Category: Linked

Last month, the NY State Siting Board ruled that TransGas Energy was required to get NY City approval to use the millions of gallons of East River water necessary to run their proposed electric plant at the Bushwick Inlet (the Bayside Fuel site). The City, which has opposed the project, probably would not grant this permission, thus killing the project (and moving us one step closer to a public park on the site). Trans Gas Electric, not expectedly, has filed an appeal of the Siting Board’s ruling.
Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to put TGE (definitively) out of its misery, so they continue to spend buckets of money on a project that absolutely no one wants to built.

First of a two-parter by Tom Gilbert of The Brooklyn Paper. I’m looking forward to part 2, but I get the feeling that Mr. Gilbert has only just skimmed the surface of the sordidness.
On a related note – the Department of City Planning holds its scoping hearing for the Domino site tomorrow.

[Exxon] has been working hard since 1979 to remediate the site. This information offers a greater understanding of the area, its history, the technology used in remediation, and the progress being made.

Just what Greenpoint needs, a lesson on the technology used in remediation. And there’s nothing like (slooowly) scooping out millions of gallons of spilled oil to help you understand the history of an area.

In September of 1978 the United States Coast Guard on a routine patrol discovered a light sheen on the surface of Newtown Creek…

Yes, “oil slick” is such an ugly phrase – it sounds so much nicer when you say “light sheen”, doesn’t it?

Miss Heather has uncovered some nice evidence of old street names in Greenpoint. When you look at it, it seems as though all of the streets in North Brooklyn were renamed subsequent to the annexation of the Eastern District by the City of Brooklyn in 1855.
Greenpoint’s cross streets were A through Q; they were then renamed Ash through Quay. (Although how this Clinton Street got into the mix, I don’t know – I guess Calyer Street was always an outlier.) Other changes included West Street (which had been Washington), and Manhattan Avenue (which had been Union Place).
The same thing happened in Williamsburg, where the north/south streets had been First through Eleventh Streets; they are now Kent Avenue through Hewes Street.
Miss Heather also discovered that this created a hell of a lot of confusion:

This practice resulted in a slew of duplicate street names* which took years to unsnarl. It was a long and very contentious process. One which, amusingly enough, often saw “North Brooklyn” (AKA: “The Eastern District”) in opposition to “South Brooklyn” on a number of occasions.

The merger of the two cities (Williamsburgh and Brooklyn) also required the renumbering of a lot of streets. This too created a lot of confusion, and revealed the true independent sprit of North Brooklynites. I’ve read elsewhere that most residents just ignored the law requiring them to renumber their houses. This went on quite literally for decades.
In the 1920s, Eugene Armbruster assembled a scorecard of obsolete street names, which can be found here (the link to all of the pages is here).

The Sun:

The city has preserved the “affordable” status of about 40,000 units, more than half of its 73,000-apartment goal.

However, the efforts for creation of affordable housing are less advanced, as the city has claimed the completion of only 25,000 of its target 92,000 units.

The issue of preservation vs. creation of new housing is critical. These numbers are pretty much in line with what has been happening in Williamsburg of late. In fact, the citywide new housing numbers are well ahead of those in the Williamsburg rezoning area.

Lets first admit that Bloomberg is playing catch up on this. He came in midway through a real estate boom, having inherited a host of unfriendly policies from a generally unfriendly prior regime, and, to his credit, at least recognized the problem. He’s been playing catch up ever since. Even given all that, the record is not outstanding. Rezonings are turning out to be massive give aways, with little in return for local communities or long-term residents. What’s working on the waterfront is not working inland. And all of this plays into the hands of the more outrageous proposals from all sides.
Jones is right that the Mayor has often refused to expend political capital in Albany in support of housing. Jones cites the failure to win rent protections for Mitchell-Lama tenants – the same could be said of the 421a reforms.

In a no-brainer, the Daily News supports reform at the Department of Buildings.
While we’re at it, lets stop making deals to legalize all the zoning shenanigans: if its not to code, take it down. That might learn a developer or two.

Francis Morrone on the Brooklyn waterfront, the National Trust’s endangered list and the “mercurial” David Yassky:

This summer may offer the last best opportunity to view parts of the waterfront in the midst of its transition from a gritty industrial environment to phalanxes of tall residential towers with riverfront esplanades and the occasional park.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is the latest (and biggest) organization to sign on in support of preserving Brooklyn’s industrial heritage.

Two very different closing announcements, but both indications that New York City is getting less and less like New York City.

In Williamsburg, the announcement that Galapagos is moving to Dumbo makes it clear that it is not just residents that are being displaced. Galapagos was only 12 years old, but it in itself represented an early transition of the neighborhood – from roving art rave to some sort of establishment. That hey day was short lived, though, as it was almost exactly 10 years that Utne Reader proclaimed Williamsburg officially hip. Now, through rezoning, the city has added so much value to the real estate of Williamsburg that property owners would be foolish not to cash in. The result is that places like Galapagos need some sort of subsidy to survive in the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, with Kurowycky’s gone, yet another one of the East Village’s connections to its ethnic past is lost.

This will certainly start a ham panic among some people we know.