Category: Articles
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Not a Park: 65 Commercial Street
65 Commercial Street: Not a Park Like I said, its Spring and everyone is thinking parks. And that includes Councilmember (and Comptroller candidate) David Yassky, who has been thinking about 65 Commercial Street for a while now. Tomorrow (14 May) at 1:30, Yassky will be holding a rally on the steps of City Hall to…
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Parks Update – Progress
The Edge, as seen from North 5th St. Pier It seems that with Spring, everyone is thinking of parks and open space. At tonight’s CB1 meeting, OSA’s Stephanie Thayer made a couple of important announcements. First off, the North 5th Street Pier will be open 7 days a week as of this Thursday. Up to…
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Not a Park: Bushwick Inlet
Bushwick Inlet Park: The Future Image via GowanusLounge As we noted yesterday, North Brooklyn was promised a lot of new open space when the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning was enacted in May of 2005. To date, we don’t have much to show for it. We do have a lot of new condos, which the rezoning enabled. But…
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Happy Rezoning Day
Photo: animalvegetable on flickr May 11 marks the fourth anniversary of the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Rezoning. A lot has happened in four years. Economies have crumbled. Regimes have fallen. The American automobile is more endangered than the American eagle. Here in North Brooklyn, the last four years have brought construction – a hell of a lot…
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Kedem – Spring Cleaning or Signs of Life?
The Overbored Magic Veggie Bus sits in a (nearly) empty Kedem lot. Giando’s and the Williamsburg Bridge are in the background. Despite all the talk of global economic meltdown and an incredible glut of condos in 11211 and 11222, there is still a hell of a lot of building going on in these parts. Not…
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CB1 Approves Greenpoint-Williamsburg Contextual Rezoning
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…
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Kent Solution in the Works?
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…
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Free Rialto Vacation
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…
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Blight Me: 538 Union
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,…
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Robert Guskind
Marc Farre and others have posted a very nice and quite lengthy obituary for Bob Guskind on Gowanus Lounge. A proper obituary, as he deserves. I am still at a loss for words to think that Bob is no longer with us. He was a tremendous writer, both in terms of quantity and quality. His…