Month: July 2011

175 Kent Fully Leased

07/27/2011 | Comment

The Real Deal reports that 175 Kent Avenue – a 112-unit building at the corner of North 3rd Street – is now full leased.

What really caught my eye, though, was some of the broker babble:

The 112-unit rental conversion at 175 Kent Avenue…

Conversion from what? This is a new building. Never lived in. Doesn’t a building have to have some sort of prior use to be a conversion?

…the Williamsburg waterfront property…

The waterfront is a block away. Now either side of Kent Avenue is “waterfront”.

Don Draper Was NOT in Williamsburg

The heat must be getting to the Brooklyn Paper:

Yep, that was Don Draper taking in the summer breeze from one of the best places around — a Williamsburg stoop.

Technically, it was Jon Hamm, who was not filming for Mad Men. And the stoop was at 365 Grand Avenue (at Gates), which most Brooklynites know is not in Williamsburg (that would be Grand Street).

Don Draper, being a Manhattanite, probably wouldn’t know the difference. But you’d think the Brooklyn Paper would.

Reversal on Plans for Williamsburg Park

07/20/2011 | 1 Comment

The Daily News reports today that the City is reneging on one of the key components of the 2005 Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezoning – the 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park. The park – which would straddle Greenpoint and Williamsburg – was the centerpiece of the City’s open space plan under the rezoning.

In the six years since the rezoning, the City has acquired less than a third of the property that was to make up the park. In a letter to one of the property owners on the site, the Parks Department is now saying that it has “no schedule for the acquisition of the site” (a position which was apparently reiterated by other City officials in a meeting with the Community Advisory Board last week).

In the 2005 rezoning, the City promised that it would add roughly 38 acres to North Brooklyn. Six years – and thousands of new housing units – later, less than 3 acres of that is actual, usable open space. The rest is 35 acres of broken promises and, ultimately, a ruined rezoning.