• Coming to McGuinness Boulevard: R7 Zoning?

    Seeing as this is the only block on the west side of McGuinness from Meeker Avenue to Clay Street that is not currently zoned R7, a better headline for Ms. Heather would have been: “Coming to the Rest of McGuinness Boulevard: R7A Zoning”.

    (This is the only block on the west side of McGuinness that has historically been zoned for manufacturing use. The rest of the west side of McGuinness has been zoned for residential use since 1961, and was given an R7A designation in 2008, as part of the larger Greenpoint/Williamsburg Contextual Rezoning. Because rezoning the site would have required going from M to R, it could not be included in the 2008 rezoning, which left all use categories in place.)

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  • A New Generation of Street Signs

    Berry

    Floating Berry
    Photo: NYT

    David Dunlap goes deep on the new mixed-case street signs that you see going up all over the city:

    “Clearview’s [the typeface on the new sign] primary mission is to improve on the legibility of the standard alphabet used for traffic signs, known officially as the FHWA series but colloquially as Highway Gothic. …In discussing its policy, the highway agency said there were demonstrable gains in legibility when mixed-case Clearview letters appeared on a reflective surface called microprismatic sheeting.”

    Safety, schmafety, I still say the mixed-case signs are ugly.

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  • Kickstarter Will Kickstart Greenpoint’s Tech Community

    Kickstarter is buying the most decrepit pieces of the former Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory complex to serve as its new home and HQ. The building (actually fragments of three historic structures) is on Kent Street, just east of West Street. (This is old news in a way (Kickstarter went through a public review at LPC and CB1 last Spring), but seems to suddenly be on everyone’s radar.)

    “It proves that if these companies can find the space, this is where they want to be,” said William Harvey, a sculptor, designer, and longtime champion of development in North Brooklyn. “Kickstarter shows that we have everything these companies want.”

    More importantly, it shows that “industry” in New York is continuing to take on new meaning. This project is bringing 45 jobs to an industrially-zoned section of Brooklyn, and doing so without building a bar, hotel or bowling alley.

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  • City Attempts to Develop Long-Stalled Greenpoint Park

    The City has issued an RFP for the sale of the 65 Commercial Street air rights – which could be an important step in the process of breaking the log jam over the City’s commitment to turn this property into a public park.

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  • A New York Institution Steps Into the Sun

    I love the City Reliquary.

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  • Manhattan Architect Jumps to Brooklyn

    Welcome to the neighborhood.

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  • 1892: In Praise of Small Parks

    Montrose Morris digs up an 1892 Brooklyn Eagle article praising Brooklyn’s then-new small parks. On the list are Monsignor McGolrick (née Winthrop), Bushwick, Sunset, Ridgewood and Brower (née Bedford) Parks.

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  • Lincoln Restler Brings Out the Troops

    The district leader position might be unpaid and little-noticed, but Lincoln Restler continued to prove it can be transformed into a noticeable political force…

    Which is precisely why he deserves to be reelected.

    Outside of Restler’s 50th Assembly District, you’d be hard pressed to find one in 10,000 New Yorkers who could name their District Leader (either one – you have two). In northern Brooklyn, that percentage is a bit higher.

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  • Residents Plan to Sue to Block Greenpoint Shelter

    The lawsuit backed by the [unnamed] grass roots organization will argue that the city’s Department of Homeless Services illegally circumvented the stringent “fair share” approval process by converting the four-story industrial warehouse without formal Community Board or City Council approval.

    20 beds in the facility will be set aside for Greenpoint residents – nowhere near enough to begin to address the local homeless population or their needs.

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  • Williamsburg J. Crew Employee Manual Leaked

    It appears that my initial skepticism about J. Crew’s imminent arrival on Bedford Avenue was misplaced…

    For the Williamsburg location, we have adopted some practices that, while a bit unconventional, will reflect our new community and its values.

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