Neil Smith, 1954 – 2012

10/09/2012 | 1 Comment

It has been 10 days since I heard about the death of geographer Neil Smith, and this is the at least the tenth time I have tried to sit down and write something about my old friend.

I first met Neil about 28 years ago, when he was a newly-minted assistant professor on the sinking ship that was the geography program at Columbia and I was foolish enough to consider a major the subject it is entirely possible that I was the last geography major to come out of Columbia College – within a year of my graduation, the program was closed). Neil was my advisor, mentor, collaborator and very good friend. He was, pretty much single-handedly, responsible for my love of geography, the built environment and all manner of land-use issues. Just about everything that you read here, and all the other stuff I do, has been shaped by – or is in response to – work that Neil and I did all that time ago.

In the late 80s Neil & I wrote about the spatial impact of the deindustrialization of the United States and even collaborated on a grant application to study the gentrification of the lower east side (which at the time, seemed imminent). As it turns out, we didn’t get the grant, and the gentrification we wanted to document was somewhat delayed by the real estate recession of the late 80s/early 90s.

In the early 90s, I almost went to grad school to study with Neil (by then at Rutgers), but chose instead to pursue a different path in studying the built environment. I’ve never regretted that decision, but for the opportunity I missed to study with him.

If you want a sense of Neil’s tremendous human and radical spirit, look no further than this video of him singing then socialist ABCs on a cold picket line (“A” is for alienation…). But I’ll leave you with this 1984 video of him reading USA Today – mainly because it dates to the year that I met him (skip to about the 11:00 mark and hear Neil discuss the old CDR bar on 119th Street).

In Memory of Neil Smith – “Neil Reads USA Today: The Flip Side of the Weather is the News” 1984
from Paper Tiger TV on Vimeo.

I will miss him terribly.

Olechowski on Top?

09/24/2012 | Comment

After all the votes were counted last Friday, it appeared that Lincoln Restler had eked out a narrow victory (53 votes out 11,000 or so cast). But nothing is simple in the 50th AD’s District Leader race – there are now reports of an 80-vote discrepancy at one polling place on Kent Avenue. Depending on which memory stick is used (the master or the backup), challenger Chris Olechowski could be up by 31 votes.

Either way, there will be a recount, as mandated in such a narrow margin.

Restler On Top

09/22/2012 | Comment

I have not seen any official results1, but incumbent Lincoln Restler says that the final tally in the 50th AD District Leader2 has him up by 53 votes over challenger Chris Olechowski. Lincoln had been down by 51 votes (out of about 13,000 cast) in the machine tally, so the absentee ballots apparently put him over the top. If the 53 vote margin holds (a recount is a distinct possibility), it represents an even closer margin of victory than his 121-vote 2010 victory. Given all the attention that has been paid to this race, the 53-vote margin would be an even bigger win.

1. If anyone has the numbers, particularly broken down by ED, please email me.

2. A Democratic party position with absolutely no legislative or executive power and virtually no real responsibility.

Vote for Lincoln

09/12/2012 | Comment

Even though I write about local politics fairly often, I don’t do endorsements very often. But Lincoln Restler is someone who I think you should vote for – he has taken a do-nothing political party position and used it as a platform for doing a lot of good things for Fort Greene, Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

I happen to think that politicians who are hard working and effective deserve reelection, and that is why I will be voting for Lincoln. I have the benefit of knowing both Lincoln and his opponent, Chris Olechowski, very well, and in this case, I feel very strongly that Lincoln is the best man for the job. As I said, this is a political position (not a legislative one), and if the politics of reform are important to you, you’re probably voting for him anyhow. But for me, the most important thing about Lincoln is that he has done a lot of good with this position, and for that, we should keep him around for another two years.

The election is tomorrow, Thursday (yes, Thursday) September 13th. It is a primary election, and there are a number of other important contests. You should vote – for someone.

McGuinness Rezoning

09/10/2012 | Comment

Mcguinness render

231 McGuinness rendering
Michael Kwartler and Associates
[photo: Greenpointers]

Greenpointers has a report on a proposed rezoning for the block of McGuinness between Calyer and Greenpoint – aka, the “Blockbuster” site (remember Blockbuster? back in the 20th century they used to rent movies), across from Key Food.

CB1’s Land Use committee held a hearing on the project last week (which I missed), and the full board will presumably vote on the application at this Wednesday’s full board meeting.

The proposal itself is to rezone this block of McGuinness from M1 to R7-A (which would allow a building of the scale depicted above – hopefully this zoning placeholder will be developed into something a little insipid design-wise once the rezoning is approved). As Greenpointers helpfully points out, R7-A is the “type of zoning [that] is found along the avenues in the East Village”. It also happens to be the type of zoning that is found along the west side of McGuinness from Calyer south to Driggs (north of Greenpoint Avenue, the west side of the street is zoned R6-A, a slightly smaller medium-density zoning). The blocks from Calyer south were up zoned in 2009 as part of the larger contextual rezoning of inland Williamsburg and Greenpoint (City Planning looks to put higher density residential on avenues in part to encourage commercial development and in part make the use of inclusionary housing bonuses more viable – and yes, this application includes an expansion of the inclusionary program to this block).

This particular site was left out of the 200-block 2009 rezoning only because that rezoning focused solely on height limits and did not involve any use changes. Had the 2009 rezoning allowed change of use anywhere, it probably would have allowed it here (the owner of the property had already started the process, at least informally, before 2009).

So the main question here is not whether the property should be rezoned from manufacturing to residential like the rest of this side of the boulevard, but whether it should be rezoned to match the medium-density blocks to the north or the medium-to-high-density blocks to the south.

Taste Williamsburg Greenpoint

09/05/2012 | Comment

In case you hadn’t noticed the little advertisement off to the top right of the page, this weekend is the annual Taste Williamsburg Greenpoint fundraiser for the Northside Town Hall Community and Cultural Center.

The Town Hall is a joint venture between two Northside civic groups (NAG and PFI) to acquire and redevelop the former Engine 212 firehouse into a community center and headquarters for the groups. Engine 212 (also called the “people’s firehouse”) has been a focal point of community activism going back to the 1970s, and thanks to this initiative, it will be a particularly fitting center of our active community for years to come.

The Taste event is this Sunday, September 9th from 1pm to 5pm, on the Williamsburg waterfront at North 11th Street (the Citi-Storage site, enter off of Kent). It brings together dozens of local restaurants, bars, brewers, distillers and vintners and promises a lot of good food, good drink and good music.

So buy tickets (or pledge to the Town Hall Kickstarter campaign and you will get tickets).

Beer Here – September Liquor License Applications

08/29/2012 | Comment

Community Board #1 – new liquor license applications

The above is a map of the 34 new applications for liquor licenses that are on the agenda for Community Board 1 at its September 12th public hearing (click on the dots to find out the information on each application). This month’s agenda has 98 liquor license applications in total, including renewals, license changes, etc. – a particularly large number because the board hasn’t met since June (actually, the number of new licenses is not that large, considering it covers three months of applications – perhaps we have reached the alcohol saturation point?).1

1 I put this together mainly as a way to play with CartoDB (the pop-ups work a bit better if you go directly to the CartoDB map, rather than trying to click around in the portal above); all of the information is from the CB1 agenda for the September meeting – errors or inaccuracies may be my fault, may be their fault or may be the fault of the various filters and encoders the data had to go through to get this map. In other words, trust, but verify (as soon as CB1 posts the September agenda).

Also, if you are looking at a world map (rather than one of Williamsburg and Greenpoint), you’ll have to zoom in manually. Some browsers (Safari, e.g.) seem to do it automatically, others (pretty much anything else I’ve tested), not so much. Sorry.Problem seems to be solved – must have been something with CartoDB.

A Law to Expose City Parks’ Inequalities Is Neglected

08/27/2012 | Comment

A spokesman for Councilwoman Helen D. Foster, a Bronx Democrat who was a co-sponsor of the bill in 2008 and shepherded it through the parks committee, which she led at the time, said Ms. Foster “did not feel she remembered the legislation.”

WTF?

Lopez Stripped of Housing CommitteeChairmanship Over Sex Harass

08/24/2012 | Comment

Stunning (and highly disturbing) development in local politics.

More from Politicker, which rightly files its report under the heading “Bombshell”, here.

Transmitter Park and the 2005 Rezoning

08/22/2012 | Comment

Everyone (see below) is reporting that Transmitter Park is finally set to (re)open this Saturday as an actual (as opposed to ersatz) park. Which is great news, and long overdue.

But everyone also seems to be confusing an important detail about the 1.6-acre park – it was not “promised” as part of the 2005 rezoning. Rather, it was a commitment that predated the rezoning by a number of years. The Post, which first reported the opening, is just one example (I’m not picking on the Post here – they actually come closest to getting the facts straight):

[The] Bloomberg administration has yet to deliver roughly 50 acres of parkland that officials promised North Brooklyn residents in 2005 while pushing through a controversial rezoning plan which has brought thousands of high-rise apartments to Williamsburg and Greenpoint’s waterfronts… When it opens, the project at the former WNYC radio transmissions tower site on the river’s edge between Greenpoint Avenue and Kent Street will be first of this promised green space fully delivered.

The 2005 rezoning actually proposed to add about 38 acres of open space as part of the sweeping transformation of the Greenpoint/Williamsburg waterfront. Of that, about 28 acres was new parkland proposed by the City, 5.6 acres was in the form of new waterfront esplanades (à la the Edge & Northside Piers), and 4.8 was new open space that was added in last-minute negotiations between the City Council and the administration (this includes the someday park at 65 Commercial and additional parkland at Barge Park).

On top of those 38 acres, the City’s environmental impact statement (EIS) identified about 9 acres or so of parks and open space that was already planned. Some of that planned open space came in the form of public esplanades for developments such as Kedem Winery, Schaefer Brewery and 184 Kent Avenue (the latter two of which have been completed). But the baseline (“future without proposed action” in EIS-speak) also included the 6-acre East River State Park site, the .2-acre Manhattan Avenue street end park and the 1.6-acre Transmitter site.

This is all clearly laid out in the EIS that the City itself prepared in 2005 (to the extent that anything is clearly laid out in an EIS):

Within the Greenpoint sub-area, there are two open space resources that are expected to be developed by 2013 (see Figure 5-3). The WNYC Transmitter Site, located at the western terminus of Greenpoint Avenue at the East River, is slated for development by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) by 20131 as a waterfront park. The site currently contains a one-story building used by DPR for maintenance, and formerly contained two transmitter towers (now removed). The approximately 1.6-acre site would cater to passive recreation use and is scheduled to have a pier constructed in approximately 2 years.

So while Transmitter Park was identified in the EIS, it was identified as a park that was already “on the books”, not as one of the parks that was part of the package that the City “promised in exchange for permitting luxury housing along the waterfront“. If you do include those “future without proposed action” sites in your calculation, the total additional parks and open space goes from 38.2 to 47.0 acres. (There actually have been other additions since 2005 – notably, the 4.5-acre McCarren Park Pool, which was not included in any of the City’s 2005 EIS calculations.)

In other words, the opening of Transmitter Park is not a case of the City following through on its commitments from the 2005 rezoning, it is a case of the City following through on its commitments from years before the 2005 rezoning.

Regardless of how you count the numbers, I’d also argue that Transmitter is not the “first” park to come of the 2005 rezoning. The Manhattan Avenue Street End park was completed a few years ago, as was the soccer field at Bushwick Inlet Park.

But no matter how you count it, the opening of Transmitter Park is a big deal.

More coverage here:

City to Open Transmitter Park This Weekend [DNAinfo – who also needs to demote Lincoln Restler]

Long-Awaited Greenpoint Park To Open This Saturday [L Magazine – and Brooklyn Magazine]

New Open Space to Open in Greenpoint [Brooklyn Paper]

Greenpoint WNYC Transmitter Park Will Finally Open Saturday [Gothamist]

Better Late? B’klyn Park Finally Opening [Post]

1. Which I think means that the City is ahead of schedule in opening the park, though it’s not clear what “2 years” refers to in relation to the pier.