Month: October 2012

Greenpoint is Fancy

Gawker thinks Greenpoint is a neighborhood of “fancy upper class Brooklynites”, and liberal ones at that, that is, like Carroll Gardens now, hypocritically opposing homeless shelters.

Greenpoint Developer Wants to Build 10 Huge Towers, Giant Bridge

10/14/2012 | 2 Comments

Manhattan Avenue Bridge
Vernon Avenue Bridge (demolished in 1954)
Source: Novelty Theater

It’s not exactly new news, but Gothamist has a piece up on the proposed mega-development at the top of Greenpoint. Not news because what’s proposed is exactly what the city approved in the 2005 waterfront rezoning. Aside from the proposed bridge to Hunters Point, the only real news is that it has taken so long for development to happen on the Greenpoint waterfront. No one has broken ground yet, but this is one of four projects that are actively in the pipeline. Taken together, these four projects would transform the north Greenpoint waterfront from Java Street to Commercial Street. (The same fate is in store for the southern part of the Greenpoint waterfront – why the northern projects are further along is a mystery to me.)

As for the bridge – connecting West Street to 2nd Street in Hunters Point South – it would be great to reconnect these two neighborhoods, but I’d much rather see it done the old fashioned way, running from Manhattan Avenue to Vernon Boulevard in Hunters Point. In addition to replacing an ages-old connection, a bridge at Manhattan Avenue would have the benefit of connecting two neighborhoods, not two developments.

Leaders Want Bushwick Rezoning So It’s Not the Next Williamsburg

Bushwick – one of the last unlimited height zones in northern Brooklyn – is ripe for a raft of finger-type buildings. A year and a half ago, the local community board’s land use committee showed little interest in the threat of height-factor buildings. Now, with development on the upswing throughout the area, the community may be too late to the game.

Neil Smith, 1954 – 2012

10/09/2012 | 1 Comment

It has been 10 days since I heard about the death of geographer Neil Smith, and this is the at least the tenth time I have tried to sit down and write something about my old friend.

I first met Neil about 28 years ago, when he was a newly-minted assistant professor on the sinking ship that was the geography program at Columbia and I was foolish enough to consider a major the subject it is entirely possible that I was the last geography major to come out of Columbia College – within a year of my graduation, the program was closed). Neil was my advisor, mentor, collaborator and very good friend. He was, pretty much single-handedly, responsible for my love of geography, the built environment and all manner of land-use issues. Just about everything that you read here, and all the other stuff I do, has been shaped by – or is in response to – work that Neil and I did all that time ago.

In the late 80s Neil & I wrote about the spatial impact of the deindustrialization of the United States and even collaborated on a grant application to study the gentrification of the lower east side (which at the time, seemed imminent). As it turns out, we didn’t get the grant, and the gentrification we wanted to document was somewhat delayed by the real estate recession of the late 80s/early 90s.

In the early 90s, I almost went to grad school to study with Neil (by then at Rutgers), but chose instead to pursue a different path in studying the built environment. I’ve never regretted that decision, but for the opportunity I missed to study with him.

If you want a sense of Neil’s tremendous human and radical spirit, look no further than this video of him singing then socialist ABCs on a cold picket line (“A” is for alienation…). But I’ll leave you with this 1984 video of him reading USA Today – mainly because it dates to the year that I met him (skip to about the 11:00 mark and hear Neil discuss the old CDR bar on 119th Street).


In Memory of Neil Smith – “Neil Reads USA Today: The Flip Side of the Weather is the News” 1984
from Paper Tiger TV on Vimeo.


I will miss him terribly.



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Greenpoint Hospital Redevelopment Plan Flatlines

The Great American Construction Corp. pulled out of the $52-million redevelopment of the vacant medical building this summer after its senior executive William Clarke was indicted on bribery charges at a separate job.

The news halts any development at the main hospital building, which was slated to become 240 units of below-market rate apartments.

Apparently the project will go back out to bid, meaning that St. Nick’s and GREC – the local groups that have been trying to do this project for years, won’t be getting it. The city should make the two other bids public before going back to the well and wasting another year or three.