A little busy for my tastes, but it looks good, and more important, does a great job of organizing what is becoming a font of content.

Chris Stein, the Ramones and a walk in midtown, ca. 1986.

As Bob Guskind used to say, because we can.

In an effort to cope with mounting budget shortfalls, the Bloomberg administration has announced that it will convert NYCHA facilities throughout the city into micro-airports. The move is seen as a direct threat to smaller area airports such as MacArthur and Newburgh, but is not expected to significantly impact flight operations at LaGuardia, Newark or Kennedy. Seen here, via Google maps, is a 737 at Bushwick Houses, ready for take off.

New York magazine’s latest issue is all about “the Greatest New York ______“, and one of the categories is the greatest New York building. A panel of architectural luminaries had this to say:

Q: Do you thing that anything new could ever compete with Grand Central for the title of best building?

[Winka] Dubbeldam: Sometimes I wonder why there is not more architectural ambition in the city. Look at the Williamsburg waterfront, where they changed the zoning and put up all these atrocious high-rises.

[Robert A. M.] Stern: These buildings are sold for their views. You’re paying for windows and a wall, and everyone is looking out all the time.

Dubbeldam: But they know people are looking at these things, right?

They don’t care, Winka.

P. S. – Winka and Barry Bergdoll went with the Whitney as the greatest NY building; the rest of the panel went with Grand Central (tough call – both wonderful buildings). Unfortunately, the discussion about greatest tower didn’t get very far. My vote is for the Cities Service Building at 70 Pine.

OK, you’ve no doubt seen this already, but Brian Williams’ epic takedown of the Times (and Brooklyn) is worth another view.

Via the Brooklyn Paper, word that yet another Bedford Avenue storefront will become a Khim’s Millennium Market. With another outlet set to open on Bedford and South 2nd, that brings the number of Khim’s on Bedford to three, with the entire Khim’s empire at six (they also have outposts on Bushwick, Graham and Driggs Avenues).

I’m sure this chain of overpriced organic groceries is somehow “better” than Duane Reade, but I’m at a loss to see how. Someday a real grocery store is going to come and run these places out of business. But until then, I now have three places to go to buy $15 vials of organic maple syrup.

(And I thought for sure this one was going to be the Apple Store.)

Weidmann Cooperage
80 Wythe Avenue
(photo: WPA)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Two Trees Management is looking for federal tax-exempt financing for its hotel project at 80 Wythe Avenue.

Two Trees, the DUMBO-based development firm, bought the former Weidmann Cooperage a few years ago, and has planned a hotel there all along. The subsidies are controversial because the site is zoned for manufacturing use. While hotel use is allowed in a manufacturing zone, city support for the subsidy would run counter to the city’s prior commitments to maintaining manufacturing uses in the Bushwick Inlet area. The other project that is competing for the subsidy is a film-production studio on Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint (a manufacturing use in a manufacturing zone).

Industrial retention advocates have questioned the project for its impact on the surrounding Industrial Business Zone and for the quality of the jobs that the hotel would create. City Comptroller John Liu has also raised questions about the validity of Two Trees’ claims with respect to the number of jobs the project would produce.

Photo: Joel Raskin for Outside Magazine.

Outside magazine, on the waterfront:

The next three hours constituted the single most thrilling ride I’ve ever had in New York—no small boast in the land of the runaway cab. Anthony raced us past the sunbathers on Manhattan Beach. He brought us within yards of the Statue of Liberty’s sandals. We saw the city from new and exciting angles: under the Brooklyn Bridge; in the shadow of a hulking cruise ship docked in Red Hook while crews scrubbed the balconies; bobbing next to the buildings of Wall Street… Back at the Brooklyn waterfront, we topped out at 50 miles per hour — a terrifically uncomfortable speed…

Vroom, vroom.

11 Broadway (the latest model)
Photo: GreenbergFarrow via Crain’s

Talk about out of context.

In the course of an article on L+M’s new proposal for 11 Broadway, the Brooklyn Paper manages to drag up a three-year-old quote of mine on a completely different development proposal for the site, making it sound like I am trashing this proposal:

The residential building will likely have stunning views of the Williamsburg Bridge and the lower Manhattan skyline, but Community Board 1 member Ward Dennis believes that much of the building’s views to the north and west will be cut off by the 34-story towers of the Domino development.

“What you’d see from this [building] is the East River and Corlear’s Hook — the part of Manhattan just south of the Williamsburg Bridge that is loaded with public and union housing projects,” said Dennis on his blog, Brooklyn11211. “Not exactly million-dollar views.”

Of course that quote was in reference to a completely different project – a 200-room luxury “waterfront” hotel, that some were saying would have killer views of the city. Given its geography, I was a bit skeptical of this claim. Three years on, the Brooklyn Paper strips it of context, and makes it sound like I have a problem with the new proposal.

L+M’s project sounds very interesting. It will certainly set a new standard for affordable housing in the neighborhood – it will have 20% lower-income housing (less than 80% AMI) and 60% middle-income (125% AMI?), with only 20% of the units at market rate (this is what the affordable housing groups should have been fighting for at projects like Domino). The Broadway building will be 15 stories tall, a consequence of the fact that the blocks alongside the Williamsburg Bridge were never included any contextual rezonings. The architects for the project are Greenberg Farrow, the same people who brought you 80 Metropolitan and North 8 condos (and for full disclosure, a firm that I do work with professionally).

Is 15 stories out of context? On Broadway, adjacent to the bridge and fronting the water across Kent, I’d argue that it is more appropriate than the 17-story block Domino will put just off Wythe Avenue. The latter high-rise sits adjacent to a neighborhood of three-story row houses, and will form the backdrop for a row of three-story houses on Wythe Avenue. Height has its place, just not everyplace.

For the record, the only thing I have written about the new L+M proposal for 11 Broadway is this post, passing on the original Crain’s article on the project.