Category: Linked

Inn Inching Along

This is bizarre – the Bossert Hotel, which has been under renovation since 2012 – still has no operator. Fën Hotels was chosen as the operator in 2015 but they have no backed out and the developer is now searching for a new operator. The hotel was slated to open in 2013, so it is now delayed by 5 years, with the developer citing vague issues with interior restoration (the building is not an interior landmark, but could have been a good preservation tax credit project).

Rejected Rebuild of Greenpoint Building Gets Redesign

After getting rejected at the Landmarks Commission for demolition and construction of a contemporary building, 111 Noble Street is back with a super-sized “restoration” of the original 1850s clapboard row house. Certainly more contextual, but isn’t this still demolition of a contributing building? Complete with the loss of the side alley, a quirky character-defining feature of Greenpoint and Williamsburg (a throwback to rear tenements).

Public-Private Brooklyn Waterfront Project Is Starting To Bloom

WSJ [subscription required] looks at the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront esplanade, a feature of the 2005 rezoning that provides public access to the waterfront. So far, the Williamsburg portion – all four blocks of it – is complete, and the first one-block section in Greenpoint is set to come online in the coming months with the completion of the Greenpoint condominium between India and Huron Streets.

The Greenpoint section of the esplanade – eventually a mile of riverfront access – will be in fits and starts as development comes online over the next decade (or two?). And some day, this will all connect into the various parks along the waterfront, including Bushwick Inlet Park, Transmitter Park and East River State Park (the privately-owned Monitor Museum also fits into this). But there are holes too – the esplanade currently ends at North 3rd Street (184 Kent), picks up again at Grand Ferry Park and (soon) connects to Domino Park, and then breaks again until Kedem Winery, Shaefer Landing and (someday, perhaps) Certified Lumber.

The two big holes preventing a continuous waterfront experience from Wallabout Creek to Newtown Creek? The city-owned Williamsburg Bridge Park site at Broadway, and Con Ed’s North 3rd Street property.

19th Century ‘Stench Map’

Fascinating map from the 1870s showing the sources of smell pollution in midtown Manhattan. A big culprit was industry in Williamsburg and Greenpoint – Pratt’s Astral Oil Works at Bushwick Inlet, and the adjacent Williamsburg Gas Works at 50 Kent (although the map locates the gas works a block to the south, at what is now the southern CitiStorage building), as well as two of Standard Oil’s refineries on Newtown Creek, a fat rendering plant and a phosphate works.

50 Kent is just now completing remediation – it is on schedule to be finished and the lot turned over to Parks in early May.

City Unveils Possible Routes for Streetcar in Brooklyn and Queens

In more alternative transportation news (also sure to give car owners agita), the city is out with a study on potential routes for the BQX streetcar. One of the more interesting things here is how the trollies will get across Newtown Creek. One option is a new bridge from Manhattan Avenue to Vernon Boulevard, recreating the bridge that existed there for decades. Streetcar or no, this is a good idea. Not sure I get the north/south passage through Williamsburg, though – if the goal is to serve “transit deserts” and make connections to ferries and the waterfront, why are we looking at Berry? And Wythe Avenue is only “medium traffic volume”? Place is a parking lot from afternoons well into the night, and most weekends.

But the biggest thing I’m not seeing here is a comprehensive transportation plan. So far, they are looking at how to fit the BQX in, but how does it all go together?