At its monthly meeting on Monday, Community Board 1 approved the contextual rezoning for Greenpoint and Williamsburg. The rezoning will bring height limits, restrictions on the use of the community facility bonus provision and some inclusionary housing to 180 or so inland blocks running roughly from Grand Street north to Newtown Creek.

The rezoning was the result of a two-and-a-half year collaboration between CB1 and the Department of City Planning, and followed a push by the community board and local council members following the 2005 waterfront rezoning to end the “finger building” and community facility abuse that has been so rampant these past few years. And while there was tremendous cooperation between DCP and CB1, there was not unanimous agreement. CB1 would like to see still lower height and density on Grand Street (between the BQE and Bushwick Avenue), slightly higher commercial density along Metropolitan (in the same area) and more commercial use allowed on the southern portion of McGuinness Boulevard. All of these changes are outside the scope of the current rezoning, and therefore will have to be addressed in future actions.

In the past week or two, there has been a petition circulating in the neighborhood opposing turning Wythe Avenue into a truck route – a solution first proposed here. Is DOT up to something constructive? Maybe – if so, hopefully they are doing it right this time.

Running Kent Avenue one way makes a lot of sense for reasons other than making room for the greenway (as Congresswoman Velzquez has said). It will mean a spillover of traffic onto Wythe Avenue, but done properly, it should not mean a reduction in quality of life on Wythe. The big thing is that DOT needs to make the changes to Wythe and Kent in conjunction with larger changes to the neighborhood overall. In a nutshell, DOT needs to recognize that Williamsburg and Greenpoint have been zoned away from manufacturing (ideally, they would have done this in 2005, when the rezoning actually happened, but I digress). DOT also needs to enforce the existing rules, and get through truck traffic off the streets of Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

I love the smell of desperation in the morning.

And things must be getting mighty desperate at the Rialto1, the Gene Kaufman designed “carriage house conversion”2 that runs through the block from North 5th to North Streets, just east of Bedford. If you are really interested, the Developers Group has the details here. But if you do need a vacation, I would suggest paying your own way, and using the money you would have spent on a down payment to upgrade to first class. Putting 20% down on an overpriced, world-class ugly condo is not the best way to get yourself to Italy.

1 Although according to Streeteasy, the project is just over half sold (16 of 31 units are listed as sold).

2 The marketing on this job is priceless (as if naming it the Rialto or putting “This is not an April Fool’s Joke” on their poster hadn’t tip you off already). The 31 “architectural apartments” (wtf does that even mean?) were “conceived to create special homes for design conscious urbanites”. The “carriage house” part probably refers to stables that were once located on this site (at least as far back as 1898). The buildings (there were four of them) look to have been completely redone circa 1932 – 1934 (see photo, after the jump), at which time they housed a “wet wash” laundry. In the 1960s, a cardboard box manufacturer was located there.

So yes, there were once horses and maybe even carriages here, but lets be honest and call a stable a stable. Sure, the project “combines the flavor of old construction methods and prewar elegance [of a stable?] with sleek and modern finishes”, but if you can find the carriage house in this mess in this mess of sleek modern finishes, they should give you a free vacation.

On the jump, the Rialto in its “carriage house” days.

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Sunday was a nice day for a jog, provided you didn’t have run by the corner of Union and Withers. That is the location of 538 Union Avenue, and its construction fence from hell. If you look carefully between the runners, you can see that the owners have managed to drive piles on the site, which will probably grandfather them if they go for a 421-a tax abatement.

538 Union is supposed to be a five-story (plus penthouse) apartment house with 12 units (designed by Kutnicki Bernstein Architects). Right now its a hole in the ground (contaminated ground at that – 538 and its sister next door are little “E” Hazmat sites) and a blight on the neighborhood.