Category: Articles
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Trying to Revive Manufacturing In Brooklyn: A Futile Cause
Dennis Holt, in the Eagle, thinks that trying to save good jobs in Brooklyn is a lost cause. His main point is that the Brooklyn waterfront is not going to rise again as a industrial powerhouse – you know, containerization and all that. And he has a point. But only up to a point. In…
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Walkscore
Walkscore is a pretty nifty website that calculates how “walkable” your neighborhood is. On a scale of 0 to 100, I come out as an 88 – not really a surprise, given that we are in the middle of New York City (my office gets a 100, but most of the places I could walk…
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Fat City
People in Williamsburg and Bushwick are, on average, more overweight and more obese than the citywide population. This has resulted in much snark on the interweb about skinny hipsters, but the problem is real, and likely tied in to the socioeconomic realities of our neighborhoods. The report, “Keeping Track of New York City’s Children”, was…
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July?
The good news/bad news on the water taxi keeps rolling in. The latest good news (via this press release) is that the City Council is funding a new water taxi service between Far Rockaway and Lower Manhattan, with service starting May 12. On the North Brooklyn front, the City has secured federal funds to build…
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Engine 212 ≠ Luxury Condos
Engine 212 Photo: jUSTINYC This piece of news slipped quietly under the radar. According to the Brooklyn Eagle, NYC’s Economic Development Corporation has awarded the former Engine 212 site to the People’s Firehouse and NAG. The groups will invest an “estimated $1.3 million in the redevelopment of the Wythe Avenue site into the Northside Town…
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Grand Street Renaissance
Sodafine Photo: Sodafine Not so suddenly, Grand Street has become a thriving retail strip. The April/May 2008 issue of WG (the newish Williamsburg Greenpoint News + Arts paper) has a great article by C. C. McGurr on the retail renaissance along western Grand Street. By her count, there are 62 businesses operating on the six…
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Whither the Water Taxi?
Back in the coldest, darkest days of winter, when New York Water Taxi suspended service on its East River route, the company said that service would resume on May 1. In February NYWT pulled the water taxi dock out of Schaeffer Landing entirely. At the time, it was reported that the dock was to replaced…
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Contextual Zoning
191 – 199 Grand Street With all the vitriol passing back and forth over the Grand Street rezoning, perhaps its worth remembering why the City embarked on contextual zoning studies in the first place. Five or six years ago, when the City was first pulling together the large Greenpoint-Williamsburg Rezoning (aka the waterfront rezoning), R6…
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Another Weekend in Williamsburg
North 1st Street, 12:50. While havoc was raining down in Turtle Bay, it was just a normal Saturday in Williamsburg. A walk through the Northside early yesterday afternoon showed over half a dozen active construction sites. At 80 Metropolitan (above), North 1st Street was blocked as workers loaded material. No flagman was present. Urban Green…
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Building Brooklyn Awards – 2008
I was very disappointed to learn that last year’s Building Brooklyn Awards did not include a single North Brooklyn project. Given the sheer volume of new construction in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, you would think that there was at least one decent new building. But alas, no – North Brooklyn was shut out in 2007 (as…