Landschaftspark? Huh? GL going off on another crazy tangent? Bear with us for a moment.

The photo essay that B61 Productions posted yesterday on Red Hook noted that demolition trucks had been spotted on the Revere Sugar property. Thor Equities (yes, the same Thor Equities that is going to build a huge project in Coney Island) bought the property–which features that iconic dome and spectacular industrial ruins–for $40.5 million last year and aims to turn it into some sort of retail and residential complex. The property’s fate is more or less sealed (attention Ikea shoppers, get your Legal Seafoods next door) if Thor gets the zoning changes and approvals it needs.

Before you accuse of being anti-change and pro-rot, consider the case of Landschaftspark in Duisburg, Germany. It’s a former industrial wasteland (a couple of photos below) that the Germans transformed into a wildly popular park and tourist destination. Duisburg is in the Ruhr near Dusseldorf. It features acres of natural greenery. The old factory buildings house musical performances and art exhibits. Former ore silos have rock climbing walls. There’s an old blast furnace that’s been turned into an observation deck and more. At night, the old industrial structures are bathed in colored light.

The Brooklyn waterfront is rapidly being overwhelmed by a sterile, pedestrian version of the future in which everything is clean and new and tending toward the suburban. Approached creatively, though, the Revere site would be a natural for the Duisburg treatment on a smaller scale. One can easily see it the Revere plant shored up and adaptively reused to serve as a tourist attraction, performance space, industrial museum, waterfront attraction and more. Which is not to say that this is what will happen. Our favorite Red Hook icon seems fated to be demolished like the shipyard next door and to live on only in the images taken by all of us who shoot a lot of pictures of structures we know are doomed.

The Landschaftspark is by no means the only such conversion of an industrial facility or parcel into an attraction. Other examples include the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, which includes everything from restaurants and clubs to art galleries and playgrounds, and the BP Site Parkland in Sydney. A forerunner of all this is the Gas Works Park in Seattle.

A little creative thinking on the part of public officials and planners could create a historic legacy for generations to come rather than another uninspired, utilitarian project with some expensive housing and, well, a Legal Seafoods.

Check out incredible photos of the Landschaftspark here and a big flickr photosteam here.

Photo courtesy of Christoph Moseler/hochofenwerk.de

There’s dumb and there’s stupid, but then there’s really moronic. We couldn’t pass on this story because it’s so funny in its own tragic-comic way and less offensive than Brooklyn’s teen Hitler. We go to the copy and paste from today’s Post:

A bungling bandit – paroled in September for robbing three Brooklyn banks in 2004 – is up to his old tricks, cops say.

Ronald Crudup, 27, was busted Wednesday after he attempted two birdbrained bank robberies right out of Woody Allen’s “Take the Money and Run,” law-enforcement sources said.

On Halloween, he passed a note at an Apple branch in Carroll Gardens – but the teller refused to read it. They passed it back and forth several times before he got frustrated and fled.

The next day he tried a Chase branch in Park Slope. But the teller asked him if he had a bank card, while passing the note to a colleague – who called cops.

Police busted him after reviewing surveillance tapes.

In 2004, Crudup was convicted of stealing nearly $10,000 from banks.

On one occasion, he was handed $1,200 with a dye pack in the stacks of bills.

When he ran outside the bank, the dye pack exploded, sending bills flying.

The teller asked him if he had a bank card? There must be some interesting things in the Chase training manual.

This is some of what happened, the last week of October & first week of November, 2006 in Brooklyn:

First, we will note that it was a week of comings and going. First, a ten-ton rock was dug up in Fort Greene and made headlines and made people happy. Then, the rock was taken from us and brought to Queens. At least, King’s Highway will get a trial of those anxiety-inducing countdown walk signals. Meanwhile, we learned that Marty Markowitz is jetting off to London to do the cheerleader thing, but that the head of the Bronx Planning Office is coming to Brooklyn to do the big building, dense development thing. We’re guessing it won’t make much difference one way or the other because the borough’s goose is already cooked in so, so many ways.

Speaking of Atlantic Yards, there are noisy weeks and quieter weeks, with this week being somewhere in between. We did note that Newark Mayor Cory Booker held his nose, got some tiny concessions out of the New Jersey Devils and came out in support of the arena with which his slimy sleazoid seriously-under-investigation predecessor saddled him. What’s this got to do with Brooklyn? Newark would love to have the Nets play in its big turkey arena. Interestingly, new IRS rules could increase the cost of building Atlantic Yards by preventing the use of a tax-exempt financing mechanism that would save Bruce Ratner nearly $100 million over 30 years. Of course, you can always vent by tossing a basketball at The Bruce.

That’s not the only tax break for the rich causing a spike in blood pressure. Derek Jeter and a lot of other celebs were in the news again for taking advantage of the city’s 421-a tax abatement, which costs taxpayers (including the really low-income and middle-class ones) $300 million a year. Great if you want to buy a $2 million condo in a Richard Meier building. Less good if you’re an ordinary person paying half his or her income in rent or for a (non-tax abated) mortgage. We are unsure, however, whether 421-a’s are good or bad for Park Slope fornicators that need a place to go to do the nasty outside the bonds of matrimony. Maybe the Brooklyn principal whose numbers add up to more than 100 percent can tell us.

Of course, there are those that prefer to steal their money the old fashioned way–by putting on a wig and a beard on Halloween, marching into a bank and robbing it. The robber was described as a “bearded lady.” She may have been one of the few characters that didn’t show up in Thor Equities release of Coney Island 3.1, but how often does a rendering have a pumpkin on a mermaid’s ass? The dumbest bank robber in all of New York City, however, tried robbing two Brooklyn banks without a costume.

Well, at least, the Halloween Bandit wasn’t dressed up as Hitler, like our favorite Brooklyn Moron of the Week, the teenager who dressed as Der Fuhrer at Leon M. Goldstein High School.

Twice.

And posed for a number of newspaper photos.

Ass wipe.

Run:

• More Marathon Strategies [Gothamist]
• Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Marathon [IMG NYC Marathon Site]
• One Marathon: 37,000 Stories [OTBKB]
• The Marathon as Costume Party [NYDN]
• Fort Green High School Band to Play Rocky Theme for Three Hours [NYDN]
• Bearded Lady Robs Park Slope Bank [Brooklyn Papers]

Don’t Run:

• Shovels Sinking at the Navy Yard [Brooklyn Downtown Star]
• Transit Oriented Development and Lagging MTA [AYR]
• New IRS Rules Could Impact Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Financing [Brooklyn Papers]
• 20 Henry St. Garden to be Replaced by Building [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• Green Brooklyn [OTBKB]
• Development Watch: Sky’s the Limit on N. 1st [Brownstoner]
• New Brooklyn Boss: Hits, Not Homers [The Real Estate]
• Letterman Blows Up Giant Pumpkin in Coney Island [Z. Madison]
• Coney Aquarium Renderings Are Not So Distant Cousin of Thor Proposal [Kinetic Carnival]
• Army Corps Studying Sheepshead Bay & Manhattan Beach Storm Threat [Bay News]
• Fort Greene Women’s Collective a “Place That Matters” [Brooklyn Record]
• Domino’s Comes to Brooklyn [Daily Intelligencer]
• Fort Greene’s 10-ton Rock Jacked to Queens [NYDN]
• Gravesend Waste Transfer Station Gets Green Light [Sunset Parker]

Don’t Think:

• More About Brooklyn’s Dress Up Teen Hitler Moron [P. Slope Courier]
• Dumbest Bank Robber in NYC Caught in Brooklyn [NYDN]

Prospect Park is always beautiful, but it’s especially nice this time of year with the leaves turning. We took a stroll through the park in glorious weather the other day, surprised by how deserted the park is on a weekday. (We can’t normally go there on weekday afternoons.) Olmstead is said to have like Prospect Park better than Central Park because he felt the landscape was more natural. There are, indeed, places in Prospect Park where you can forget you are in the middle of Brooklyn. In any case, a few of the photographic results are in the slideshow below. If for some reason, you’d rather go to the flickr set, you can find it here or view it as a slideshow on the flickr site by clicking here.

Don’t look now, but the 500 billionth packet of Sweet’n Low rolled off the assembly line at the sugar substitute manufacturer’s plant across the street from the Brooklyn Navy Yard this week. (Did you even know that Sweet’n Low came from Brooklyn?) The milestone is reported in the new Brooklyn Papers, which notes that the “granulated sugar substitute” was invented here in Brooklyn in 1957, the year the Dodgers departed for Chavez Ravine in LA.

Packet number 500 billion was given to the Brooklyn Historical Society, where it is unlikely to end up in a cup of coffee. While times were tough for a while, Sweet’n Low has seen an upswing in popularity in recent years because of diabetes. (Really bad news is always someone’s good news.) Should be a while for packet 1 trillion, though.

What’s a 421-a, you say? For those that don’t know, it’s a 35-year-old New York City tax break that dates to the days of the city’s death spiral–fiscal crisis, Son of Sam, South Bronx on fire, muggers on every corner, etc. Back when 421-a was enacted Soho was a very edgy place to live and the city was desperate for development. The 421-a program was designed to encourage developers to build housing by offering a 10-year tax break that allows them to pay taxes on the value of the lot they’re building on rather than the new property itself.

Over time, like most tax subsidy programs, it has run amok, and is routinely used to subsidize luxury housing. Beneficiaries of the huge tax break, as detailed in Metro by Patrick Arden in August include Derek Jeter (who saves $130K a year), Hideki Matsui (who only saves $26K a year), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (which pockets $114K a year). And then there’s Calvin Klein ($152K annual savings), Ian Schrager ($40K a year savings) and big name chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten ($47K a year). Not to mention Natalie Portman ($26K a year) and James Gandolfini (a mere $6K a year in savings).

All told, the 421-a program costs the city $300 million a year. Mayor Bloomberg recently proposed the brave reform of requiring additional Manhattan developments and ones in Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo to include some affordable housing. (There are those who think 421-a should only go to developments that include affordable housing and some who think it should be put out of its expensive misery entirely and the money devoted to affordable housing.)

Which brings us to On Prospect Park, where apartments start at $1 million and where buyers will get a monstrous tax break courtesy of their fellow New Yorkers for ten years. This isn’t the only Meier building in New York to get the break either. His West Village glass buildings have 421-a’s too.

Brownstoner, which has been following the 421-a issue, summarizes a Pratt Center-Habitat for Humanity study of the tax break that was released earlier this year and concludes “Developers have made out like bandits.” The study, among other things, found that the program has subsidized more than 100,000 units of housing — only 8% of which are affordable or to low or moderate income New Yorkers. (You can find more about the study by clicking over to the Pratt Center’s website or a PDF of the study by clicking here. It makes fascinating reading in a public subsidy for developers and the wealthy kind of way.)

On Prospect Park is still a pretty building, but hard to look at without thinking about those tax breaks.

Why are we writing about this? Not because Newark Mayor Cory Booker held his nose the other day and embraced the New Jersey Devils and the arena with which his sleazy predecessor saddled him. And not because the “concessions” that Mr. Booker got from the Devils in exchange for his support are so minimal they are laughable. (There’s only so much you can negotiate with both hands tied behind your back and a gun pointed at your head, even if you are young, highly ethical and ambitious.)

No, we’re writing about it because of this sentence in the NY Times article: “The Booker administration would also love to lure the Nets basketball team if plans for a new home in Brooklyn come to naught.” Could it come to pass? Much would seem to depend on how long the Atlantic Yards proposal is tied up in litigation as the eminent domain suit works it way through the Federal judiciary and, of course, on the outcome. (Yes, we’re assuming rubber stamp approval by the Empire State Development Corporation and an okay by the Public Authorities Control Board.) And, the Nets, of course, also have an out in their New Jersey lease that allows them to go to Queens. (Sunnyside Yards, anyone?)

Newark’s arena is likely to be the financial turkey to beat all turkeys with only a hockey team as its tenant. So, the only thing to keep Newark from drowning in a sea of red ink and having to bail out its $365 million arena is a basketball team. The beautiful new arena in Newark is due to open next fall.

This is one of those items that goes under most radars, but that is of interest to those concerned with Brooklyn development. The Real Estate reported yesterday that Purnima Kapur, who is director of the Bronx office of the Department of City Planning is taking over as director of the Brooklyn office. In the Bronx, Ms. Kapur handled the contentious and controversial rezonings for Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Terminal Market. She is replacing Regina Myer, who will be heading the Hudson Yards Development Corporation. Ms. Myer, among other things, was an Atlantic Yards supporter who recently described the project as “incredibly transit-oriented,” on “primarily state-owned land,” and located “in Downtown Brooklyn.” While we know little of Ms. Kapur, we do know about the Yankee Stadium and Bronx Terminal Market projects, so we assume that the Planning Office’s support for dense, large-scale development in Brooklyn will continue.

The release announcing Ms. Kapur’s new job says she is “extremely qualified to lead the Brooklyn team for upcoming challenges such as planning for the Gowanus Canal neighborhoods, revitalization of Coney Island and implementation of the Downtown Brooklyn and Greenpoint-Williamsburg plans.” Some of our favorite topics. Which is why we thought it was worth taking note of the New Brooklyn Planning Boss.

Park Slope resident and author Steven Berlin Johnson, who is also one of the people behind the newly launched outside.in website is reading from his new book The Ghost Map at the Book Court tonight. The reading is at 8PM at 165 Court Street in Cobble Hill. (Check out an item on this and tonight’s Stoop Series over at the Brooklyn Record.) The book is the subject of a long essay in New Yorker, which calls it a “vivid history” of the work of mid-19th Century doctor John Snow in identifying contaminated water as a source of transmission of cholera. Among other things, outside. in aggregates blog and news content by zip code and has a number of other interesting features.

Check both out.

Food:

• Wednesday Food and Drink Roundup [Brooklyn Record]
• First Pizza at Loucallie’s on Henry St. [A Brooklyn Life]
• Loucallie’s is ‘brick oven perfection’ [New York]
• Loucallie’s Considered [Slice]
• Biscuit BBQ on Fifth Avenue is Open [Chowhound]
• Ayoub of Williamsburg’s Fornino Opening Cronkite on LES [Eater]
• Chicken-n-Waffles? [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Juliette Bistro in Williamsburg [Chowhound]
• Hot Stuff at the Smoke Joint [Brooklyn Record]
• The Smoke Joint Does It Right [Clinton Hill Blog]
• F is for Funny at Focaccino in Bed-Stuy [Eating for Brooklyn]
• Getting Grimaldi’d [TPSG&TC-LC]
• Greenpoint’s Divine Follie [Chowhound]
• Porchetta on Smith Pushes the Envelope [New York]

Not Food:

• Bronx Planner (Who Managed Controversial Projects) Coming to Brooklyn [TRE]
• Uninsured Artists Barter Service for Healthcare [Brooklyn Record]
• NYT’s Sports Section Assumes Nets Move to Brooklyn [AYR]
• A Peek at One Hanson Place [Blather from Brooklyn]
• New Cement Terminal in Sunset Park [Sunset Parker]
• New Brooklyn Historical Society Exhibits [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• Park Slope Journal: O’Connor’s Without its Owner [NYT]
• Street Vendor Art in Dumbo [Dumbo NYC]
• Cobble Hill Lofts [Set Speed]
  

Not Smart:

• Goose Step Kid: Moron Brooklyn Teen Dresses Like Hitler Again, Goes to School [NYPost]
• Brooklyn Principal Has Trouble with Percents [NYDN]

Related Post:
Coney Island Aquarium Renovation is Cause for Celebration

There’s a little more to report about the, um, interesting Coney renderings published by the Post yesterday. The Post, itself, follows up with this blurb that notes that city officials saw the drawings and have pronounced them “on the right track”:

City officials who control the future of Coney Island say the latest renderings for a $1.5 billion, Vegas-glitz amusement area around the boardwalk are right on track.

Joshua Sirefman, interim president of the city’s Economic Development Corp., said developer Thor Equities’ latest proposal shows “the right kind of energy that we’ve always talked about for Coney Island.”

No word on the batman character in the picture or the pumpkin on the mermaid’s butt. Kinetic Carnival, the superb Coney blog, also weighs in with very thoughtful commentary:

These new served up renderings by Thor Equities seems like some lesser quality rejects which were not part of the small collection that was displayed this summer. And now, simply rehashed in light of the negative press.

Or perhaps a limited job of redesigning with not much to offer. With one of the cluttered drawings released in time for our Halloween spirits, a pumpkin on a witchy mermaid’s bum towers over those miniature parachute jumps that seem to be the recurring theme, here. With the other rendering a giant whale hologram seems to be a throwback to what we saw a few weeks ago in one of the Aquarium competing drawings.

Us, we can’t wait for more, especially for the renderings that show exactly how many highrises are proposed for the property.

We stumbled across this commentary about Brooklyn Industries on the blog Raeubertanz and we bring it up only because this Brooklyn business has gone from being amusing five or six years ago to being a little bit of a source of irritation today (especially the aggressive sales help the moment you walk in the door, at least, if you’re like us and want to be left alone to look around). They seem to us to have acquired the status of those Black Dog t-shirts that started in Martha’s Vineyard. Well, perhaps, not quite, but they’re a second or third cousin spiritually. In any case, the writer takes issue with an aspect of the company’s marketing strategy:

So, Brooklyn Industries, the company that prides itself on “urban-wear”, professing the greatness of the (best) borough of New York by labeling their clothes, and accesories with Brooklyn pride uses all white models for their catalog. Now a borough that is almost sixty percent non-white should really be properly represented by the clothing company that represents it, i think. Brooklyn Industries even goes on to use the iconic water towers of the Gowanus Projects as their logo, portraying the “Brooklyn Skyline.” That was the projects I mentioned earlier for all of you who don’t read closely, and I’m not going to make any rash overarching statements, but I’m pretty sure that my seventy-five dollar bag does not market towards the people who live in the Gowanus Projects. Now personally I don’t have any huge problems with Brooklyn Industries, mostly because I look badass in my new bag, but maybe they should go for some of the marketing techniques Talbot’s uses, and use a different skyline of “Brooklyn”. I’m thinking something more like Williamsburg, or that new apartment that sold down by the water for something like 3.1 million (the one with the giant clock window). But oh doesn’t it feel great to make money off of gentrification?

Some may agree. Some may disagree. In any case, it’s food for thought.

[Photo courtesy of dyobmit/flickr]

After-Hallo:

• Park Slope Halloween Parade Pics and Parade Notes [No Words_Daily Pix/OTBKB]
• Brooklyn Halloween 2006 flickr Photostream [flickr]
• Boo [Callalillie]
• Halloween in the US and the UK [Englishman in New York]
• Brooklyn Rock on Halloween [Crazy Stable]
• A Graveyard Smash [World According to EDW]
• Dumbest Kid in Brooklyn Dresses as Hitler and Poses for the Post [NYP]

Post-Ween:

• The Public Authorities Control Board [City Limits]
• A Walk Through Loews King Theater [Brownstoner]
• Historic Bed-Stuy Slave Theater Left to Rot [NYDN]
• Housing Displacement? Map Points to Prospect Heights/Crown Heights [AYR]
• Marathon Viewing Strategies [Gothamist]
• CMJ Takes Over Brooklyn [Brooklyn Record]
• Williamsburg’s Mad Crapper [Gawker]
• Turning Parking Lots into Housing [streetsblog]
• Coney Island Development News [Gerritsen Beach Net]
• Clinton Court Condos Slipping Under the Radar [Set Speed]
• Fall Foliage in Victorian Flatbush [Living in Victorian Flatbush]
• 70 Leffert Pl. Landmarked? [Landmark This!]
• Markowitz Taking Marriott-Funded Trip to UK to Sell Brooklyn [NYDN]

All this time, we thought that proposed power TransGas Energy power plant at the Bushwick Inlet in Williamsburg was dead. It’s not.

One could be excused for thinking otherwise, what the city looking to build a park near the site (and on the north shore of the Bushwick Inlet too) and with luxury highrise condos going up or planned all over the waterfront. (Bet nobody’s anxious for prospective buyers at Northside Piers or North8 to know that one of their neighbors could still be an 1100 megawatt power plant exhaling toxic gasses.)

So, five years after it was first proposed, and many community protests later, there’s another protest planned against the plant on Saturday (11/4) because, as it turns out, an independent state Siting Board has yet to make a decision on the plant. This, from the stopthepowerplant.org website:

While the Siting Board and the Governor waffle, lots of community residents have been asking if the fight against the TGE power plant is over. Many think that since Mayor Bloomberg and city agencies came out against the power plant that the community has been spared this power plant siting. Not so. While our campaign has put TGE on the ropes, the lengthy legal battle against the power plant siting is not over. The final result depends on the Governor’s appointed Siting Board. The Greenpoint Williamsburg Waterfront Task Force recently invited candidates running to state their position on the TGE power plant. The community eagerly awaits their reply. The Greenpoint Williamsburg Waterfront Task Force (GWWTF) maintains its strong opposition to this power plant siting despite TGE’s recent attempts to lure the community with unenforceable affordable housing offers and tall tales about better community air quality….the Governor and his Siting Board continue to waffle on their decision. The GWWTF along with the rest of the community, now represented without charge by Columbia Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic, have questioned whether the Siting Board has jurisdicton over TGE’s current proposal.

The rally is from noon-1PM on Saturday at Kent and N. 12th. More info is available here. (Amusingly, there will be a volunteer clean up going on at the East River State Park–which likely won’t open to the public until next spring–a few blocks south, starting at 10AM and continuing past the time of the rally.) While we’re vaguely amused in an bitterly ironic way about the image of million dollar condos cheek by jowl with what would be the biggest power plant in New York City, we are shockedthat a dagger has not been completely driven through its heart yet. The power plant is a relic of an era (not so long ago) when the waterfront was viewed as a dumping ground for things like trash stations and oil depots.

Time to look again, for a moment, at the state of things with our favorite threatened Clinton Hill landmark, Broken Angel. In a word, the situation remains confused and Broken Angel is by no means out of the woods.

To recap: On October 10, there was a fire at the top of the structure. This drew attention to the building, which was in violation of a raft of New York City building codes. The elderly creator was told to vacate the property. On October 18, the police moved in and led him away in handcuffs in a situation that one person called “a Clinton Hill Waco.” By the following week, the city was threatening to demolish the structure, which is not unlike the Watts Towers in Los Angeles in the sense that it is has been crafted bit by bit from odd-and-ends by its artistic creator. Meanwhile, a local architectural firm volunteered some services and there was another meeting with the city last week.

The owner’s son, Chris Wood, offers up the following comments:

Broken Angel has been an active project of construction by my family beginning in 1979. Major construction was finished in 2002, and all work done thereafter has been for the purpose of maintaining the building. The fire brought the attention of the Department of Buildings (DOB), previous interactions had occurred in 1986, and 2002 with no action taken against the building. During the course of building and maintaining the structure there have been no accidents or complaints. Compared with most modern construction projects, such as the Time Warner building in NYC, this is an excellent record. It raises questions as to why large developers are allowed to continue construction when they pose a risk to the community, whereas Broken Angel, which has no history of construction problems, has been singled out as a danger.

Of the subsequent walk through with the architect, Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture, he writes:

On Thursday (10/26/06) an engineer from the DOB toured the structure, and the next day the DOB released a different story. A DOB spokesperson recently commented to the Daily News (10/27/06) that any demolition orders, if warranted will take approximately 3 months to begin.

What the architect told the paper, of course, is that much of the structure can be saved but that it’s a matter of “time, labor and money.” Which, means, of course, that Broken Angel’s future is as endangered as ever, even if there has been a hint of progress and a slightly bigger timeframe before the city might order in wrecking balls.

A little history is helpful here. Those familiar with the saga of Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers (pictured above and to the left) might recall that Rodia’s work was condemned by the City of Los Angeles and threatened with demolition too, until a coalition of actors, artists and community activitists stepped in to save them. They were later declared a national landmark. Broken Angel may not be the Watts Towers in form, exactly, but in spirit and–increasingly in story–they are closely related.

The photo at top is courtesy of onebadapple on flickr. For those that are interested, he has posted a superb Broken Angel photoset, which can be viewed by clicking this link.

Related Posts:

• Ray of Hope for Broken Angel?
• City Now Threatening to Demolish Broken Angel
• Broken Angel Standoff: A “Clinton Hill Waco”

Today’s NY Post lays some new renderings of Thor Equities Coney Island plans on us, and we’re not sure what to make of the psychedelic drawing. They bear a vague similarity to drawings that surfaced during the summer that were later disowned as not being for public consumption. Similar features include miniature Parachute Jumps. This is what the Post has to say:Architectural renderings obtained by The Post show a grand vision of the famed summer amusement area’s rundown streets being transformed into a glitzy year-round playground and public attraction.In one image, Stillwell Avenue becomes a fantasy-filled boulevard marked by larger-than-life street furniture, such as a mermaid swimming in a martini glass and a gigantic tattooed elephant.

The landmark Cyclone roller coaster can still be seen from down Bowery Street – which itself is reinvented as a permanent festival and sideshow area.

Thor Equities has purchased 10 acres of boardwalk land in the hope of building a $1.5 billion entertainment destination. The project is awaiting city approval, but the company hopes to break ground in 18 months and wrap up in about five years.We’re not sure what that tall glass looking thing is, although the elephant (shades of an earlier era and Lucy the Elephant in Margate, NJ) is a nice touch. (It’s small, but do you notice the halloween touch on the mermaid’s rear end in the top rendering?) The description of Bowery Street as “a permanent festival and sideshow area” is encouraging. The five-year construction timeframe is sobering, to say the least. Interesting that they surface now after some of the bad press Thor got last week for the early evictions of current tenants.

Related Posts:
Coney Island Death Watch: Big Eviction Story, Continued
Turning Down the Glam Rock and Pumping Up the Elevator Music

Halloween:

• Nearly 800 flickr Brooklyn Halloween Photos [flickr]
• Pirates of the Scaribbean Ready for Prime Time [Brooklyn Record]
• Haunted House 10/30 [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Halloween in Red [Brit in Brooklyn]
• Brooklyn Heights Dogs in Costume [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• Park Slope Halloween Details [OTBKB]
• Vampires Are a Mathematical Impossibility [Sunset Parker]
• Halloween 2006 Photoset [lesterhead/flickr]
• 12th Annual Clinton Hill Halloween Walk [Clinton Hill Blog]
• The Green-Wood Cemetery Tour [Brooklyn Record]
• Costuming the 10-Ton Fort Greene Rock for Halloween [Razor Apple via Gothamist]

Not Halloween:

• The Mystery of Ratner’s City Tech Tower [AYR]
• PLG Rental Renovations on the Rise? [Across the Park]
• Seen Better Times on Jefferson Ave. [Brownstoner]
• Friedrich Special on Underhill [Set Speed]
• Spoken Word/Poetry Workshops at Dumbo’s Retreat [Dumbo NYC]
• House Hunting in Ditmas Park and Environs [Daily Intelligencer]
• Seventh Ave. Bank of America Watch: Nasty Again [OTBKB]
• Brooklyn Museum Shows [My Brooklyn Year]

So, a blogger who does a blog called Rajbot lost his wallet in Park Slope, got it back and was so pleasantly shocked that he wrote about it. We figured we’d help pass it along too, given that we read so much about people doing nasty stuff, not to mention crime and mayhem.

Here’s some of the blogger’s story:

I casually reached into my pocket and was shocked to find it empty. No wallet! Oy…I first turned the apartment upside down looking but to no avail. It didn’t help that the apartment was a mess.

I’d only visited two places earlier that day. I’d been to Watana to meet helpful Violet at a favorite Thai restaurant called Watana on 7th avenue and 14th in Brooklyn. I’d also gone to Prospect Park in the afternoon where we’d found a comfortable bench not too far from the entrance where I laid down and took a nap for about 30 minutes or so. Shortly after, we walked the 5 minutes to get back home.

We called the restaurant, and while they recognized us – they had no wallet to speak of. We also went back to the park being careful to follow my previous footsteps. Of course, no luck there.

I went ahead and called my credit card agency and had my card put on hold. About an hour later I got a call from Capital One. The CSR said, that the wallet was with the 78th Precinct in Brooklyn. A couple apparently found my wallet and returned it – money and all.

I called down at the precinct and the police officer said ‘yes! come and pick it up!’ Her eagerness was funny to me. Apparently if they have to keep things overnight it requires additional paperwork. I explained that it was late, but I could come by in the morning before work. She finally said that she’d have an officer drop it off. About a hour later, sure enough, an officer came by to hand me the wallet.

I’m not really sure how to pay these good deeds forward but I definitely won’t be making any more jokes about the police or snide remarks about Park Slope yuppies for some time.

I don’t recommend losing your wallet if you can help it. If you do, maybe you’ll get lucky too.

The NYPD delivered the wallet? For real? That’s almost enough to undermine the credibility of the story.

This reminds us, in a small way, of the time a couple of years ago we were walking down the boardwalk in Coney Island when we heard someone shouting behind us, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” It turns out they were trying to get our attention. We had somehow dropped a ten dollar bill and they were running after us to give it back. Not quite like a wallet, but it just goes to show that an awful lot of us, given the opportunity, will do the right thing.

BONUS: Having delivered the happy news, we did note that there has been an epidemic of pickpocketing at the Park Slope Food Coop recently. It was reported in the Brooklyn Papers this week. (Sorry, the story isn’t online, so there’s no link to it.) Suffice to say that one of the thieves was caught via the Coop going to its security video tapes and giving them to the NYPD. One of the thieves was busted, a second is still at larger. Neither Mr. Sticky Fingers One or Mr. Sticky Fingers Two are said to Coop members, which deprives us of the opportunity to crack many, many, many jokes.

In the shameless self-promotion department, we’re pointing out that the Blogorithms column in today’s Metro has a Q&A with Gowanus Lounge about “Brooklyn’s Growing Pains.” It’s written by Paul Berger, who covers NYC blogs for the paper, and also produces his own excellent blog, Englishman in New York. In any case, you can find the article here, but since it’s about us, we’re going to copy and paste it for your reading pleasure:

With so much development going on in the city, how are New Yorkers supposed to separate the good from the bad? Robert Guskind, an editor and journalist, has a passionate interest in Brooklyn development. He blogs at The Gowanus Lounge (gowanuslounge.blogspot.com).

What inspired you to start blogging?

I grew weary of just talking about issues I really cared about like quality of life and development in Brooklyn.

Is current development in Brooklyn generally a good thing or a bad thing?

I have concerns about development that’s going on throughout the borough. I think there are significant issues about scale and density and the impact it’s going to have on quality of life, especially with an overburdened infrastructure.

For example?

If you look at the waterfront developments in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, which are some of the larger developments going on, they are taking place in parts of the borough where mass transit is already at breaking point and there’s no transportation plan to make it better.

Can you think of a good development?

The Richard Meier building at Grand Army Plaza. It’s a new development, but it respects the scale of the neighborhood and it looks like it will be beautiful.

A poll found that 78 percent of people had not been following news about the Atlantic Yards project. Why?

People switch off because it’s a complicated issue. It gets down to abstract things like scale and density, and legal issues like eminent domain. But I don’t think it’s unique to Atlantic Yards. It’s the same with all major initiatives and projects. Like the rebuilding at Ground Zero, for example.

How are people to know what’s going on?

That’s where local blogs come in. There are a lot of people out there doing great work, consuming and filtering a tremendous amount of information. But yes, frankly, it is difficult because of the sheer volume of development going on all over.

It is painful to watch the Old Dutch Mustard Company building on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg being demolished by Steiner Equities to make way for a new development. To us, Old Dutch was one of the nicer industrial buildings in Williamsburg. A chimp could have looked at it and understood how it could have been renovated. Instead, the developer is perpetrating an act that is nothing short of cultural vandalism and a sad obliteration of history.

Are we ranting? Perhaps. Are we overreacting? Not at all. Destroying the Old Dutch Mustard building is the cultural equivalent of an act of violence, and symbolic of what is happening to Williamsburg as a whole. (We rarely toss around shrill statements like these, but Old Dutch is a demolition that has crossed the line in our eyes.)

If you are interested in what’s left of Old Dutch, you can click on this link or check out the embed below. We shot the vid yesterday in the howling wind, so there’s no sound.