Domino for Sale

03/12/2012 | Comment

In news that should surprise no one (but is surprising nonetheless), the Observer reports that the Domino site is on the block. Apparently, the Katan Group and their development partner CPC Resources have been shopping all or part of it to potential buyers.

A spokesman for CPCR told the Observer:

We are pursuing various options that will achieve our goals: to realize value for ourselves and our partners, and to insure that development is consistent with all project entitlements

Chief among the entitlements CPCR received (and of primary value to them, their partner and any potential buyers) was approval from the City to redevelop the site for as many as 2,400 housing units. In exchange, CPCR promised to build 660 units of affordable housing, a lot of open space and a public school, all (nicely) designed by architects Rafael Viñoly and Beyer Blinder Belle. Most of this of these benefits were not guaranteed – something that was a very big issue for people opposed to the project back in 2010.

Hopefully we were wrong.

Building Heats Up Down By The East River

03/11/2012 | Comment

Crain’s looks at development on the East River and finds things are booming up and down the Brooklyn waterfront. From the next tower at Northside Piers, to a hotel at Brooklyn Bridge Park, to industrial redevelopment at Bush Terminal, a lot is happening. But no news on the Greenpoint waterfront, and nothing new at Domino, which “hopes to set a start date soon” (they originally had a start date in 2011).

Bushwick BK is Back (I Hope)

02/14/2012 | 1 Comment

Bushwick BK is reincarnating itself as Bushwick News, a non-profit website to report on news, events and history at the other end of the Eastern District. To make it all work, they are trying to raise money through a Kickstarter.

What they are trying to raise – $40,000 – is ambitious, but Bushwick BK was nothing if not ambitious.I had this to say when Bushwick BK shut down last fall:

This is a loss – BushwickBK managed to be a lot more than a neighborhood blog. It had some great reporting, strong editing and a ton of content. That’s tough to maintain…

Or, as they say, “it’s real journalism”. And it was.

I hope it will be again, too. So get on over to Kickstarter and make a pledge. If you have any doubt of their seriousness, just look at the list of supporters they have organized for the swag (I’ll be on the Dereszewski/Schwartz tour myself) – this is not a spur of the moment thing (and from what little I know of the folks over there, if they say it needs $40,000, it probably needs $40,000).

Sewer Diving on South 6th Street

01/26/2012 | Comment

Urban explorer Steve Duncan goes spelunking in the sewer tunnels under South 5th Street west of Kent Avenue (this is where the city has been installing a new bladder system to control CSOs – not in Bushwick, as the Gothamist headline says).

Judge Grants Injunction on Broadway Triangle

01/04/2012 | 1 Comment

State Supreme Court Judge Emily Goodman has granted a preliminary injunction that bars the City from moving forward with the development of affordable housing in the Broadway Triangle area. The suit, brought by the NY Civil Liberties Union, Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady and the Broadway Triangle Community Coalition, alleges that the City’s 2006 rezoning of Broadway Triangle violates the Federal Fair Housing Act, in that it would increase racial segregation in the neighborhoods surrounding the Broadway Triangle. Judge Goodman, in granting the injunction, ruled that the “plaintiffs had demonstrated the likelihood that they would succeed at trial on the merits of the case” (in other words, the case itself has not yet been litigated).

The Broadway Triangle rezoning covers a small swath of land north of Flushing Avenue and west of Broadway. The area that the City rezoned lies within Community Board 1, but borders directly on CB3. Most of the area that was rezoned is privately owned, but a number of City-owned parcels were set aside for the development of affordable housing. 50% of that affordable housing would be set aside for residents of CB1 (such set-asides are standard in the City). The plaintiffs contend that because Williamsburg (CB1) is predominantly white (about 60% according to the evidence presented by the plaintiffs), and Bedford-Stuyvesant is predominantly (77%) black, that the set aside would perpetuate and increase the racial segregation between the two neighborhoods. A demographer retained by the plaintiff found that only 3% of residents in the new housing would be black.

The plaintiffs’ argument – accepted by Judge Goodman – is that the City is required under Federal law to conduct an analysis on the racial impact of all rezonings. Judge Goodman wrote in her ruling that there “can be no compliance with the Fair Housing Act where defendants never analyzed the impact of the community preference”.

The issues on which the injunction was issued are ones that (to my recollection) never came up during the protracted fight over the Broadway Triangle rezoning, and certainly never came up in any of the other large and small rezonings in North Brooklyn that were enacted by the City over the past decade. On the merits, it stands to reason given the demographics of the two neighborhoods that the set aside would favor whites applying for affordable housing. But many other rezonings have created (or could create) “dramatic racial disparities”.

As NYCLU’s press release notes, this ruling has implications far beyond Broadway Triangle:

This decision puts the city is clearly on notice: When it proceeds to develop housing – whether in the Broadway Triangle or anywhere else – it must evaluate the potential impact on segregation and develop projects that include the entire community and will create more integrated neighborhoods.

So the bigger question is, how does this effect other rezonings (past and future)? Is a racial analysis required for all housing types (affordable and market rate)?

What IS Con Ed Up To On River Street?

12/30/2011 | Comment

Con Ed’s River Street site, partially demolished
Photo: Sharese Ann Frederick on flickr

I’ve mentioned this in passing before, but Con Ed is doing some serious demolition at its River Street facilities. The two-block site used to house a series of storage tanks, but over the past few months, the tanks have been slowly coming down. (The speed of the demo is probably due to the fact that the tanks are constructed of concrete 20″ thick; there is no evidence of any environmental remediation at the site that I can find.)

So what’s in store for this site? Could it be the site of the recently-rumored Williamsburg Whole Foods (I’m betting not)? Some other development (I’ve heard rumors that CineMagic’s Riverfront Studios is expanding somewhere “within a few blocks” of their Kent Avenue/South 9th Street studios, though I doubt this is that site)? Or is Con Ed just going to mothball it like they have their other waterfront site, the former BRT Power Plant at Division and Kent?

The options are somewhat limited by zoning, which is heavy industrial (M3-1), which limits the as-of-right options to industrial uses and certain commercial uses. (The six-block area between North 3rd and Grand Street west of Kent Avenue is actually ripe for rezoning – the industrial zoning on five of the six blocks is completely anachronistic since the residential rezoning of the Domino properties to the south in 2010.)

Or perhaps Con Ed will do something truly useful for the community and turn the site over for a waterfront park and esplanade? It would make a fantastic extension of the esplanade at 184 Kent to the north, wouldn’t it?

Hipster Highway Hellzone

12/06/2011 | Comment

‘It’s well known that it is a dangerous place,’ said grieving mom Rachel McCulloch, whose hipster son, 28-year-old Neil Chamberlain, was killed during an early morning hit and run on McGuinness in April 2010.

Note to the Daily News – it’s not just hipsters who are losing their lives on McGuinness Boulevard. And Chamberlain’s mother is right – McGuinness Boulevard is a well-known accident waiting to happen. Since 1995, this 15-block, 4-lane “boulevard” has seen over 100 pedestrians or cyclists run over by motor vehicles1. 11 of those pedestrians lost their lives (almost half of them were 60 years old or older), as did 3 cyclists. As best as I can tell, only 2 of these 14 fatalities involved “hipsters”.

For the record, here is a partial list of the people who have lost their lives trying to cross the “hipster hellzone”:

Richard Iwaszkiewicz – 61, a baker was hit in April 1995
In 1996 an unidentified woman, aged 60 was killed
Joseph LoCurto, a construction worker on the McGuinness Boulevard renovation project was killed in December, 1998
In 2002, an unidentified male pedestrian in his 30s was killed
Liz Byrne, aged 45 was killed in September 2005
Maria Piatkiewicz, 67, a neighborhood resident was run over by a van in July 2008
Solange Raulston, a 33-year-old DJ was killed while riding her bicycle in December 2009
Neil Chamberlain a 28-year-old web designer was killed on his bike in April 2010

The thing is, McGuinness Boulevard has been a hell zone for years now. Write an article about that, and skip the gratuitous “hipster” headlines.

1 The data here was compiled from Crashstat.org, which has information through 2009 only; the names of the victims were compiled through Google searches and searches of local newspapers, like the Daily News.↩

Upgrading the L Train

10/04/2011 | Comment

The MTA has announced a series of planned upgrades for service on the L line – moves that, in the long term, at least, could ease some of the overcrowding on the line. The services changes are partially a response to a request from State Senator Dan Squadron that the the MTA review the state of service on the F and L lines, and partially a response to the fact that everyone knew service on the L line was beyond capacity. (Its not just the morning rush, either – as the Times points out, service on the L train is often 35% over capacity on Saturday afternoons.)

Second Avenue Sagas has a nice rundown of all the changes that are planned. The only immediate change is that the MTA will add one additional train in the 9:00 to 9:30 morning rush period. Theoretically, this will lower crowding during this period from the current 101% to something in the mid-90% range (pro-tip – the cars at the back of the train are only running at 99% capacity in the morning rush (vs. 130% at the front) – pile in!) . Long term, the MTA will finally roll out its fully- automated train service (CBTC) on the L line. With the full implementation of the automated service, the MTA says it can run up to 24 trains an hour on the L line (currently, headway is limited to 17 trains an hour).

All of this will – in the long term – help the average commute on the Canarsie line. In the short term however, expect more weekend service cuts, as the MTA continues to implement the switching necessary to get automated service fully online by late 2012. And remember that even with the potential for 24 trains an hour, the line is still only two tracks – if one train gets stuck, everyone behind still has wait for that sick passenger to get off the train. And as new residential developments all up and down the line continue to come on line (there are still about 5,000 unbuilt housing units from the 2005 rezoning alone), those additional 7 trains an hour will pretty soon be running at capacity too.

New Condos

09/26/2011 | Comment

The Louver House

268 Wythe Avenue (aka 91 – 93 Metropolitan Avenue) has relaunched as the Louver House (it had been called the Louver Condominium). The new name is an intentional (I assume) play on the name of one of the iconic works of 20th-Century architecture. The project has languished on the market – either for financial reasons or otherwise.

I still think this is one of the nicer-looking developments in the Northside, though the wood slats and other details don’t look as though they will wear well. And if the Times is correct about the dearth of good condominium product on the market, it may sell this time around. (Certainly from an anecdotal point of view there are a) fewer and fewer stalled sites and b) more and more condos turning rental in the core Williamsburg area.)

Drug Orgies on the Northside

09/21/2011 | 1 Comment

It would be hard to do, but in case you missed it, a resident of North 7th Street has posted videos of people huffing nitrous on North 7th Street after last Saturday’s Widespread Panic concert. I’d heard about these videos last night, but hadn’t seen them until just now. While I wouldn’t call this a drug orgy or any of the other hyperbole being thrown around, it is an inexcusable mess.

So – a few thoughts on this:

One, it sucks that this happened. Sucks for the resident(s), sucks for OSA, sucks for the NYPD and sucks for the concerts.

Two, this was exactly the opposite of my experience only one block to the north. I was at the concert that night – the first time I’d been to an OSA waterfront concert – and was generally impressed by the efficiency and professionalism of the security inside, the number of cops outside and the comportment of the crowd. I happened to leave via North 8th Street, where it was relatively quiet and there was a large police presence. The crowd was orderly and by no means out of hand (I left about half an hour after the show, so the throngs had moved on by that point), and the cops kept people moving out of the area. There were a lot of concertgoers in the bar I went to after, and all were well behaved. More or less more or less, the crowd behavior that evening was what I would expect from a post-Dead, post-hippie jam band’s followers (of which I am not one).

Three, I remember this coming up earlier in the year – residents complaining about people selling hits of nitrous out of the trunk of their cars after last year’s concerts – and thinking “Who the hell does that?”. Unfortunately, now I know.

And in case you did miss it, there is a lot more on this at various sites already (with plenty of comments):

From The New York Shitty Inbox: Saturday Night [NYShitty was there first]
These Widespread Panic Fans Aren’t Sucking On Balloons Because They’re Feeling Festive [Voice]
Video: People Casually Doing Nitrous On the Street in Williamsburg After Jam Band Show [Voice]
Video: Nitrous Oxide-Fueled Fans Terrorize Williamsburg Locals [Gothamist]
“POST-CONCERT DRUG ORGY MOB NIGHTMARE” AT WILLIAMSBURG WATERFRONT [Free Williamsburg]
Jam Band Show Turned Williamsburg Into Druggy Whippet Wonderland [NY Mag]
Post-concert open-air drug market in Williamsburg! [Brooklyn Paper]
Widespread Panic Concert Causes ‘Mayhem’ In Williamsburg (VIDEO) [yes, even HuffPo has reaggregated it]