Month: May 2011

Southside Firehouse to Close?

05/18/2011 | Comment

First they came for the teachers, now it’s firefighters (or at least firehouses) that are on the budgetary chopping block.

There are 20 firehouses on the City’s list of potential firehouse closings released today, and 40% of them are in Brooklyn. Three of the eight Brooklyn houses slated for closing are in North Brooklyn:

In addition, Ladder 128 at 33-51 Greenpoint Avenue in Long Island City is a backup unit for many parts of Greenpoint.

So basically, every neighborhood in North Brooklyn is cut. Well, every neighborhood except the Northside – it lost its firehouse in 2003. At least that one didn’t go down without a fight.

Brooklyn FDNY

Brooklyn fire houses
Source: Brooklyn.com

I haven’t delved into the numbers behind all of these closings in our community, but the removal of Ladder 104 from the Southside will leave only three units in Williamsburg west of the BQE (Engine 221, which will remain at South 2nd Street and Engine 229/Ladder 146 on Richardson Street just south of McCarren. This in a neighborhood with a booming population and many tall buildings that can’t be reached by a regular engine company.

The Southside has some of the largest concentration of tenements in the area, and most of these are 5 and 6 stories tall. The area west of the BQE has also seen the largest concentration of new mid- and high-rise apartment buildings in the 2000s housing boom. One would think that would be an area that could use a ladder company.

Meanwhile, the area directly served by Ladder 104 (roughly from Broadway to McCarren Park, west of the BQE) has seen a population increase of 22.5% (over 6,300 people) in the past 10 years. And the area immediately surrounding Ladder 104’s house is among the most densely populated areas in North Brooklyn (over 21,000 people live in Ladder 104’s census tracts or one of the 5 abutting census tracts).

Wood map

Wood frame buildings are prevalent in Bushwick
Map: Bushwick Avenue Studio


Over in Bushwick, the closing of Engine 218 will leave no company in the center of a neighborhood that has a large percentage of wood frame houses (which, as we learned last week, go up quickly). And that wasn’t the first fatal fire in that neighborhood this year.

But I’m sure all of this has been thought through.

Illegal Hotel Crackdown

Among the 15 hotels shut down by the city in the past few weeks is Williamsburg’s Hotel Toshi (three other Toshi branches were also closed by the city).

East Williamsburg Foodways Tour

Urban Oyster, which runs some of the more intelligent tours in Brooklyn and beyond, is adding a “foodways” tour centered around Moore Street Market and the Latino foods around Graham Avenue.

2011 Building Brooklyn Awards – North Brooklyn Represents

05/16/2011 | Comment

wyckoff-exchange.jpg

Wyckoff Exchange
22-28 Wyckoff Avenue
Andre Kikoski Architect
Photo: Dezeen


The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce announced its Building Brooklyn awards (Brownstoner has the details; they’re not up on the BB site yet). For a change, North Brooklyn has some really good projects in the mix, including the Newtown Creek sewage plant (Ennead Architects), the Austin Nichols & Company Warehouse (aka 184 Kent Avenue; SLCE Architects with Walter B. Melvin Architects preservation architect), the Mason Fisk Building (72 Berry; Meshberg Group), the Brooklyn Brewery (Fradkin & McAlpin Architects) and the Wyckoff Exchange (Andre Kikoski Architect).

CB1 Supports OSA Concerts

05/10/2011 | Comment

CB1 voted tonight to partially overturn the recommendation of the Parks Committee and not recommend a reduction in the number of OSA concerts or the number of concert attendees.

This came after OSA Secretary Adam Perlmutter made the case for OSA and it’s concert series. Perlmutter pointed out that last year’s promoter was out and that OSA would be running quieter and shorter shows this year. Long before the community spoke out on the issue, OSA had already decided to cut the number of shows from 22 to 15, the number of attendees from 7,500 to 6,500 and the number of bands per show from 5 to 2. And of the 15 shows, two will be children’s concerts, one will be a comedy show and one will be a philharmonic show, so there will be only 11 rock concerts (the Parks Committee recommended 10).

These changes seemed to be acceptable to some of the park’s neighbors, and since they brought the concerts more in line with what the committee had recommended anyhow, it was agreed to drop the numerical requirements and give OSA a chance to run a more neighborhood-friendly concert series.

It Is Still Safe to Drink in Williamsburg

05/06/2011 | Comment

CB1’s Public Safety Committee held a very long meeting tonight, which ended with a discussion of the “moratorium” (apparently it started with that too, but I missed the opening hour). CB1 Chairman Chris Olechowski presented some recommendations from the Board’s Executive Committee that were based on guidelines used by CB3 in Manhattan. They were, for the most part, pretty common sensical – using the 500′ rule more, not approving rear yard uses in residential districts, limiting approvals on residential streets. It’s not clear how those rules would fit into the reality of CB1, but the Committee agreed that they were worth further study.

And so, no moratorium (this month).

Bikers, Drivers Clash Over Bedford Avenue

05/05/2011 | Comment

Drivers in South Williamsburg are apparently harassing and in some cases physically (and vehicularly) assaulting bicyclists. Of course no one could have predicted that when the DOT removed the bike lanes on Bedford Avenue that it would lead to a sense of entitlement to the road on the part of local drivers.

As I said when the bike lanes were originally removed, a lot of the controversy over the lanes was about the very mundane issue of parking. Baruch Herzfeld backs up this notion:

Williamsburg bike maven Baruch Herzfeld, who hosted a debate between bikers and Hasidim last January, says the tension has resulted from the lack of parking spaces in South Williamsburg and not a conflict between Orthodox residents and yuppie cyclists.

“The Hasidim park in the [former] bike lane because there is no other place to park and the city has limited resources to enforce it,” said Herzfeld.

Of course local political leaders have a solution:

Hasidic leaders say that cyclists should find another route.

“You have a densely populated area that hundreds of people cross those streets every single day,” said former Council candidate Isaac Abraham. “You’ve got a ballroom, two schools and five synagogues. Traffic there is tremendous.”

It sounds to me as though these leaders need a refresher course in driver’s ed. It’s pretty simple really – riding a bicycle on a public street is legal, bike lane or not. Double parking is not legal. Kicking bicyclists, running them off the road with your minivan or school bus and otherwise intimidating or harassing fellow citizens is very illegal. Sounds to me as though the NYPD needs redirect some of its efforts to parking and traffic enforcement on Bedford Avenue.