The Times has an update on the saga of 172 North 8th Street, whose residents were evacuated last June by DOB, let back in, and then evacuated again.
Among other things, the tenants and the landlord are now fighting over who did the most recent work in the cellar that led to the latest vacate order. The tenants say the landlord was trying to excavate the basement to create retail space. The landlord suggests the tenants are culpable. The landlord’s lawyer says “eh, maybe it just happened”.
DOT met with the Community Board last night about the Kent Avenue bike lanes and traffic on Wythe. Highlights included the news that Kent Avenue is now the second busiest bike route, traffic on Wythe is up 600%, and DOT is planning on installing traffic lights along Wythe at North 6th, North 4th, Grand and South 4th (no news about lights on Kent, though, which surely needs them).
Aaron Short has the story.
NY1 has the story.
The Daily News on the show before the show at yesterday’s council hearing. Jump to the end for the real story:
The inside word is that it will have to go through some modifications but is expected to eventually pass, with or without [Vito] Lopez’ backing. Mayor Bloomberg has strongly supported the development.
Negotiation and modification is the name of the game when land-use items reach the Council (viz. Rose Plaza, Greenpoint/Williamsburg 2005 rezoning). But right now, there are no negotiations happening, which has a lot of people frustrated. Is that because Domino is refusing to come to the table or because Domino doesn’t know who to sit down with?.
Last week, the City Planning Commission approved the New Domino in a unanimous vote. One of the only changes the commission demanded from the project’s developers was to eliminate one parking lot, reducing the number of parking spaces from 1,694 to 1,428. The 266-space reduction was not based on studies or research. It came straight from a request by Borough President Marty Markowitz.
Any reduction in parking is a benefit to the community, but clearly there is room for more to be cut.
This is across the river, but worth a look: it’s based on the excellent work my students did in the Spring studio at Columbia.
Turns out the legal saga at 172 North 8th Street is not over (and the NY1 report I linked to yesterday didn’t tell the whole story).
The tenants have been thrown out of their homes again, and again by DOB. DOB apparently discovered new damage to the foundation, after having lifted the vacate order issued a year ago.
As for the tenants, they weren’t let back into the building when the vacate order was lifted, they had to force their way back in. And they were prepared to live there without water, electric or gas.
UPDATE: Aaron Short has more on this:
City officials vacated tenants from the four-story N. Eighth Street house once again on Tuesday night after discovering that the corner of the basement had been destabilized and the building was close to collapsing… City contractors worked well into the night to temporarily add several 10-foot-long wooden beams to support the shaky wall, stabilizing the foundation.
A complete nightmare.
New Domino would fit in much better in Los Angeles than it would in Williamsburg.
I guess the green building crowd is buying into Domino’s reduction in parking (to only 1,428 spaces) as a step in the right direction.
UPDATE: The original link was not working for some reason. The article is here (http://bit.ly/dunvaS)
Today marks the 106th anniversary of the General Slocum fire. 1,021 passengers, almost all of them German-Americans from Kleindeutschsland (the East Village and Lower East Side), died as the steamboat burned in the middle of the East River. It was the city’s worst loss of life during the 20th century.
