PIX interviews Assemblyman Joe Lentol on Bushwick Inlet Park, and the City’s decision to walk away from its commitments in the 2005 zoning.
Lentol on Bushwick Inlet Park
City Too Poor to Build Promised Bushwick Inlet Park
Aaron Short covers the City’s abandonment of Bushwick Inlet Park.
State Won’t Fund Kayak Center on Newtown Creek
The Newtown Creek Boathouse proposal, which was the top-ranked project for funding under the State-administered fund established to mitigate the City’s ongoing pollution of the creek during the construction of the Newtown Creek Waste Management plant may run aground because of the Federal designation of the creek as a Superfund site.
Got that?
Reversal on Plans for Williamsburg Park
The Daily News reports today that the City is reneging on one of the key components of the 2005 Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezoning – the 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park. The park – which would straddle Greenpoint and Williamsburg – was the centerpiece of the City’s open space plan under the rezoning.
In the six years since the rezoning, the City has acquired less than a third of the property that was to make up the park. In a letter to one of the property owners on the site, the Parks Department is now saying that it has “no schedule for the acquisition of the site” (a position which was apparently reiterated by other City officials in a meeting with the Community Advisory Board last week).
In the 2005 rezoning, the City promised that it would add roughly 38 acres to North Brooklyn. Six years – and thousands of new housing units – later, less than 3 acres of that is actual, usable open space. The rest is 35 acres of broken promises and, ultimately, a ruined rezoning.
A Phantom Ride on the Evergreen Branch
Paul Cox takes a ride on the old Manhattan Beach Rail Road’s Evergreen branch.
Great piece – I love finding these geographic relics.
Who’s Behind the Blight?
Turns out that a lot of the stalled construction sites in Williamsburg (corner of South 4th and Bedford, 212-218 North 9th, 237-243 North 9th, 261-263 North 9th) are owned by the same pair of developers. Who also own the converted loft building at 100 South 4th Street and the vacated loft building at 239 Banker Street.
The L Train is Crowded on Weekends Too
At the Bedford Avenue stop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which serves about a third of the L train’s passengers, an average weekend day retains 90 percent of the ridership of a weekday.
Charlatans & Cowards
Kevin Drum on the pitiful jobs report out this morning:
We are ruled by charlatans and cowards. Our economy is in the tank, we know what to do about it, and we’re just not going to do it. The charlatans prefer instead to stand by and let people suffer because that’s politically useful, while the cowards let them get away with it because it’s politically risky to fight back. Ugh indeed.
In Hawking Seafood, He Reeled in a Show
Ben Sargent, founder of Hurricane Hopeful and the underground lobster-roll man, makes the big time.
Rose Plaza Now a Conversion?
Rose Plaza: Not Coming Soon to a Waterfront Near You??
Brownstoner reports this morning that 484 Kent Avenue has a DOB permit to convert the top two floors of the building to 30 residential units. The ground floor will remain as warehouse use.
Presumably, this means that the grand plans for Rose Plaza – and its 240 affordable housing units – aren’t going to come to fruition anytime soon. If that’s the case, that is the second affordable housing project in a week to put an affordable housing promise on long-term hiatus.