WSJ previews Hotel Williamsburg’s four (yes, four) bars.
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Where’s Our Park?
The “Where’s Our Park?” protest event, organized by a handful of North Brooklyn community groups, was timed to coincide with the city-sponsored “It’s My Park Day” on Saturday, where more than 5,000 volunteers engaged in parks improvement projects citywide.
Instead, parks advocates marched from the N. Ninth Street soccer fields — the first and only working recreational field at Bushwick Inlet — up Kent Avenue to Quay Street, the site of a long-delayed museum.
Good quotes, too.
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Greenpoint Avenue is Latest Battleground in the Car-Cyclist Clash
Greenpoint’s community board has asked the city to halt its plan to remove much-needed parking spaces to accommodate an extended bike lane on Greenpoint Avenue.
“Much-needed” by who?
The stretch of Greenpoint Avenue in question – between Provost and the Greenpoint Avenue bridge, by the treatment plant – has always been a vehicular free-fire zone. The introduction of unprotected bike lanes a year or two ago did nothing to improve the situation. Spend 10 minutes watching traffic and you’ll see that vehicles coming off the bridge use the (poorly-marked) bike lane as a high-speed passing lane.
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In Case You Didn’t Notice: Sewage Odors Are Drawing Fewer Complaints
In 2007, the bulk of the complaints were directed at two of the city’s 14 plants: Owl’s Head in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
By this summer, complaints about the Newtown Creek plant, the city’s largest, had dropped to 4, from 151 in 2007.
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Douglaston to Develop Third Toll Tower
The Wall Street Journal (via Brownstoner) reports that Douglaston Development, the developer of the Edge condos, has bought a vacant tower site next door at Toll Brother’s Northside Piers development. Douglaston plans to erect a 40-story luxury rental on the site.
Both Douglaston and Toll have sites for third towers on their properties – Douglaston has used its site to host the Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg, while the Toll site has sat vacant. The deal – which has been rumored for some months now – means that Northside Piers will be completed, albeit with rentals instead of condos and Douglaston instead of Toll as the developer (FXFowle, which designed the other Northside towers, will remain as the architect for the rental tower).
What is not clear is what this means in terms of affordable (inclusionary) housing. L&M Development Partners, which built the existing affordable housing at the Palmers Dock portion of Northside Piers, is listed as a partner with Douglaston in the new development. I don’t know if Toll has already built the required 20% affordable housing for the new tower, or if L&M will be developing it for Douglaston. L&M is building a new ground-up affordable project on Broadway and Kent, so conceivably that could represent an offsite component of the required inclusionary housing.
As Brownstoner notes, this is something of a bombshell. It is a bullish move on Douglaston’s part, and an indication of the relative strength of the Williamsburg rental market (particularly on the waterfront), but at the same time, the fact that neither Toll nor Douglaston is interested in condos has to be a bearish indicator.
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Where’s Our Park?
This Saturday, the Where’s Our Park coalition kicks off – find out what’s happening with the new parks and open space promised by the City in 2005 (short answer: not nearly enough).
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Affordable Bushwick Homes’ Fate Uncertain in Wake of HPD Scandal
More on the HPD kickback scandal and its local impact.
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NYT: Protestors Against Wall Street
In case you missed it, the Times had a very full-throated endorsement of #occupywallstreet:
It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself.
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East River State Park Lights
People who live next to East River State Park aren’t happy about the solar lighting system installed by the State.
I don’t particularly like the poles either (it seems there are way more than are necessary, and they do seem a little bit randomly placed), but they are there so that everyone can use the park after dark.
(Actually, it seems that complainers aren’t happy about those lights or the soccer field lights at Bushwick Inlet Park, but the letter is a bit muddled on this.)
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NY Housing Official Hit with Corruption Charges
A couple of local angles to the arrest of an HPD assistant commissioner for allegedly taking bribes for affordable housing project. First, the whole scandal seems have come to light because of a probe involving extortion of Polish construction workers in Greenpoint. And second, Sergio Benitez, one of the developers indicted, is at the center of a separate investigation into an apartment in an affordable development that he allegedly gave to Councilman Erik Dilan.