Sadly, these planters – civic though they may be – are
probably illegal.

The big story here is that the “war on brunch” is really a crackdown on street life. The Community Board, upset at a few bars and restaurants, has chosen to use a hatchet instead of a scalpel. Restaurants and property owners are getting summonses and warning letters about sidewalk benches, sidewalk planters and the like1. As with dining al fresco before noon on Sundays, these targets of the Community Board’s ire are actually the kinds of things that make a neighborhood more livable and more enjoyable.

There is a reason why city planners obsess over things like bench heights, and it goes all the way back to the great neighborhood advocate Jane Jacobs herself. Street life, be it seniors sitting on a bench or patrons waiting for a seat at an insanely popular restaurant, makes for better neighborhoods and better communities (or, as Holly Whyte put it, you can measure the health of a city by the vitality of its streets). Outlawing benches and planters isn’t going to make Pies ‘n’ Thighs any less popular (or any less good), though it will mean that more people – not less – are standing around waiting for a table and clogging up the sidewalk.

To be clear, all this wonderful street furniture is also illegal. But using laws against sidewalk furniture to go after a broad swath of businesses is a stop-and-frisk approach to a very specific problem. If the problem is that certain restaurants are flouting the laws about sidewalk cafes and creating an actual nuisance, go after those restaurants. If neighbors have specific complaints, the Community Board should (and traditionally has) acted as a broker, talking to the owners and the residents to work out a solution. If that doesn’t work, then use the relevant city agencies to crack down on the specific troublemaker.

In the long run, trotting out arcane, outdated blue laws is not an effective approach, if for no other reason than that it turns the target into a victim and the enforcer into a bully. The story now is not that some number of restaurant owners are breaking the law and creating a community nuisance, but rather that the Community Board, through City agencies, is using outmoded, ticky-tacky laws to bully a whole business sector (and in the process sweeping in private citizens who have rogue planters, benches and other contraband street furniture (lawns!!) in front of their houses). Ironically, the perennially bad neighbors on the nightlife scene haven’t been impacted by the crackdown, and may not be – most of their sidewalk cafes are legal, and they don’t open before noon on any day.

A nice place for seniors to sit or a public nuisance?
(Probably the latter – this bench looks to be on private
property

In other developments, Councilman Steve Levin is promising to introduce legislation to rescind the ridiculous prohibition on sidewalk eateries before noon on Sundays. Given that many of the neighborhood clergy – including Ann Kansfield of Greenpoint Reformed Church and Monsignor Calise of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (and a member of CB1) – have gone on record saying that Sunday morning eateries are not a threat to their religious observance, this is a good thing. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail on the bigger issue of the street furniture crackdown too.

1. It would be wonderful if this was the biggest issue facing our neighborhood – have we solved all our problems and are now ready to focus on this?↩

The race itself pits incumbent Lincoln Restler against Community Board 1 chair Chris Olechowski. I know both well, and both are genuinely good people. But this bit jumped out at me:

[Olechowski] declined to overly criticize the incumbent [Restler], simply saying he hasn’t heard much from Mr. Restler during his short tenure in office… “I don’t know what Lincoln has really done,” he opined.

Seriously? Campbell is right, “[the] irony, of course, is that despite all [of Restler's] talk of accomplishment, district leaders aren’t really supposed to be doing things”. But Lincoln has taken a genuinely do-nothing job and used it as a bully pulpit for a lot of effective advocacy (and a lot of bashing of the Kings County political leadership). Chris, of course, does know what Lincoln has done, and he has heard a lot from Lincoln – Lincoln is at every event Chris attends and many, many more.

Not much love for north Brooklyn in this year’s Building Brooklyn (™) awards, but I’m sure that’s probably as it should be. The only project in Williamsburg and Greenpoint to get a nod was “Atrium House” at 19 Powers Street (Mesh Architectures). Nearby, Building 92 at the Navy Yard was also honored (and is very much worth a visit, if you haven’t been).

Businesses have been getting threatening letters and summonses from the city for things like having benches and planters on the street (North 6th Street), etc. (and, yes, even for operating sidewalk cafes before noon on Sunday).

P.S. – kudos to Brownstoner for doing some actual level-headed reporting on the overblown war metaphors.

The decision appeared to clear the way for the Community Preservation Corporation, a joint owner of the site, to proceed with a deal to hand the majority stake to the project’s senior lender, Pacific Coast Capital Partners, LLC… Mr. Katan secured the Domino Sugar Factory in 2006 in a whirlwind deal largely negotiated over a single weekend to buy the site with CPC for about $50 million from the sugar company, which decades ago [actually, less than a decade ago] used the factory as one of its largest sugar refineries in the world.

Which means that Katan’s (and CPCR’s) stake in the project drops from 50% to 8%. The difference between 50% of $1.5 billion and 8% of $1.5 billion explains why Katan, through his attorney, is promising to continue his legal fight.

[again, via Brownstoner]

The notion that sidewalk dining in some way restricts, inhibits or in any other way interferes with church attendance is utter hogwash. Consequently, I respectfully request that you not cite religious observance, specifically church attendance, as an argument against sidewalk dining… If there were so many church-going people in Greenpoint and Williamsburg that sidewalk seating would interfere with church attendance, all of our churches would be packed full of people. This is not the case… Sunday morning worship at the Greenpoint Reformed Church is so exciting and my sermons are so riveting and life-changing that sidewalk seating in no way keeps our congregation from attending services here. We simply traverse along the empty portion of the sidewalk and are able to get to church.

The pastor is right.