OSA announced a series of paid concerts to be held at East River State Park this summer. The series kicks off on July 5 with a reunited Faith No More, with all proceeds for the paid events benefitting OSA and their work to preserve and create parks in North Brooklyn. (These concerts are in addition to the free “Pool Party” concerts, of which there will be eight this summer.)
Faith No More to Play Williamsburg Waterfront
CB1 Says Yes to Williamsburg Bridge Park
View WBP in a larger map
Last night, long after the Domino drama was over, Community Board #1 passed a resolution calling on the City to turn the DOT-operated property underneath the Williamsburg Bridge (in green on the map) into a public park. As I wrote yesterday, this is not a new idea (in fact, the Williamsburg 197a plan called for this same thing 10+ years ago). But it is an idea whose time has come.
Coincidentally, City Planning did a presentation to the Board last night on their development of a 10-year comprehensive waterfront plan. They are in the midst of a survey of the entire NYC waterfront (the last such survey was in 1992). Two of the City’s stated goals in waterfront planning are “expanding public access to the waterfront” and “enlivening the waterfront with attractive uses, high-quality public spaces, and publicly oriented water-dependent uses, integrated with adjacent upland communities”.
“Williamsburg Bridge Park” is a 700′-long site located between South 5th Street (the southern boundary of the Domino site, in red above) and Broadway. The property includes a large amount of paved-over open space directly on the river, so it could be turned into an ersatz esplanade at relatively little expance. The property also includes a two-story building between South 6th and Broadway and a couple of smaller buildings directly under the Williamsburg Bridge, any of which could be repurposed for recreational uses. The property is currently used by DOT, but there are no “water-dependent” uses – the land is just left over space from the old Brooklyn Ferry Company (which ran the Broadway Ferry from this site) that would be put to better use a public park.
Open Space Mitigation
Photo: Bachner for the Daily News
One of the biggest adverse impacts of the Domino rezoning is the impact on community-wide open space. As I’ve said before, despite a huge allocation of open space in the project (well above the minimum required by zoning), the project actually reduces the per capita open space rather significantly. In a community that ranks near the bottom in city-wide open space rankings, that is simply not acceptable. Also not acceptable are the significant shadow impacts on Grand Ferry Park – Domino will put the park into shadow for an additional 4 to 6 hours per day, year round.
In talking about mitigation, I’ve mainly discussed reducing the density of the project – attacking the denominator. But what if you could something about the numerator? Say, for the sake of argument that there was a large city-owned site directly adjacent to the Domino site. Two-blocks worth, right on the river. One that includes buildings that could be converted for recreational uses and open space that could be readily converted into a waterfront esplanade.
New Domino Mixes Parking Disaster WIth Bike-Ped Benefits
Streetsblog has a good article on the impending disaster that is Domino’s parking proposal.
That’s 1,700 cars and it’s going to really overwhelm the community; there’s no doubt about that.
1,700 or 1,500, we’re still going to be overwhelmed. Domino claims it is matching the rate of ownership in the immediate area, but their study area includes a) immediate blocks that are very sparsely populated; and b) a good swath of Hasidic Williamsburg, which has inordinately high rates of car ownership. If Domino was acting responsibly, they would limit parking to under 50% – that matches the rate of ownership for CB1 at large (and coincides more or less with the zoning minimum).
Bagel Store Priced Out for Starbucks
Photo: Brownstoner
Gothamist has some good stuff on the lease renegotiations on the Bagel Store. Long story short, landlord is doubling the rent, bagel store is leaving. But don’t bet the house on a Starbucks at this location.
The landlord’s Starbucks threat (“[The landlord] told me, okay, I’ll give you a break and only raise the rent to $14,500 a month. We can’t afford that, but he says that’s what Starbucks can pay…”) sounds a lot more like a for instance than actual threat. The Bagel Store’s lease isn’t up for another 18+ months. There are plenty of places they could move into now, why would they want to wait two years (which is how long it would take with build out and all). If Starbucks wanted a store in Williamsburg, they’d have a store in Williamsburg.
It’s also worth remembering that this is the same landlord who owns the rusting hulk across the street at Bedford and North 4th. Two years ago, he was going to put a Commerce Bank in there, but that deal fell through. He’s been happy to leave it as a rusting eyesore (though frankly, it is less of an eyesore than the bank would have been). (Speaking of vacant Backer properties, does anyone know what is happening in the old Citywide Lumber space?)
Waterfront Preservation
From the Greenpoint Gazette, a Domino spokesperson on the preservation of the Refinery building:
No other waterfront development is preserving anything…
Ahem.
The developer of the Austin, Nichols & Co. warehouse (pdf) is not only preserving a huge industrial building on the waterfront (five blocks from the refinery), they are doing so voluntarily, with historic preservation tax credits and a facade easement donation. And the building looks beautiful.
It’s unprecedented.
You Can’t Live There
A long, long time ago I wrote a post about the ridiculous set up at 164 Grand Street. This is a new condo-turned-rental on Grand just off of Bedford (across the street from La Villetta Bakery). At the time, I noted that the building (designed by Scarano Architects) used every play in the book – mezzanines, attics and cellar duplexes. What was particularly ridiculous about the cellar duplex is that the building’s trash cans sat right on top of the sidewalk grates that protected the cellar’s light wells.
The cellar in this instance is not a legal living space. Often such a space is designated on plans as a “home office” or other such contrivance to get around the fact that it does not have sufficient light or natural ventilation to qualify as a habitable room. Sure, real estate agents will give you a nod and a wink when they tell you you can’t use it as a bedroom – but the Certificate of Occupancy (pdf) is pretty clear on the question: “not for living or sleeping”. And plenty of people do use these non-habitable spaces for habitation.
But it is illegal. As the tenant in this unit found out last week.
164 Grand
Partial Vacate