Month: December 2007

Test your knowledge.

Duh.

But – expect another mad flurry of foundation pouring between now and June, as developers race to get grandfathered under the old (and far more lucrative) rules. Then we’ll see if the new rules result in an upsurge of affordable housing or a downward adjustment on new condo prices. Being a pessimist, I’d bet on the latter.

From Brooklyn Papers on the Finger Building BSA approval.

But liking the gallery (Cinders).

I suppose this is good news for the developer, but I fail to see why leasing out a rental building on the southside deserves its own press release.

Thanks to Google’s annual zetgeist report on search trends, we now know that there are a lot more people out there looking for love than looking for love. (And that a lot of them finding love, judging by the “How to…” graph!)

Test your geography skills – via Kottke, an incredible time waster.

To be taken with a grain of salt, in that it comes from Newsday, which writes for Long Island commuters. If true, this would be a huge setback for smart planning in NYC. And once again, its the out of city pols who are killing us.

I know there’s a lot of outer borough hatred for the Mayor’s plan too, but it makes a hell of a lot of sense. The plan would include transit upgrades and local parking preferences to protect neighborhoods (like ours) from freeloading car drivers. And for the trades complaining about the cost of getting into the city to do business, balance that against the cost of going to the city for free and losing business because you’re sitting in traffic half the day.

This is old news, but the Star has an update on the status of the proposed Commerce Bank project at North 4th and Bedford. Short take: the Community Board isn’t willing to support a bad design (and this is a really bad design), particularly one that doesn’t provide the types of affordable housing the neighborhood needs.

DOB is now saying that the deal they reached with architect Robert Scarano “had no practical impact whatsoever” on any State charges that might be leveled against the architect. Maybe so, but the deal does nothing to counter the notion that DOB (or at least the Brooklyn office) exists to protect developers, contractors and architects, rather than to regulate construction and enforce zoning rules.