Month: June 2012

Everybody in the Pool

06/28/2012 | Comment

Pool

I’m not prone to hyperbole, so trust me when I say that the refurbished McCarren Park pool is a thing of beauty. Kudos to the NYC Parks, architects Rogers Marvel and restoration architects Jan Hird Pokorny Associates on an amazing renovation.

The pool opens to the public for actual swimming Thursday afternoon. Believe me, you want to check it out.


Greenpoint’s Boathouse on Troubled Waters

Beautiful pictures and nice synopsis of the Greenpoint Boathouse project at Brooklyn Based:

Community advocates want to reclaim Newtown Creek by constructing a boathouse in the ground floor of the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center (GMDC). The project would also include a repaired bulkhead and an esplanade along the waterfront. For boaters and the kayak-curious, it will mean storage space for non-motorized watercrafts and a training center for recreational boating. For all other visitors, it will provide a place to enjoy the waterfront, as the development would create a public gathering spot that is more of a park than a club.

If all goes according to plan, Greenpoint will have this new waterfront park by 2014.

R.I.P. Rainbow Theatre

06/22/2012 | Comment

rainbow.jpg

Rainbow Theatre
167 Graham Avenue
Photo: Laguardia Archives via Cinema Treasures

This was what the entrance to the Rainbow Theatre on Graham Avenue looked like in 1939. According to Brownstoner, the building is in mid-gut as part of a condo conversion.

The 1,746-seat house of the theatre was back along Meserole Street. Like many movie houses of the day, the public face of the establishment was a small structure with a big presence on a prominent retail strip. The house was on a side street, where real estate was presumably cheaper.

One wonders whether the Rainbow was a conversion of older residential structure such as that seen to the left of the theatre. Based on historic maps (which show a 4-story brick store and tenement at this location as late as 1929), that would seem to be the case.


A Skirmish in the War Brunch

This is a week or so old, but the brunch kerfuffle has now received the New Yorker treatment.

At the Swinging 60s Senior Citizens Center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in a room filled with cafeteria tables veiled in plastic, a sign hanging from the wall says, “Old ladies never die. They just play bingo,” and another below it reads, “LUNCH will be served 12 noon to 12:30 P.M.” When the local community board gathered there for a meeting the other night, concerned citizens chimed in on a dispute over exactly when Sunday brunch is served. Certainly, it’s meant to come before lunchtime—though they may overlap—and ideally, if rarely, brunch belongs in the sweet spot of a late, lazy weekend afternoon. But the timing is a hotly contested issue, among sleepy relatives and New York bureaucrats alike. The official answer, according to a rarely enforced city law for sidewalk cafés, is not before noon. But this week, three New York City Council members set out to legislate in favor of morning brunching.

Domino Sells

06/21/2012 | 1 Comment

DUMBO-based Two Trees has closed their deal for the Domino sugar refinery site, for what appears to be $185 million ($20 million more than the price that Two Trees supposedly went into the negotiations at). According to the Times, the price increase came after co-owner Isaac Katan made an offer with developers Chetrit Group and David Bistricer for $185 million. The price is a handsome return for co-owners CPC Resources and Katan, who bought the property in 2004 for $55 million and spent 6 years securing a rezoning for the residential use of the site (though Katan apparently doesn’t think it’s such a great return).

What does the new owner have in mind for the project? Two Trees principal Jed Walentas is quoted in the Times as saying that there are “probably some opportunities to make improvements on the plans”. The Rafael Viñoly plans shown during the public review for the site’s rezoning are non-binding, so a redesign of the building skin is certainly possible (and I’d bet likely). So too is a redesign of the Landmarks-approved addition to the Refinery building (the current model was designed by Beyer Blinder Belle).

But what of all the promises that CPCR made to the local community during the rezoning process? The open space is largely codified into the zoning for the site (and by general waterfront access plan requirements), as are the building heights and general uses (retail, office, residential).

But the big promise – the one that brought a lot of community into CPCR’s fold – was affordable housing. 660 units of it. Rob Solano, a supporter of the CPCR rezoning told the Times: “It’s extremely important that the Domino project is built with all the affordable housing that was promised”.

The Daily News asked the question that is on the minds of CPCR’s community supporters, and the response should not be reassuring:

The new developer of the iconic Domino Sugar Factory hedged Thursday on whether the new deal would include affordable housing.

“There were promises made by another developer. We literally just brought the property today so I don’t know,” said Stefan Friedman, a spokesman for Two Trees Management Co.

Two Trees is an experienced developer (unlike CPCR), but they are an experienced developer of luxury and market-rate housing. As I’ve said before, they are a good fit for this project in that they have experience with old buildings, experience with big (and complicated) developments, a commitment to good design and a very long-term investment philosophy (and they are certainly better than Katan-Chetrit-Bistricer partnership would have been). But affordable housing is not their thing, and if, after two or three weeks of due diligence on a $185 million deal, they are being coy on the affordable question, that should make people in the community pretty nervous. Maybe Two Trees is thinking about who to partner with to do the affordable housing (a smart move), but it’s a pretty good bet that they are also looking at the number or percentage of units.

Two Trees is right – the promises were made by another developer. That other developer was able to secure a zoning density that far exceeded what any other developer on the waterfront was able to get, and in exchange for that, they promised to build a lot of affordable housing. But those promises were not binding on CPCR and they are not binding on Two Trees.

Your Guide to a Tour of Decay

Closing out a mini-theme on abandonment and decay, I’d be remiss in not linking to this excellent profile of Mitch Waxman from Sunday’s Times.

City Reneges on Promised Brooklyn Waterfront Parks

06/19/2012 | Comment

Wsj map

Source: Wall Street Journal

I’d been meaning to write a wrap-up post on last week’s City Council hearing on the status of the 2005 rezoning of the Williamsburg & Greenpoint waterfront, including the many articles that led up to the hearing. Happily, the Working Harbor Committee has done that for me – written a concise, informed wrap-up of the many articles already written. So I’ll just link to that, put up this very excellent graphic prepared by the Wall Street Journal and pull a particularly good quote from Council Member Steve Levin:

This is about credibility, doing what you say you’re going to do,” said Levin. “You have no concrete plan. When you want to do something, you have a plan.

OK – and I’ll add this: since the 2005 rezoning was based on environmental assessments that assumed that the city would build parkland, at what point does the city’s failure to build that parkland (or even make good faith progress toward doing so) make the EIS a faulty instrument?