Photo: teal185

We can’t find a link for this, but we received an email the other day announcing that DOT is changing the traffic pattern for the footwalks on the Williamsburg Bridge:

The south footwalk of the Williamsburg Bridge, currently closed in order to facilitate ongoing rehabilitation, will reopen at 7:00 am on Monday August 20, 2007. Simultaneously, the north footwalk will be closed to bicycle and pedestrian traffic. The north footwalk will reopen for weekends only, from Fridays at 3:30 pm to Mondays at 6:00am, beginning September 14, 2007.

What they don’t say is if the only access to the footwalks will be from Bedford Avenue, or if the Valley Forge entry will remain. Guess we’ll find out soon enough. And no word on when BOTH footwalks will be open.

Photo: DumboNYC

The Daily News has an “exclusive” in today’s print and online edition: Dumbo’s Pearl Street Plaza.
If this sounds familiar, maybe you’ve already read about here. Or here. Or here, here, here, here, here and here. To name a few.
Oh, and the press conference has been postponed. You wouldn’t know that reading the News, but you would if you read blogs like DumboNYC.
Journalmaism at its finest.

Herewith, a scooter we came across while in Oz today. From the looks of this, the City is ready to crack down on sidewalk scooter parking – hell, it even looks as though they had special scooter-size stickers made. In classic NYC fashion, this is, at the same time, visionary and short sighted.
Visionary because, let’s face it, sidewalks are for walking on.
Short sighted because, let’s face it, the street is no place to park a two-wheeled vehicle.
Bicycles, scooters and motorcycles should be a huge part of the solution to NYC’s congestion and smog woes. Unfortunately, the City really goes out of its way to make riding on two wheels as difficult as possible. There is a dearth of dedicated bike parking (either racks for bicycles or dedicated areas for scooters and motorcycles). lately, it seems that there are all sorts of crack downs in effect – pulling over scooters to check for papers; zero tolerance enforcement of lane splitting and lane sharing; enforcement of “parade” rules that are primarily targeted at bikers in the first place. At the same time, there are some smart enforcement actions, such as the recent noise rules (loud pipes do not save lives – like car alarms, they just annoy the hell of people); this kind of sidewalk parking crack down; targeting bicyclists who ride on sidewalks; making better bike lanes; enforcing bike lane regulations.

If you happened to park your car on Kent Avenue last Thursday evening, you probably found yourself in this position. Its seems that DOT came through on Friday and installed new parking signs, after months and months of no parking regulations whatsoever. And, of course, the traffic enforcement agents were following the work truck, probably issuing tickets before the cement holding the signs in place was dry.
So, after years of construction, dirt, noise, more dirt, etc., Kent Avenue is finally rebuilt. The street is like a runway now – prime territory for fast driving1. To hear old timers tell it, its just like the old days when people used to drag race on Kent Avenue. For the past couple of months, though, all the parked cars had a beneficial traffic calming effect. No more – DOT has made it pretty much impossible to park anywhere on Kent Avenue south (and probably north of) of Metropolitan. Which means that residents, like the folks on this block, can’t park in front of their house.

Worse, it means that Kent Avenue is now back to being a four lane highway, with ample room for impatient drivers to pass on either side. If you’re driving anywhere near the speed limit, expect to be passed – on either the right or the left. Last Friday, we counted at least five passing incidents on our walk from Broadway to Grand Street. It was bad enough before the no parking regs took effect (a double yellow line is apparently only advisory in Williamsburg).
It would be one thing if the parking regs served some higher purpose, but they do not. The regs on the Southside seem to be held over from the days of industry, when trucks routinely lined up to get into Domino, and industry thrived on Kent Avenue. Apparently, someone forgot to tell DOT about the rezoning. And about Schaeffer Landing, Kedem Winery and the New Domino. Instead, we now have block after block of No Parking Anytime on one side of the street, with loads of No Standing on the other. Where there is alternate side parking, one block is the special night regulations (around the nightclubs, of course), while the next is regular morning regulations. And then there’s this collection of signs just north of Schaeffer.

So thanks to DOT, if you live on or near Kent Avenue, you now have no place to park. And if you happen to find a spot on the other side of Kent Avenue, you will be taking your life into your own hands crossing the street. Good luck on both fronts.
1. We must confess to loving the little chicane where Kent transitions to Franklin Street at the Bushwick Inlet. This has been our favorite piece of two-wheel pavement for years, if only because its the closest thing to a twistie you’ll find in all of north Brooklyn. And if you time it right, you can hit that chicane at speed.↩

Continuing the Building (North) Brooklyn awards ceremony, and following up on last week’s post for Lost Opportunity: Williamsburg, today we bring you 216 Broadway, winner of of the B(N)B for Lost Opportunity: South Williamsburg. Normally, we don’t venture past Broadway for architectural criticism – the barrel is very small, and its filled with a lot of big fish – but this site is so prominent, and the results so atrocious, that we just couldn’t resist.

The South Williamsburg Flatiron Building (216 Broadway)
Architect: Henry Radusky, Bricolage

Broadway has a long history as a main commercial thoroughfare. It is home to many wonderful buildings from Williamsburg’s heyday, including a number of individual landmarks and a host of buildings that ought to be landmarks. The Williamsburg Bridge Plaza has a less auspicious history – constantly fighting a battle between grandeur and functionalism (guess who usually wins). In the past few years, we have watched Broadway’s vacant lots get filled in with banality after banality, interspersed with more than the occasional monstrosity.

Continue…

Continuing our series on design awards for North Brooklyn architecture (following the woeful neglect of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce), today we present the award for the best new restoration trend: California stucco (a.k.a. EIFS, Dryvit, et al).

Berry and North 9th.

Yes, what better way to celebrate this historic workmanship of your rowhouse than by gluing a bunch of styrofoam to it and slathering a bunch of frosting over the whole thing? The possibilities for rich architectural detailing are virtually limitless here, as, apparently, is the palette of Mediterranean colors.
We appreciate that this new treatment continues a rich neighborhood history of faux facade finishes – from asbestos shingles and asphalt siding to tin and vinyl siding. But it makes one wonder if there is a fake siding out there that North Brooklynites won’t put on their buildings.

Tonight, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce will present its Building Brooklyn design awards for architectural merit. We here at brooklyn11211 will not be attending, in protest of the fact that not a single North Brooklyn project has been honored this year (as far as we can tell, only one North Brooklyn project was even nominated).
This is very surprising, when you consider the fact that on a per capita basis, North Brooklyn probably has more construction going on than any other part of NYC. Its even more surprising when you consider the fact that so much of that construction is of such high quality. In fact, the Pritzker folks are probably spending most of their time in North Brooklyn these days.
So rather than waste $150 attending an awards show that snubs our fair district, we have decided instead to put together our own list of the great architecture of North Brooklyn, which we will unveil here over the coming days (and we will gladly accept nominations – please email us at 11211[at]brooklyn11211[dot]com). For the most part, these are all projects that have been completed over the past year or so. But since its our award, and we make up the rules, we reserve the right to highlight older projects that clearly stand head and shoulders above their peers.
So without further ado, our first award, in the category of Lost Opportunities, goes to the Toll Brothers development, North 8 Condos.

Photo: conbon33.

Yes, “Williamsburg is all grown up”, but the buildings are still ugly. And what better place to put an ugly, squat, black-brick building than on North 8th and Kent, where it will forever face out onto public parkland. Think of all the grand design gestures that could have graced this site – a modern-day Central Park West, perhaps? Or maybe this is more of a 21st-century Gramercy Park? NO – on what might be the most prominent upland waterfront site in all of rezoned Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Toll Brothers has opted for Marx-Engels-Platz.1 instead – a building so disappointing that even the developer won’t put a picture of it on their website (or if they do have a picture of it, its pretty well hidden).
So while residents of North 8 Condos revel in their park and river views, the rest of us are forced to wallow in banality. Yes, this dark, brooding presence on the Williamsburg waterfront is there for the long haul, so get used to the asymmetrical fenestration, and the nouveau-factory aesthetic (try this: see if your friends can pick out the luxury condominium from the surrounding factories). Amazingly, this building is more boring than most of the surrounding industrial buildings.
1. OK, that statement is really insulting to East German architecture – the Palace of the Republic had a lot more going for it than this building. I doubt there will be much discussion when this baby comes down.[back]

Its hard to imagine a waterfront hotel with no view, but the much-rumored Aloft hotel at Broadway and Kent just might qualify. To the west, there is nothing but a one-story building and then the East River. But when get right down to it, that might be all you get a view of.
The 200-room hotel (and 98 condo units) would be hard up by the Williamsburg Bridge, which in and of itself would be a view killer. But with 30 and 40 story towers coming to the Domino site just north of the bridge, the midtown views have be pretty fleeting even from the top floors of the hotel. At least there are views of the Financial District, right? Not so fast. What Schaeffer Landing doesn’t block already, the soon-to-be Kedem Winery development might just finish off.
If our highly scientific research is correct, most of what you’d see from this 20-story-or-so hotel/condo is the East River and Corlear’s Hook. That’s the part of Manhattan just south of the Williamsburg Bridge that is loaded with public and union housing projects (some of which are quite nice buildings in their own right).
Not exactly million dollar views, but at least Aloft would be convenient to transportation… its only seven blocks to the JMZ.

The Quadriad proposal continues to be a cliffhanger. As you may recall, in early June, the land use committee of CB1 voted narrowly (by a one vote margin) to “approve” the concept of the Quadriad plan. After much confusion over what exactly the Quadriad plan was, and therefore what it had approved (and even why it was approving a plan with no application), the full Community Board voted at its June meeting to table the committee’s resolution. Tonight, CB1 voted unanimously (14 to 0, with 5 abstentions) to reject the committee’s recommendation, thus killing any Community Board “approval” of the Quadriad plan.

But not so fast… Earlier in the day, the Community Board received a letter from Quadriad, withdrawing its proposal. The letter, which touted the committee approval, stated that Quadriad did not require further action from the Community Board, and that the developer was prepared to move forward with its as-of-right development and begin the formal process of applying for a rezoning to allow a 20-story tower on the corner of Berry and North 3rd and a tripling of density on the site, all in order to create 33% affordable housing on site without any public funding. (No word on their plans for the rest of the neighborhood, or the city as a whole, but Quadriad has said all along that it plans to file for citywide zoning changes.)

So as it stands now, Quadriad has withdrawn its proposal (but promised to return with a real application), and the Community Board has voted unanimously not to endorse the Quadriad plan (but hasn’t specifically voted against the plan). If we could explain this in a chart, we would.

Rest assured, though, like any good summer blockbuster, there will be a sequel.

Last night, Brooklyn’s Community Board #1 voted to table the proposed resolution in support of the Quadriad project. The motion to table came after it became clear that many Board members did not understand the full scope and impact of the Quadriad plan. Based on the close vote at the Land Use committee last week, it is clear that there is no consensus on the project.

The Quadriad motion will go back to the Land Use committee for further discussion and dissection. The committee could take up the issue as early as the next meeting, which is on 26 June.

This latest turn of events is a good development, in that it will give Board members time to ask questions and (hopefully) get some answers from the developer on what approval of the Quadriad project would really mean for the whole community.