Category: Linked

Somehow I don’t think $6,000 is a “substantial” fine for Joshua Guttman or many other developers. Probably works out to be a bargain, given the cost of actually disposing of asbestos in a safe and legal manner.

(Thanks, Laura H.)

The Brooklyn Eagle fluffs for Tahoe Development:

Regarding the influx of new people to their buildings, he is noticing that they are from all over the Midwest, but mostly from Manhattan and a majority of them are students whose parents are helping them.

“There’s a lot of diversity,” he said. “They’re all meeting in college and it reminds me of what SoHo was like 20 years ago.”

No comment on the students, but I do think its time we got over this Soho 20 years ago crap. Williamsburg 10 years ago might have been like Soho 20 or 30 years before that. But Soho in 1987 was already overrun with tourists, overpriced, and over for art. Why do you think we moved to Williamsburg?

In terms of quality of life issues, one of the really stupid things about DOB’s BIS system is that IT DOES NOT TRACK WEEKEND PERMITS. There is an assistant commissioner who keeps a spreadsheet of weekend variance applications and permits, but you won’t find the information online. So if you want to know if the building next to you has a permit to wake you up at 8:00 am on Saturday, you can’t. I don’t even know if 311 operators can look up this information.

So we are left with inundating 311 with complaints about off-hour construction, that are then only inspected the following Monday, when the chance of finding illegal weekend construction is pretty much nil. Given the stock the mayor puts into information technology, this is just plain idiotic.

Chances are, your (old) light switch was made in Greenpoint by Mr. Leviton (I always thought Leviton was a trade name). Leviton opened its Greenpoint factory in 1922; I have no idea if they still make anything in Brooklyn, but they have opened a large factory in China.

More about Mr. Leviton at the Leviton site.

Luxury condos in Orthodox Brooklyn (and more gentrification in Crown Heights).

Basil Seggos gets the money quote:

This is a working-class community with a dirty creek in a part of Brooklyn no one really cares about, it would have perhaps been a better thing if these were river otters covered with oil. You’d have had immediate action.

Including Spoonbill & Sugartown.

I hadn’t realized that last month’s tornado and torrential rains had done so much damage in North Brooklyn (the tornado was in far away parts of Brooklyn, not up here). Not surprising, though, given the high water tables and myriad wetlands upon which much of the neighborhood was constructed. In response, FEMA has opened a disaster assistance center on Division Avenue – with information on grants and no-interest loans for repairs.

Good to hear that at least one business in Williamsburg has a long-term lease.

Via Gowanus Lounge and INSIJS, we learn that the buildings at the corner of North 6th and Wythe are really not long for this world. 12 years ago or so I had friend who lived on that block, further over towards Kent (well before Galapagos or anything else). It was a wonderful, desolate block, made incongruously happy by the colored aquarium gravel that was always strewn along the sidewalk.