Two Trees to Buy Domino?

06/10/2012 | Comment

The Daily News and Crain’s are reporting that CPCR has reached a deal with Two Trees to sell the Domino project for $160 million. CPCR and its partner Isaac Katan bought the Domino site in 2006 for $55 million. Since then, they have rezoned the property for residential use and gotten stuck in a morass of bankruptcy and lawsuits. The sale would allow CPC (the not-for-profit parent of CPCR) to pay off its subsidiary’s mortgages on the property (rumored to be $125 million) and go back to focusing on what they do best, which is providing financing for affordable housing.

If true, this latest development in the Domino saga bodes well for the fate of the overall project – not that that was ever really in question (prime waterfront real estate in a hot gentrifying neighborhood is a rare commodity, and someone was going to build there). Two Trees is an experienced developer that brings a wealth of expertise in developing mixed-use projects, and a long-term commitment to the neighborhoods they go into. It is particularly encouraging news with respect to the landmark refinery building – CPCR never had a viable plan for this wonderful structure and clearly saw its preservation as an impediment rather than an opportunity. Two Trees’ track record with historic buildings – including the stunning renovation of the Wythe Hotel – hopefully means that the refinery will no longer be an afterthought.

But when all is said and done, the New Domino project will be judged on the promises made to the community by CPCR. There was never any question that someone would develop this property. The question, still unanswered, is whether anyone will live up to CPCR’s unsecured promises for massive amounts of affordable housing and other community benefits that too many in the community bought into.

Two Trees is not a developer of affordable housing1 – what does that mean in terms of the promises made to the community? Certainly Two Tree can partner with an experienced affordable housing developer – but how much housing will they build, and how affordable will it be?

1. But then again, neither is CPC – and its for-profit subsidiary, CPCR, never had the depth of experience needed for a project of this scope.↩

A Grand Slam for Grand Street

Scattered showers didn’t stop backyard grilling connoisseurs from feasting at the first annual Grand Slam BBQ Battle Music and Food Festival [last Sunday]. More than just bands, beer and beef, the event also marked the neighborhood’s formal introduction to the Grand Street Alliance (GSA), an organization dedicated to developing and supporting small businesses in Williamsburg.

GSA did an amazing job with this event. The food was fantastic, the whole thing was really well run, and by the next morning, the street was nearly spotless. Good start for this organization.

L Train Set for Service Bumps

Newsday (via Second Avenue Sagas):

The MTA will add nearly 100 trains each week along the L line starting Sunday… 16 additional round trips will run each weekday, 11 more will go on Saturdays and another seven on Sundays, an MTA spokesman said.

The increased service is the result of the automation upgrades that have been going in on the line for what seems like years now. As a result, the MTA is able to reduce headway and squeeze more trains onto the single-track line.

State Senator Dan Squadron – who pushed hard for these service increases – is a happy man: “Anyone tired of the crushing crowds and overflowing trains will now have an L train trip less likely to feel like hell.”

LPC Warehouse RFP Issued

Brownstoner has published the full text of the press release for the Landmarks Warehouse RFP. This is the site at 337 Berry between South 4th and South 5th Streets that was promised as affordable housing in the 2005 rezoning. CB1 pushed hard to get the City to agree to some additional community benefits, most notably a local presence on the development team. And lo, HPD delivered:

As part of the RFP’s threshold criteria, at least one Principal of the development team must also be a locally-based development company

That probably does not mean that a local partner is required, but it comes darn close. Los Sures should have the inside track here, assuming that they can put together a viable proposal and convince the city that they can pull the project off.

The Finger Sells

Two of Brownstoner’s five biggest sales last week were at the Finger Albero 144 North 8th Street. Penthouse #2 tops the list at over $2.5 million, while Penthouse #1A is #5 on the list at $1.8 million (must be a real dump).

Food Vendor War

Food vendors are a sore subject in southern Brooklyn:

[Community Board 10] voted to request that a city-imposed ban on sidewalk vendors within the Bay Ridge 86th Street Business Improvement District be amended to include food carts.

Two thoughts:

1) the city can ban sidewalk vendors in general? I shudder to think what this would do the melted record industry if applied on Bedford Avenue.

2) Maybe we need to acknowledge a borough-wide “war on food”, and declare food trucks the southern flank and brunch the northern flank.

Williamsburg Charter High Gets a Reprieve; Cheating at PS 31?

05/23/2012 | Comment

The saga of Williamsburg Charter High School’s closing continues. Yesterday, a judge refused the city’s request to move forward with a lottery to relocate the current students at the school. Unfortunately, this decision doesn’t necessarily help the students at WCH, as they may still need to scramble to find a new school between now and September. From the looks of it, neither the city nor the leadership of the school (which is fighting to stay open) have done right by the students in this process.

Elsewhere in the Eastern District, two highly-ranked elementary schools are being investigated for cheating on standardized tests. P.S. 31 in Greenpoint and East Williamsburg’s P.S. 257 – the two top-ranked elementary schools in the entire city based on the Department of Education’s report card system – are under investigation for helping their students excel on the standardized tests that make up a big part of the report card ranking.

The cheating was suspected after many of the students from the two schools performed worse than expected on subsequent testing at I.S. 318. The gaming of the testing system also reveals a particularly nasty side effect for the teachers at the middle school:

At I.S. 318, nearly 60 percent of teachers were rated below average or low [on DOE’s new teacher report cards]. The Daily News singled out the school for its poor performance, and many news media outlets, including The New York Times, published teachers’ ratings online. The sixth-grade teachers’ scores, which depended on the progress students made from fifth to sixth grade, were particularly poor.

The ‘Drastic Miscalculation’ That Stalled the Greening of Greenpoint-Williamsburg

You might have missed it, but last week was the 7th anniversary of the City’s 2005 rezoning:

In 2005, the mayor pushed through a rezoning of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, allowing for significantly higher development along the waterfront, and promising a series of parks and open spaces strung like beads along two miles of the neighborhoods’ shorefront…

Certainly, much has changed for the better in Williamsburg, from a waterfront access standpoint. The esplanade in front of the Edge and Northside Piers is well-trafficked and much-loved. Transmitter Park at the end of Kent Avenue, though not yet finished, is in use by Greenpoint residents.

Unfortunately, progress on the development of the waterfront access and open space is not very promising – in fact, recent developments at 65 Commercial Street are a huge step backwards.

The best the City can do at this point is to point to the huge sums of money they have spent to date (“the largest in any Community Board district”) as justification for not actually building much in the way of parks. The problem is, most of the money has been spent acquiring industrial property at residential valuations (that would be the “drastic miscalculation”), leaving very little left over for remediation, let alone construction of actual parks.

Much has changed for the better – McCarren pool is opening soon, as is the waterfront portion of the Bushwick Inlet soccer field site and Transmitter Park (the latter, a promise from the Giuliani era, finally fulfilled by this administration). But despite this progress, we are years away from realizing three-quarters of the promised incremental open space.