Author: linked

Speaking of crossing party lines, you can’t beat the criss-crosses in upstate’s 23rd Congressional special election. Dede Scozzafava (R) has dropped out of the race and is now supporting Bill Owens (D) over Doug Hoffman (very, very R). This all came about because the brownshirts in the Republican party thought that Scozzafava wasn’t Republican enough, even though she had the support of the local and national Republican party. This whole thing started when Barack Obama (D-US) appointed former congressman John McHugh (R-NY) to the Secretary of the Army.

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In tomorrow’s election, there is a hot race for the 34th Council District seat. You might have thought that Diana Reyna’s close victory in the Democratic primary would have ended it there. But Maritza Davila, Reyna’s primary opponent, is still on the Working Families Party ballot line, and Vito Lopez (Davila’s boss and the head of the Kings County Democratic Party) is pushing her candidacy very strongly.

All of that is (the convoluted) background to this piece in yesterday’s Times piece about a robocall that Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio, the head of the Brooklyn Diocese, made to all registered voters in the 34th. The call itself only mentions Lopez and his support for issues important to the Diocese (so presumably the calls don’t jeopardize the Catholic Church’s non-profit status in the eyes of the IRS), but its intent seems pretty clear.

The robocall (which was first reported by Aaron Short at CNG’s BoroPolitics) was also noticed by the Commonweal blog , who noted DiMarzio’s newfound “flexibility” when it comes to politicians who support abortion rights. All of which seems to have the Bishop’s spokesman working overtime.

Engine 201, Sunset Park
Architect: RKT&B
Photo: Courtesy Albert Vecerka/Esto, via AN

Indeed, if Williamsburg is now defined by condo corpses on the one hand and early sales success stories on the other, Karl Fischer Row falls somewhere in the middle: a monument to grandiose condo dreams that didn’t quite gel with market reality, particularly after last September, when sales came to a standstill.

The Real Deal goes back to Bayard Street so you don’t have to. They report that the Aurora (30 Bayard, the center building) has sold out its 51 units. Next door, the Ikon (50 Bayard, the northernmost (and best looking) building) has sold over 85% of its 48 units. Last to market was 20 Bayard (the tall, aesthetically-challenged one) only sold 25 of its 62 units before calling it quits and going rental. Maybe they buyers couldn’t figure out how to get in to the building. Or maybe they didn’t understand the advertising campaign either.

The Post reports that burglaries in the 90th Precinct are up 22% over last year and 36% over two years ago. On the other hand, it is safer to walk the streets, with robberies down 25% over last year (and all major crimes, including robbery, are down 9.6%).

So you might be safer, but your laptop isn’t.

The state Parks Department – still strapped for cash – is getting $60 million to build the playground from Juicy Juice, part of a $350 million project by the juice maker to build playgrounds at seven parks across the state.

Some money being spent on our local state park – great news. (Though I assume the News’ sentence construction is wrong and that the playground at ERSP is not going to cost $60 million all on its own. Unless that’s a mighty big train.)

The Times looks at Bloomberg’s development record, and what the legacy of it might be.

‘For good or bad, the rezonings will probably be his most significant development legacy,’ said Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, an independent research group. ‘They’ve never got as much attention as the large-scale development projects he was pushing, like the Olympic stadium, but the rezonings are what will ultimately transform a large chunk of the city. Developers will be rebuilding on these for years to come’

Steven Heller at Design Observer hits on a point that I’ve mentioned once or twice before – the ridiculousness of people living in glass houses. Yes, it looks great in the photos, but most people either do not lead a sufficiently minimalist life to carry it off, or they can’t afford the high-end window treatments that covering up such glass excess really requires. (Mies van der Rohe had the right idea at the Seagram Building – everyone gets the same blinds, and they can only be in one of three positions. That doesn’t work with condos.)

Glass living works if you live in a glass tower on the waterfront, but as a replacement for the typical city-scale apartment house, it’s a failure (and to make matters worse, all that glass is an environmental failure as well).

[via Curbed]

Unsurprising news of the millennium – the condo boom was not grounded on solid construction practices. Even less surprising, the craptacular Broadway Arms is a poster child for shoddy construction.

Some highlights from the Times’ grim assessment of construction quality in the 21st Century:

Many of the recently built glass towers are especially prone to temperature issues, because air-conditioning units are too small to combat the punishing summer sun, and heating systems can’t make up for a lack of insulation during the cold months. [So much for green construction.]

The sheer volume of new buildings that went up during the condo construction boom is the main reason for the increase in defective buildings, lawyers and engineers said… ‘It happens in every cycle,’ [attorney Stuart] Saft said. ‘At the beginning of the cycle, workers are underemployed, then suddenly they’re busy, and at the height, there are too many projects and not enough workers. Then what happens is shoddy workmanship, and when you have sponsors running out of money, they start to cut corners.’ [Cutting corners? The raft of building collapses and worker deaths wasn’t a tip off?]

Andrew P. Brucker, a real estate lawyer with the New York law firm of Schechter & Brucker, said that the boom had prompted people with no experience in real estate to start building condos. ‘When the market was hot,’ he said, ‘anybody who had a couple bucks suddenly became a developer, thinking they’d get rich’. [Smells like North Brooklyn.]