Category: Linked

From Crain’s NY (subscription required, so extensive quoting follows) comes word that the waterfront is not immune to the real estate carnage.

Northside Piers (the one finished building) hasn’t sold out, and has now gone the rent-to-own route:

One Northside Piers seemed destined to be a winner when the project broke ground two years ago. The luxury condominium, on the waterfront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, had sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline, a rooftop terrace and a screening room…

Twenty-three months later, the views and all the bells and whistles are still there, but the buyers are missing.

Things are no better next door:

At The Edge, which features 575 luxury condos in two towers and 350 affordable rentals in lower-rise buildings, sales began strong in April but have tapered off drastically… As of late October, Douglaston had sold only 110 apartments; it shelved plans for another 40-story tower.

A glut of units in a neighborhood short on amenities? No one could have this coming:

Plans for 7,000 condos were announced as developers bet that people would pay top dollar to live in one of the city’s hottest up-and-coming neighborhoods. In doing so, they were also wagering that buyers would overlook such things as long hikes to the subway along streets that were still lined with factories and warehouses.

Its worth pointing out here that the Edge and Northside Piers are three blocks from the subway. But there are a dearth of other amenities:

A glaring problem is emerging as people move into the new apartments along Kent Avenue — the profound lack of essential services, including dry cleaners, drugstores and grocers. Developers expect a boom in waterfront retail, but no leases have been signed so far along Kent Avenue, where asking rents hover at about $60 a square foot.

I don’t understand – Tops (on the Waterfront) is only a block and a half away from Northside Piers. And at $60 a foot, whatever comes in is bound to uphold the neighborhood tradition of overpriced necessities.

Yep, no one could have foreseen a problem here.

I was thinking the same thing when I drove by there on Saturday. If there’s an over/under pool, I’ll take under – way under.

Affordable housing at the Edge, via WiD.

Just to be clear, though, if you win the lottery, you don’t actually get to live in the glass tower with all the swells – you’ll be living in the low-rise portion on Kent Avenue. Still, nice digs and only a block to the waterfront esplanade. (Hopefully they’ll let you use the driveway, which is not the case if you rent an affordable unit at Shaefer Landing.)

Another hollow point of agreement?

The $2 million anti-displacement fund was set up as part of the 2005 waterfront rezoning. As it is, it took the city way to long to fund the program. Now they are announcing a 25% cut.

Do you think they’ll cut back the developer windfall by 25% too?

According to the News, Father Jim O’Shea is out at Our Lady of Monserrate, and Churches United has been dissolved. The News says this is all fallout from the Broadway Triangle fight (does this mean Wednesday’s charrette is off?), but CU was also the major backer of the Domino project. I assume this is developing, as they say.

[Thanks, Phil]

UPDATE: According to inside sources, there was an “attempted coup” by some members of the CU board. It remains to be seen if the dissolution will hold up.

Not our Grand Street – the one in Manhattan.

Once again, DOT paints first and asks questions later. The lanes are down and the no stopping signs are up, but all the other stuff necessary to make the bike lanes less of an imposition are still being installed. At least this time, DOT cops to the backwards planning: “[the] most important thing to emphasize is that this project is still being installed”.

Once again, DOT has done half a job. This time, its the bicyclists who are paying the fines, at least until DOT finishes marking out the bike lanes and making it clear that (in this case) bicycles are allowed on the sidewalk.
Is it really too much to ask that DOT think about what they’re doing before they break out the paint striper? Maybe the machine is just so much fun that they can’t stop the guys from going out and painting lines before the higher ups have thought the whole plan through.

See, I was right.

Good, quick piece in the *Eagle* on the Havemeyer’s Sugar Trust and the efforts of Arbuckle Coffee to break it.
In the late 19th century, the Sugar Trust included not only the Domino Refinery (the “jewel in the crown”), but at least five or six other refineries along the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront. Others were located in DUMBO and in New Jersey.
The lone holdout was the Mollenhauer Refinery, which was located on the Certified Lumber site on Kent between Division and South 11th Street. Mollenhauer was a speciality sugar manufacturer, and thus not a threat to the Trust. The suspicion at the time was the the Havemeyer’s let Mollenhauer operate unimpeded so that the Sugar Trust wouldn’t be accused of controlling 100% of the market. They only controlled 98% of it.

Matisyahu:

I guess my feelings on gentrification are that cities grow, and people need places to live and it’s just what happens. At one point I had a motorcycle I bought from a guy named Slick who owns a repair and used motorcycle shop, Japanese bikes, over in Williamsburg. And you know, he’s been there for years and years and he bought it for very cheap and it’s this old shack with all these cycles sitting out in the street. And he’s been offered millions and millions of dollars for his property and he’s like, “Nah,” just holding on. When you hear stories like that [pauses] I think that’s a pretty cool thing.

Its hard not miss Slick.