January 25th, 2007 · Comments Off on Here’s "Coney Island Park"
The drawing above is the latest rendering of a park that Thor Equities might build in Coney Island on the site of Astroland. It was passed on to the Daily News and is written up today by Jotham Sederstrom. The six-acre park would have 21 rides, a hotel, a glass-enclosed atrium, commercial space and a manmade canal for boat rides. It’s being designed by Thinkwell Productions, which Thor hired to work on the Astroland property. Here’s some information from the story:
The big-bucks developer who bought Coney Island’s oldest amusement park plans to replace it with a glitzy $250 million playground anchored by a roller coaster that dips under the Boardwalk, the Daily News has learned.
Double the size of Astroland, the multitiered park will include 21 rides, a hotel, a manmade canal for boat rides, a glass-encased atrium and commercial space.
“We’re trying to deliver on the promise of what Coney Island is,” said Chris Durmick, creative director of Thinkwell Design & Production, the California group that is drawing up the 6-acre plan. “Whatever you come looking for at Coney Island, it’s all going to be there.”
Astroland owner Carol Hill Albert, whose family had owned the gritty but storied park since 1962, sold the site to developer Thor Equities in November for an unspecified amount.
Coney Island Park, slated to open in 2011, would be one component of a 13-acre, $1.5 billion plan by Thor that includes an indoor water park and residential, retail and entertainment components.
The flagship ride is the “Leviathan,” a 100-foot-tall coaster with loop-de-loops that dips under the Boardwalk before flying back aboveground.
Including the Cyclone and another coaster planned for Stillwell Ave., it would be the third for the area.
Another marquee ride, the Aviator, would soar 120 feet, with gondolas guided individually by hand-held joysticks.
Kinetic Carnival, the Coney Island blog, comments that “Attention will now be on ThinkWell as we eagerly await and see what specific plans they will conjure up. With this new report Thor seems to have gained many points to their side. Let’s hope Thor and company keep the promise and integrity of the importance of the amusements in Coney.”
We have questioned Thor’s plans for Coney, and still have concerns about its plans to build massive highrises with luxury condos in the amusement area, but the plan for the Astroland property certainly looks like a step in the right direction, assuming it is serious.
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January 25th, 2007 · Comments Off on Program at Gowanus Houses Needs Computer Donations
Have a computer sitting around that you’ve outgrown? We came across an email from a local resident who is putting together a computer training course for the Gowanus Houses Community Center “to teach kids in public housing the fundamentals of computers using free and open source software.” The resident, Kevin Hardiman, says he is “looking to the community for computer donations – full computer systems desired, but incomplete system will be evaluated – to drive the program.” He is seeking people or businesses willing to donate old unused machines or that would be intesting in helping, and can be reached at kevin (at) opensourcebrooklyn (dot) com. The program is being developed in conjunction with the Gowanus Houses Community Center, and has the support of the Gowanus Tenant Association.
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January 25th, 2007 · Comments Off on Gowanus #1: What’s the Plan?
If you’re interested in the entire Gowanus planning and zoning issues, representatives from the Department of Planning are making a presentation tonight (1/25) to Community Board 6 on “a land use framework for further planning discussions” in the Gowanus Canal area. Given the recent publication of a Comprehensive Plan drawn up by the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation and a likely rezoning by the city (and developer pressure for zoning decisions), it’s the beginning of an important conversation. The meeting starts at 6:00PM at St. Mary’s Residence, which is at 41 First Street (between Hoyt and Bond Streets). The entire Community Board 6 calendar is available here.
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Head over to this week’s New York Observer to check out a nice account by Alexis Swerdloff of going back to the neighborhood (Boerum Hill). A sample:
During the summer of 1996, my parents and I crossed the pond, as it were, and moved from Boerum Hill to the Upper East Side. Several months later, Patois opened up on Smith Street, inciting the so-called “Smith Street Restaurant Revolution,” which went on to incite a full-on Boerum Hill revolution. A year after we left, Boerum Hill (née Gowanus) had transformed itself from Cobble Hill’s pockmarked younger step-cousin to a full-fledged swan of a neighborhood…Like the burnt-out punks who wax nostalgic for the East Village of yesteryear—when you couldn’t walk an inch without stepping on a crack vial—I did my own back-when-ing.
“Back when I lived here, Bar Tabac was a Chinese restaurant—with pictures.”
“Back when I lived here, there was a drunk guy who sat on the stoop across the street from my house and shouted obscenities at me.”
“Back when I lived here, I had a gymnastics birthday party at the YWCA on Third Street and Atlantic Avenue, and it was too dangerous to walk there, so we drove.”
…Whenever people ask me why I don’t live in Brooklyn anymore, I say, “I’m not ready.” I’m a little intimidated by what it’s become. I live above a Duane Reade in the East Village, a neighborhood that is moving closer and closer to Fratsville as we speak. It’s hard for me to think about the boys with calculator watches and girls with WNET tote bags, drinking Stellas at Boat on Smith Street and browsing the paperback section of Book Court, without feeling a little left out. I feel like the girl who was best friends with the fat kid, who then started being mean to said fat kid because that was the cool thing to do, and now that fat kid has grown up to be Philip Seymour Hoffman.
January 25th, 2007 · Comments Off on Williamsburg Sunrise
There’s something about this vid–a seven-second time lapse sequence, actually–that we really like, and it only requires a tiny investment of time. It was originally posted at Lolz Blog, where you can watch it with a Quicktime plugin or just click on the youtube version below.
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Interesting chatter in Boerum Hill as property owners appear to be getting frightening tax statements from the city. (Nothing like a missive entitled “Nutso Property Tax Assessment” to get our attention.) The discussion comes from the Boerum Hill Group on Yahoo. Among the comments from owners:
Has anyone else gotten a loony property tax assessment this year? I just opened mine to discover that Mayor Bloomberg thinks my house has increased 100 percent in one year. What is more, it is now worth more than any other house on the block or perhaps in the neighborhood by hundreds of thousands of dollars. This of course allows him to bill me at an outrageous rate for property that would sell at best for half the valuation. What the hell is going on NOW? First we are inundated with wiggy water bills. Now we get priced out of our own houses for valuations we cannot possibly collect? Is there no one minding the store?
Not to get too technical, but later emails indicate that assessments are “going to full market value” but that “taxes will still be based on assessed value (which has yearly limits on the percentage.”
What kind of market value increases are people seeing? Apparently, 50 percent or more. One property owner reports a market value increase of $700,000. Another of $500,000. And, are you ready for this one? “We got our assessment yesterday and our value went up by $1.2 million!”
If you get your information online, you already know that Jake Dobkin revealed on Gothamist that someone called “The Splasher” is responsible for the destruction of street art in Williamsburg and Soho. For the handful of you, however, that didn’t see the post, he writes, “Over the last few months, someone has been splashing paint over major streetart works all over the city. The ‘Splasher’, as he’s come to be known, has a taste for targeting major pieces by Swoon, Obey, Momo, and others. His trail of paint-dripped terror extends from Williamsburg, to Soho, and back again– and he’s already obliterated dozens of pieces.” As one who appreciates the work of Swoon and other artists, we find this all tremendously depressing. There is more info and many photos in the post as well as an ongoing discussion about the propriety of destroying street art and about street art itself. The street artists known as Flower Face Killah says that the Splasher is a former Columbia student named Zak, which still doesn’t explain the Splasher’s infantile, pseudointellectual psychobabble about “the fetishized action of banality” and “unmediated actualization of desires.”
We could say a lot of things. “Bite me,” comes most readily to mind. But, we won’t say that or utter any of the curses or epithets we yearn to type. Instead, we will ask: With all the things one could splash in Brooklyn and Manhattan, this person has to destroy street art?
Wonder why some people are less than enthralled with the top-to-bottom rebuilding of Coney Island proposed by Thor Equities that might leave it nothing more than a famous brand name that bears zero relationship to the original product? Well, for a strong sense of the concern, check out this post about Coney Island on Erica’s Blog. For all of our writing of the planning and development issues involved, the spirit she conveys is far, far better than anything we’ve managed:
The highlight of my trip was always climbing the incline of the ramp of the Riegelman Boardwalk as the entire expanse of the Atlantic Ocean opened up before me…the world famous Parachute Jump – what has been called Brooklyn’s equivalent to the Eiffel Tower – directly ahead of me. It was a sight that never failed to take my breath away, the sun setting over the crashing waves, old Russian immigrants huddling together (even in the summertime) on the benches lining the boardwalk, and the further along I rode on the rickety slats, the closer I got to the amusement park, which I would sometimes bypass my mother’s job for if I had the time to kill, and then go back to West 5th Street later.
I loved the sounds of the rides, watching, and listening to them. The towering Wonder Wheel, its red and blue cars sliding back and forth on the rails, affording riders a breath-taking view of the landscape, children screaming with joy on the teacups…adults pleading with Cyclone operators “Shut it off!, I wanna go back!,” as they ascended the first gut-wrenching drop of the coaster (which I’ve been on close to 20 times, each time better than the next)…these sights and sounds always made me so happy, and never was I more at peace with myself and life as when I took this journey to Coney Island.
After construction and re-development commence to turn Coney Island into (words escape me) the exact opposite 0f what it is now, the Brooklyn-spawned, age-old seediness and grit will be gone, replaced by digitized neons and high-techitude, nothing more than another Atlantic City, or Vegas-ized theme park. It won’t be my Coney Island anymore, the only one I’ve known my whole life, the one I would go to every summer, and used to drool over as my bicycle wheels bumpily thumped over miles of boardwalk to the tune of coasting seagulls and the screams of Cyclone riders, who’d never before experienced that “first drop,” which I hear is a killa.
I, for one, do not look forward to this makeover. Yeah, the neighborhood could use a little pick-me-up, but an out and out makeover, so that it’s no longer recognizable from what it one was? No thank you.
We should have a better sense of what will happen as 2007 unfolds.
January 24th, 2007 · Comments Off on Brooklyn Losing Zoloft but Gaining Affordable Housing on Pfizer Site?
The announcement that Pfizer was shutting down its Brooklyn manufacturing plant–where Zoloft, Cardura XL and other prescription drugs are produced–had barely hit Monday when discussion started about the fate of the company’s factory on Flushing Avenue in Williamsburg and several adjacent parcels of land. (The Pfizer land is shaded in the Google map/satellite image above.)
Yesterday, Brownstoner offered that the site should be used for affordable housing, writing:
The availablity of a site this size provides Mayor Bloomberg with a rare opportunity to achieve his affordable housing goals. The area would have to be rezoned for residential, but the Mayor said yesterday that he planned to pursue that course of action.
A huge amount of land will be in play including the 660,000-square-foot plant between Marcy and Tompkins. Pfizer also owns another 15 acres of land nearby, leading a source to write to Curbed:
It’s a sizable chunk of real estate in Williamsburg/Bed-Stuy. On the above Google satellite image, it’s not just the factory and parking lot, but the three triangular/trapezoidal plots just north of it. It’s almost as large as the Marcy Houses to the west. I wonder which developers are going to jump on this? Like Gowanus, they’ll need experience in remediating the brown-field/superfund like conditions under the plant. Keep an eye on this story.
Interestingly, in May 2003, Pfizer was promised $46 million in tax breaks and subsidies to expand and add jobs in New York City. The city is said to be taking a look at the incentives in light of the plant closure.
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January 24th, 2007 · Comments Off on Gowanus Whole Foods Site From Above
It’s not often you get to see a major development site from above in an essentially low-rise neighborhood. Such is the case with the photo above shot by photographer f.trainer that shows big Gowanus Whole Foods site. The Whole Food property extends from Third Avenue, on the left, all the way to the Gowanus Canal, on the right. (It doesn’t include the history Litchfield Building, which is at the corner at the lower left.) The property extends back to the branch of the Gowanus that appears as a dark line in the photo. A wider panorama is below. You can check out a couple of the shots at full size here and here.
January 24th, 2007 · Comments Off on Cool Panoramas of Gowanus from the Batcave
The images from the photo expedition inside the so-called Batcave–the old Transit Authority Power Plant between the Gowanus Canal and Third Avenue–in Gowanus keep coming. Photographer f.trainer has produced a variety of very, very cool panoramas shot from the roof. One was posted over at his excellent blog, The Food of the Future. Others are part of his flickr photostream. You can check them out in a large size (which is how they should be seen) here, here, here and here. They offer excellent views of Gowanus and South Brooklyn from a vantage you wouldn’t otherwise see.
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January 24th, 2007 · Comments Off on Develop Don’t Destroy Holding Comedy Fundraiser at Union Hall
At least they haven’t lost their sense of humor. Develop Don’t Destroy, which is waging a legal fight against the Atlantic Yards project, is holding a fundraiser for its Legal Fund on Tuesday, February 6 at 8:30. The event will take place at Union Hall, the cool hangout spot and venue at 702 Union Street in Park Slope (at Fifth Avenue). Comedians include Michael Showalter, Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, Jon Benjamin, Andrea Rosen, Chelsea Peretti, Gilad Foss, Patrick Borelli, Robin Cloud and “special guests.” Doors at 8. Ticket are $20. For more information go to Develop Don’t Destroy. Hey, you might as well laugh.
BONUS: Screenings of documentary “Brooklyn Matters,” are being held several times in coming weeks. (Check out Gothamist’s review of the documentary here.) There’s one on Jan. 31, from 7-8:30PM, hosted by the Boerum Hill Association at Belarusian Church, which is at 401 Atlantic Avenue (at Bond Street). There is another screening on February 1 at 6PM at the Pratt Institute at the Higgins Hall Auditorium, which is located at 61 St. James Place(at Lafayette Avenue). And there is a screening on February 27 at 7:00PM hosted by the Fifth Avenue Committee, which is at 621 Degraw Street(btwn 4th & 3rd Ave.).
DOUBLE BONUS: We didn’t get around to it yesterday, but it was developer Bruce Ratner’s Birthday. No Land Grab declared it Happy Bruce Day and related the following information from Wikipedia about Mr. Ratner: Born January 23, 1945 in Cleveland, Ohio. He is president and CEO of Forest City Ratner, the New York division of Forest City Enterprises, which is based in Cleveland. Ratner was New York City’s most active real estate developer during the 1990s. Ratner graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1967 and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1970. After obtaining his J.D. Ratner became the director of a Model Cities program for the Lindsay administration in New York City. Subsequently he served in the capacity of chief of the Consumer Protection Division in the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs under Mayor Ed Koch in 1978.
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January 23rd, 2007 · Comments Off on Roebling Oil Field Progress Report
Our friends at the Roebling Oil Field, the development at N. 11th Street and Roebling in Williamsburg that is formally known as McCarren Park Mews, are making progress on the coverup remediation. Much foundation has been poured, but the scent of oil still wafts from the environmentally-challenged site, which a few weeks ago smelled like an oil field in Kuwait. The workers have also tried closing up all the holes in the tarp covering the fence around the site, but where there’s a will (and a small lens on a Canon Powershot), there’s always a way. What we found on Sunday were workers bulldozing around black dirt on the western side of the site.
What, you might ask, is down there? Well, a look at the big Environmental Impact Statement that went with the Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning is revealing. It shows a tank with used oil across the street at 5 Roebling Street, which has been used as a truck repair facility (but no indication the tank has leaked). Of interest, at least if you want to know what used to be near the condo you’re buying is the report for 215 North 10th Street, next door to the Roebling Oil Field. That site used to house a tank for 5,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid, a tank for 12,000 gallons of ammonium hydroxide and a tank for 2,000 gallons of nitric acid. (The tanks were “closed” in the early 90s and there is no indication of any leakage, but it’s always interesting to know who the neighbors were.)
Not listed in this document, but noted on Property Shark, is another interesting issue: a “tank failure” at 223 N. 11th Street, which would be the current site of a condo called N. 11th & Roebling. “Tank failures,” according to Property Shark, involve “releases of gasoline, fuel oil, industrial chemicals or other toxic pollutants often cause extensive air, water, groundwater or soil contamination that threatens the environment or the public health.”
January 23rd, 2007 · Comments Off on PortSide’s Mary Whalen in Drydock
PortSide New York, which acquired a tanker named the Mary A. Whalen, and is turning her into a floating headquarters and multi-purpose facility, celebrated a milestone last week when the venerable ship was towed to a drydock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for renovation and repairs. PortSide director Carolina Salguero has started a blog called the Portside Tanker Blog to chronicle the work. Here’s an excerpt from the first entry:
0830 and we’re at the Navy Yard. A cluster of hard hats awaits us. The dock is flooded and the caisson (door) is open. A dinky block of wood floating on a slim line across the head of the dock indicates the centerpoint to align with the Whalen’s bow. The opening is too narrow for the tug to keep us on the hip, so the tug lands us on a fuel barge just outside the caisson, and moves to our stern to push us in. The Delaware’s tankerman helps out with lines even though he’s still in his slippers and it looks like we woke him. We slide in and the gantry crane soon swings over a man basket and lifts the guests away. My adrenaline wicks away rapidly. I’m beat. Wednesday night was a sleepless one due to the cold.
You can also check out some cool photos of the ship in drydock at Stefan Falke’s Eye and over at Tugster. We had to miss the trip to the Navy Yard, but we’re hoping to be able to visit or to make the trip back. (We visited the Mary Whalen during Open House New York and you can check out the photos in our GL post with a flickr slideshow or just go over to the flickr set.) What we really can’t wait for, however, is for the Mary Whalen to start her new life berthed in Red Hook, welcoming visitors.
January 23rd, 2007 · Comments Off on Tale of Two Neighborhoods: Battling Dangerous Demolitions by youtube, Blog & Phone Call
Today’s Daily News takes note of some of the bitter development fights in the South Slope and in Greenwood Heights, comparing the youtube and blogging approach of the Greenwood Heights residents with the more traditional calls made to the Department of Buildings by Bensonhurst residents. A bit on the battle on 22nd Street:
A Greenwood Heights man is filming a construction site’s alleged asbestos violations and posting them on YouTube, while a Bensonhurst group facing a similar problem is loudly voicing concerns to city agencies.
Aaron Brashear has been videotaping a construction site at 338 22ndSt., which he charges has hazardous working conditions, including asbestos. He then puts the footage on the Internet…City officials said they are monitoring the site but have not written any violations. “The department understands the neighbors’ concerns and we appreciate the efforts and urge them to call 311 in addition to the videotaping,” Buildings Department spokeswoman Kate Lindquist said.
The city Department of Environmental Protection said the asbestos allegations are “under consideration” and that a ruling may come as early as today. If it is found, the contractor, Knockout Construction, could be slapped with multiple fines.
Meanwhile, in Bensonhurst:
In Bensonhurst, angry neighbors of an asbestos-tainted demolition site have taken a more traditional approach – hounding city agencies.
The site at 2084 60th St. has been dormant for over a year after the Buildings Department issued a stop-work order due to demolition without a permit. When a complaint about asbestos was filed earlier this month, the Department of Environmental Protection inspected the site. “Asbestos was found in the vinyl floor tiling,” agency spokesman Ian Michaels said, but the asbestos is unlikely to get into the air because the tiling “holds the asbestos really well.”
Slight advantage to the youtube and blog approach.
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January 23rd, 2007 · Comments Off on Casualties of the N. 6th Street Graffiti War in Williamsburg
We owe the news of the N. 6th Street Williamsburg Street Art War to blogger INSIJS, because we don’t often check that block for blogging purposes. In any case, tipped off by INSIJS’s post, we shot some photos of the aftermath (and posted an edited version of the “Excrement of Art” manifesto yesterday). Here’s some of the collateral damage. Banksy went first. The Faile stencils went last week. We await the next clash and results.
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January 23rd, 2007 · Comments Off on Gowanus Back in the Day
We hit up the well known as our Gowanus archive for another Gowanus Back in the Day historic photo from the Brooklyn Public Library‘s extensive collection of historic Brooklyn pics. This is an aerial shot of the Carroll Street Bridge from the 1950s. The notes with the photo say, “Portion of Gowanus Canal showing Carroll Street and Union Street bridges; tugboats docked in canal, lower left; warehouses and industrial plants on both sides of canal, with parked trucks and automobiles; large water tower in right foreground; rows of residential buildings in left background.” The caption reads, “Carroll Street Bridge — A retractile bridge carrying Carroll Street over Gowanus Canal. Opened to traffic in 1889.”
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This paper has taken a very principled stand against the waterfront condo-and-open-space development known as Brooklyn Bridge Park, but the time has come for the Brooklyn Angle to break from The Brooklyn Paper and support Brooklyn Bridge Park for one reason and one reason only: tetherball.
The other day, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy sent out a glossy mailing highlighting all the recreational offerings their new park would have — and tetherball was right there on Pier 2 (see rendering).
Yes, tetherball — the true city game — is coming back to Brooklyn, the borough that, arguably, nurtured the greatest talents that the sport has ever produced (true, Leroy “Tight Serve” Johnson was from Fresno, but he’s nothing compared to Kareem Abdul Fishman — Midwood High School ’45! — and Ollie “Loop-de-loop” Carradine, the pride of Westinghouse High).
Indeed, all these legends have been forgotten — but only because the city’s Parks Department, the Board of Education and Robert Moses’s long-powerful Office of Tetherball Services dropped (or, more accurately, severed) the ball and eliminated hundreds, if not dozens, of tetherball courts citywide.
Tetherball!
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McCarren Pool will be before the Landmarks Preservation Commission on January 30 for a landmarking hearing. Preservationists have had the pool on their landmarking list for nearly two decades. News of the sites around city that will get hearings on the 30th is passed along by the Historic Districts Council Blog. The historic pool was opened in 1936 and sat abandoned for years before being revived for use as a concert venue last year. Landmark status might actually give a boost to efforts to return it to life as a swimming pool. In any case, it would safeguard the facility from destruction or significant alteration. The Landmarks Commission document lists “the bath house, swimming pool, diving pool, wading pool, filter house, life guard house, brick perimeter walls, piers and cast-iron fencing, comfort stations, linking pathways, and the planter meridian paralleling the western side of the bath house, Lorimer Street between Driggs Avenue and Bayard Street, Brooklyn.” Interestingly, the diving pool has already been filled in with dirt.
The pool opened on July 31, 1936 and ceased operating as a pool in 1984. It was the eighth of eleven giant pools built by Robert Moses and the Works Progress Administration that opened during the summer of 1936. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia cut the ribbon at McCarren pool on July 31, saying “no pool anywhere has been as much appreciated as this one.” It was built to handle 6,800 swimmers and cost $1 million to build.
January 22nd, 2007 · Comments Off on Brookvid: Revere Sugar Death Throes
Developer Joe Sitt‘s demolition workers weren’t working in Red Hook this weekend, but the results of their labor were on full display. The site of the old Revere Sugar Plant used to be dead quiet. Now, as Revere dies, it is eerily noisy as loose metals bangs and clangs and vibrates. The Brookvid here captures the current state of the demolition project and the death noises of Revere in a bitter January wind.
We swung by Monteleone’s on Court Street over the weekend and found that it looks like it’s about ready to reopen and that it’s looking good. The signage says “F. Monteleone & Cammareri, Bakery & Cafe.” All of the cases are in place, as you can see, and so are the tables, so it looks like the only things missing are the best cakes and pastries in Brooklyn.
