At a rally pushing for the downzoning of Carroll Gardens yesterday, blogger and City Council candidate Gary Reilly said that he was fighting to keep Carroll Gardens from “becoming the next Williamsburg”. Today, on his blog, Reilly had this to say about his comment:

A quick note on the Williamsburg comment, before it’s taken out of context – I’ve got nothing against Williamsburg. What I’m opposed to is what crap developers and their architects like “Hot Karl” Fischer have done there . . . and for the record, Hot Karl is currently straddling Carroll Gardens and making his first deposit at 100 Luquer Street. We can’t have more of that.

We won’t take it out of context at all – and won’t even take offense. The fact is, 90% (or more) of the buildings going up in Williamsburg and Greenpoint are crap. Some, like the crap on Karl Fischer Row, went up before contextual zoning took effect. Others, like the proposed Karl Fischer crap on Grand and Driggs is trying beat out a pending contextual zoning. Still others, like the Karl Fischer crap on Humboldt, is going up precisely where our community is working to implement more contextual zoning.

A word of warning to our friends in Carroll Gardens: a lot of the crap that is going up in Greenpoint & Williamsburg is consistent with the contextual zoning that was implemented in 2005 (R6A and R6B, predominantly). Its shorter crap, but its still crap. And other than landmarking, there’s not a lot you can do about that.