Cultivate the Grassroots

This article is almost two-and-a-half years old, but it is still pertinent. Are community groups buying in or selling out when they team up with for-profit developers and endorse large luxury developments in exchange for affordable housing?

Big Williamsburg Condo Project Faces Foreclosure

Crain’s has the latest on the Warehouse 11 saga (which ultimately ties into 20 Bayard and Rose Plaza).

This little bit made me smile – a lot:

…the 120-unit condo, built atop the former Roebling Oil Field

Emphasis added.

Climate-Change Debate is Heating Up in Deep Freeze

Skeptics of global warming are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change — this looks more like global cooling, they taunt.

This is great news – 150+ years of human-induced climate change has been reversed with just two snow storms! And, we all get to make fun of Al Gore again!

New Domino” “Authenticity” and Affordable Housing

Despite misgivings on the authenticity front (“new businesses cannot help but name themselves for whatever working-class business used to exist at the same location. It has always struck me as being an inside joke that’s in poor taste…”), author Willy Staley finds some hope in the New Domino proposal.

Talking Trash

In other … neighborhoods, leaders say their litter problem could be ameliorated if they had more public garbage cans and if the sanitation department swung by more often.

You can walk for blocks in Northside or Soutside Williamsburg without seeing a public trash receptacle. And where there are public trash cans (Bedford throughout the Northside, e.g.), they are often overflowing.