Wow – that started quickly.
For those wondering, all signs point to this being another Salvation Army building. Renderings that I saw back in June or so were clearly for the Salvation Army, and knowledgeable people I spoke to at that time had no information to the contrary. You’d think they’d cash in, and maybe they plan to, but I’ve seen nothing to indicate that that is in the offing.
Or, as I like to call them, bike racks.
What the situation amounts to, Alpert and others say, is a school system bigger than Boston’s operating virtually without oversight, making it easily the largest unregulated school system in America.
Bigger than Boston’s? Turns out Boston’s school system is relatively small, but still.
Though there are plenty of start-ups that favor Williamsburg and Greenpoint, developers, local officials and real estate brokers say there is a dearth of office space. Most landlords, lured by the promise of building lucrative apartments in the increasingly popular residential area, are reluctant to devote space to commercial tenants who can pay little and might wither as quickly as they bloom.
“Industry” in Brooklyn is booming, it is just not the smokestack-type industry that we all associate with Brooklyn. Whether start-ups, artisanal manufacturing, food processing, or film production, there is a huge demand for “manufacturing” space in North Brooklyn. And a huge need – the more jobs that can be made local, the less demand there is on our transportation infrastructure.
Although many buildings have retail space on the first floor, upper-floor offices are hard to come by, according to several people who have recently looked… Part of the problem is zoning: though parts of Williamsburg and Greenpoint are zoned for mixed commercial and residential use, the zoning tilts residential.
Ironically, this was among the objections raised in the community response to the 2005 rezoning – in converting hundreds of blocks of outdated industrial zoning to largely residential use, the city was turning a mixed-use community into a bedroom community.
Greenpointers has renderings for the new mixed affordable/market-rate development going in at the site of the former BRT trolley barn at 1133 Manhattan Avenue. I noted before the similarity of this project to 11 Broadway – turns out there is another connection in the architect (the design team behind 11 Broadway is now at Perkins Eastman).
Yikes – Oslo on Bedford Avenue is no more, gutted by a fire this morning. No one was hurt, and hopefully no one other than the coffee shop is out of a home (this is the base of a six-story apartment building). Very sad news on my old block.
The pizza oven was just delivered to the new Broadway location (shame they had to get rid of the graffiti, though).
Double digit increases in much of brownstone Brooklyn, but Williamsburg is the only neighborhood to break three digits (Greenpoint had the fourth-highest increase, checking in at 47%).
The City has decided that the East River Ferry pilot program, started in June of 2011, has been such a success that they are going to make it permanent. To that end, they are issuing an RFP to find a a permanent operator – it is a competitive process, but they’d be hard-pressed to find a better operator than the one that they have now.
Meeting the requirements of the RFP could be a challenge, though:
Respondents to the RFP will be evaluated on the extent to which they can improve the existing service while significantly reducing or eliminating the need for public operating assistance. In addition, respondents have the opportunity to propose expansion of service, such as increased operating hours and new landing locations. [emphasis added]
Expanding service would be wonderful (personally, a ferry stop at Houston Street would be grand). But reducing public subsidies (currently about $3 million per year) would require a massive expansion in ridership (it is already exceeding all expectations), something that probably only happens when riders can make a free transfer to public transportation. More likely, reducing subsidies means raising fares (probably by at least a dollar a ride).
The City’s program to track energy use in large commercial buildings has some interesting results. Some new LEED buildings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. In a city where buildings use far more energy than cars, and 2% of the buildings account for 45% of that energy expenditure, this stuff matters.
On the other hand, two venerated show horses from the 1930s, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, sailed to an [Energy Star rating of] 84 and an 80 as a result of extensive upgrades of their insulation and mechanical systems.
By comparison, Lever House, a 1954 International Style glass tower, scored a 20. Keeping in mind that none of these buildings were built with energy efficiency in mind, it makes sense that a wall that is more than 50% masonry (as at Chrysler and ESB) will have better thermal properties than a wall of glass. (Lever House’s curtain wall was replaced within the past 10 or 15 years, so it is a somewhat apt comparison to the recently upgraded ESB – Seagram, which retains its original 1958 glass-and-metal facade, scored a 3!)
