232 Bedford Avenue – open for business

Not like this is a regular feature, but after seeing the very sudden emergence of retail at the corner of Bedford and North 4th, it got me thinking about all of the retail that has been popping up in the neighborhood. The 232 Bedford Avenue building had been all residential, and has just undergone a pretty stunning transformation (courtesy of Loading Dock 5 Architects). As of last weekend (as seen above), there are three new retail stores operating out of the ground floor – a jewelry store, a high-end sneaker store and another boutique.

Diagonally across the street, it looks like another jeweler/boutique is set to open in the small space next to Whisk (another somewhat recent addition to the neighborhood). With Bedford Cheese Shop on the third corner, this is turning into a nice little retail hub, made nicer by the fact that it is just a bit south of the crappy stretch of Bedford. (Hopefully the fourth corner won’t be built out as planned.)

In other retail news, my friends at Treehouse, Sodafine and lots of other great local establishments are putting on The Winter Market this Sunday (6 December) at Public Assembly (70 North 6th Street).

All good reasons to keep your holiday shopping local.

FREEWilliamsburg says it’s bullshit, and they’re right. The removal of the bike lane on a section of Bedford Avenue – the section that runs through the heart of the Hasidic community, was a bad decision, made for bad reasons. Gothamist says that the Bedford Avenue bike lane was “relatively noncontroversial”, but that is not the case at all. The bike lane was hugely unpopular with the local community, in part because it made double parking illegal, and in part because (for one rabbi in particular) of the “problem” of scantily-clad women riding through the neighborhood.

Now Bedford Avenue is a heavily-trafficked and crowded street – south of Division Avenue and North of it. Which is why south of Division the bike lane – which connects north Brooklyn to central Brooklyn neighborhoods like Clinton Hill, Bed-Stuy, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights as well as connecting all of those neighborhoods to Prospect Park and the Williamsburg Bridge – runs a block west along Berry. But there is no viable detour north of Division, which is why the City – correctly – put a bike lane on Bedford Avenue. Now that Kent Avenue has a bike lane running all the way north from Flushing, it does make sense to encourage bikes to take that route – it is safer and more protected, albeit much more indirect.

What doesn’t make sense is removing the Bedford Avenue bike lane in its entirety (and I think DOT’s “quiet” removal of the lane reinforces that). As Transportation Alternatives correctly points out, bikers have a right to ride on any public street. Removing a bike lane entirely – particularly bowing to NIMBY pressure to do so – sends exactly the opposite message. If DOT really wanted to make responsible “bike network adjustments in the area”, it would have converted the Bedford Avenue bike lane to a shared arrow (sharrows) lane – at least would have reinforced the message that drivers (and neighborhoods) need to share the road with bikers.

349 Metropolitan: Foreclosed and Blighted

349 Metropolitan Avenue started out pretty ugly, and it was clear from the outset that the craftsmanship left something to be desired. But now that it’s had a few month to stew in its foreclosure, the project is really detracting from the neighborhood.

If it’s November, it must be time to start talking about canceling East River ferry service for the winter.

[The] operator of the ferry service, New York Water Taxi, says that it has not been able to come to an agreement with the city about continuing the subsidy [that is supposed to carry service through to 2010], and that it might have to halt the East River commuter service for the third time in four years. Further, the city’s Economic Development Corporation said that because of the recession, plans to expand the ferry service on the East River have been delayed for at least a year, until spring 2011.

There are a few things at play here, none of them encouraging. NY Water Taxi continues to be unable to make the East River commuter route profitable. Tom Fox, who runs the Water Taxi, has long said that commuter service is just that – a service. He makes money on the tourist service, which in turn subsidizes the money-losing commuter end of the operation. Since there are fewer tourists riding boats in the winter, there is much less incentive for NYWT to run a money-losing route. That’s where the City’s subsidy was supposed to come in, but clearly that has not happened, leaving NYWT to once again threaten to cut off an important transportation route.

The other not-encouraging piece of news is EDC’s statement that the expansion of the ferry route to north Williamsburg and Greenpoint is being pushed back another year. That can’t help existing waterfront developments like the Edge and Northside Piers, and it also doesn’t help the many in the Northside and Greenpoint who don’t live in towers on the waterfront but would like to have a better way to get to downtown or midtown. It also doesn’t help people like Jon Bernstein, who is trying to get community support for a supersized tower on the Greenpoint waterfront or the development of the Greenpoint waterfront in general. As Bernstein said in his presentation to CB 1’s land use committee last week, one of the the big draws of his location is he ferry service he plans to install on the India Street pier wants to build. Bernstein’s primary marketing plan seems to be to attract financial types working on Wall Street (not there are many of them left, and, by the way, most of them don’t work on Wall Street anymore, but that’s another story) by touting the “5 minute” commute from India Street (it’s more like 25 minutes, but whatever).

There is also a whole chicken and egg connection between the expansion plan and the need for City subsidies. If service was expanded to North Williamsburg and Greenpoint (and, if as planned, more trips were added throughout the day), there would be more commuters. But until service expands, the existing Long Island City/Schaefer Landing service is not enough to fill boats – particularly Schaefer, which is so remote that its ridership is drawn primarily from the development. Service stops on the Northside and in Greenpoint would draw from a much larger pool of potential commuters, potentially putting the Water Taxi closer to a break even point on commuter service and potentially have some small but positive impact on the “horribly overpopulated” L train1. (The Water Taxi is more expensive, and does not come with a MetroCard transfer – another thing the City should fix – but it is a viable option for people working in Lower Manhattan and for people working at Bellvue, NYU Medical Center or anywhere else in the East 30s.)

And last, now that the election is over, you can expect that EDC’s postponement of East River ferry service expansion (“because of the recession”) to be but the first in what is likely to be a long winter of City cutbacks.

1. Speaking of which, I was reminded last night that the City/MTA have yet to make to good on the solitary transportation mitigation measure that was promised as part of the 2005 rezoning – the widening of the Bedford Avenue staircases on the L train. It’s been four and a half years since the rezoning was enacted, and still no sign of any impending increase in steppage.↩

Most of the real action happened on primary day, and most of the rest of the suspense was eliminated on runoff day, but there is still an election tomorrow, and there are at least two races that really matter.

One of them is that race at the top of the ticket, but locally (that’s why you’re here, right?), there is an actual race for the council seat in the 34th district. Diana Reyna, the incumbent, won the primary by a narrow 250-vote margin over Maritza Davila. Davila is now running on the Working Families Party line in the general election, and with some Democrats crossing the line to endorse her, the race is far from over.

Reyna has been a solid councilmember for her district. I don’t always agree with her, but I’ve always admired her commitment to her constituents – a very broad range of constituents at that. She has funded a lot of school playgrounds (132, 17) and computer labs (132, 17, 84). She was also a huge proponent of the contextual rezoning of Williamsburg & Greenpoint (including on Grand Street, where she stood up to a lot of flack), and the designation of Williamsburg’s first historic district. She was also about the only Brooklyn Democrat to endorse Barack Obama. In the primary.

Davila, despite months on the campaign trail, is still something of an unknown. Like Reyna before her, she is a close ally of Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the head of the King’s County Democratic Party (a title that has not stopped him from endorsing the WFP candidate). Davila is a long-time employee of Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, and has been active in housing advocacy issues. (Website here, but it hasn’t been updated since the primary.)

In case you haven’t noticed, there is an election tomorrow. Technically it’s a primary, but for all intents and purposes, it’s the election (the exception being the race for Mayor, which will be decided in November, not September).

If you are a registered Democrat, vote tomorrow.* If you are a registered Democrat in North Brooklyn, vote tomorrow and tell all of your friends to vote. This is particularly important in the 33rd District, which Williamsburg and Greenpoint shares with DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Park Slope (because we all have so much in common). Too often, our council members are focused on the southern part of the district, where the votes (and dollars) are, to the exclusion of the north. Good turnout from the northern territories can change that (it might even elect someone who actually lives here).

[*If you are not a registered democrat, you really should be – at least for the citywide elections. For better or (mostly) worse, New York has a closed primary system. That means you can only vote in the primary for the party you are registered for. If you are not registered as a Democrat in city elections, you will not have a voice in most of the races that affect you. That’s just the way it is, and that’s why you should register as a Democrat (you can always switch back to Republican, Independent, WFP, whatever in the even-year state and national election cycles).]

David Yassky’s office said tonight that there is (finally) some progress on the City’s acquisition of 65 Commercial Street. The big stumbing block – MTA intransigence – seems to have been overcome, and the agency that answers to no one has agreed to two potential relocation sites. The City now needs to do a feasibility study for the site they select, which is expected to completed by the end of the month. Then, I guess, negotiations begin over the cost of acquisition (not a quick-turnaround process) and then design of construction of housing on the site, development of parks, waterfront esplanade and other open space benefits on adjacent sites.

A long way off, yes, but at least we can see the starting gate from here.

There were a few noteworthy – and interesting – newspaper endorsements over the past few days. In the 33rd Council District, Evan Thies has picked up the support of the Brooklyn Paper and the Brooklyn Downtown Star. Meanwhile, the Courier-Life papers have gone for Steve Levin.

In the 34th District, Courier-Life endorsed Diana Reyna, while the Star endorsed Gerry Esposito. (As far as I can see, the Brooklyn Paper hasn’t weighed in on the 34th yet.)

A couple things of note in these endorsements. First, as Norman Oder notes (in a slightly different context), Courier-Life can’t be accused following the party line by picking Steve Levin, given that they also endorsed Diana Reyna. And second, for those (like Norman) who have been worried that News Corp’s ownership of both the Brooklyn Paper and the Courier-Life papers would mean that all would follow the Murdoch party line, at least for the moment, there seems to be editorial independence between the two.

On a more substantive note, Real Reform Brooklyn’s latest broadside against Jo Anne Simon tries to connect the dots between a few Simon contributers and Atlantic Yards. The crux of the argument is that Simon received contributions from three board members of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation (BBPDC), as well as a contribution from the wife of one of those board members. RRB claims that the contributions from these “real estate related interests” pose a conflict of interest, in that Simon is opposed to the development of luxury housing in Brooklyn Bridge Park. This is enough of a stretch – and belies a complete misunderstanding what a conflict of interest is. But RRB really jumps the shark when it claims that the contributions create the “appearance of a conflict of interest” because the BBPDC is a subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), and ESDC is – wait for it – overseeing the development of Atlantic Yards.

For the record, the “questionable” contributions came from BBPDC board members Joanne Witty, David Offensend and Henry Gutman and from Gutman’s wife Karolyn. All three are heavy contributers to various campaigns – notably Yassky, Markowitz and de Blasio. The total of the contributions from the four was $2,750 ($6,250 when matched with city matching funds).

The BBPDC contributions are interesting, and may raise a question about Simon’s commitment to keeping luxury housing out of Brooklyn Bridge Park for those who are concerned about the issue. But they are not a conflict of interest, and they are certainly not an indication of a connection to Atlantic Yards. If you want to troll the CFB records for questionable donations, there are far bigger fish out there. Take for instance Joshua Guttman – two “T”s, he of Greenpoint Terminal Market fame – and his family. He, his son Jack and wife Vera have given a total of $6,000 in direct donations to Isaac Abraham’s campaign.

5:30 pm: Traffic backed up on Kent Avenue; even the northbound cars are unsure where to go.

Today, DOT implemented one-way traffic on Kent Avenue from Clymer north to Broadway. How did it go? As one Curbed commenter noted, not so great. Instead of diverting traffic from Kent over to Roebling, DOT just diverted traffic off of Kent, leaving everyone to fend for themselves once they got to Broadway. Which meant that most traffic tried to use Wythe – even the 18-wheelers, which are too big to make the turn off Broadway onto Wythe. When I passed by at 8:30 this morning, DOT had a flagman waving southbound off Kent and onto Broadway. There was no one directing traffic away from Wythe, and no one enforcing the no truck rule on Wythe. There was an 18-wheeler trying to make the turn, which required much backing up of the truck and hence much backing up of traffic on Broadway.

This evening, just before 5:30, the situation was even worse. The flagman was gone, creating a free-for-all at Kent and Broadway. Southbound traffic (cars and trucks) was backed up past the bridge on both Kent and Wythe. Trucks and buses were using Wythe, and using side streets to get from Kent to Wythe. Most of the traffic turning onto Broadway from Kent (including all of the trucks and school buses) quickly made a right onto Wythe.

So knowing that they were dealing with a hot-button issue and making a major to traffic patterns in North Brooklyn, DOT’s traffic-management solution is a flagman (who probably knocked off at 3:00) and a couple of no-left-turn signs. No traffic agents to direct traffic. No police officers to issue warnings to trucks going off the designated truck routes.

This does not inspire much confidence in the City’s ability to manage Kent Avenue II any better than it did Kent Avenue I. And it really isn’t that hard. There are a few pretty simple ways to make this whole change work more or less to everyone’s advantage:

1. Divert through traffic (truck and otherwise) away from the Franklin/Kent route.

2. Enforce the existing truck route regulations (and for the next few weeks, take some traffic agents off ticket-writing duty and put them on traffic-control duty).

3. Install traffic signals and traffic calming measures along the Northside portion of Kent Avenue. (Commenter Teresa says that DOT will do pedestrian counts once the new traffic pattern is in place, which will be just in time for the off-season of the State park.)

4. Install traffic signals and traffic-calming measures along Wythe Avenue to discourage trucks and through traffic.

5. Conduct a district-wide transportation study to determine the impact that thousands of new residents, the loss of hundreds of manufacturing establishments, the installation of a greenway on Kent Avenue and the conversion of large swaths of the waterfront to destination parks has on the transportation needs of North Brooklyn. Okay, this should have been #1. And it should have been done in 2004, not 2009.

Cars and trucks making the right onto Wythe Avenue. The constant stream of cars going eastbound on Broadway
also backed up traffic coming eastbound to turn onto Wythe (such as the B61).

Traffic on Wythe was also backed up past the bridge, with a large number of (illegal) trucks.

Trucks and buses were also using side streets to get from Kent to Wythe in the hopes of bypassing the
bottleneck at Kent and Broadway.