• The Northside Gets a Supermarket

    Food Town

    The Northside is getting its first supermarket.

    OK, technically, the Northside has a supermarket in Tops on the Waterfront. But as endearing (and enduring) as Tops is, there’s nothing “super” about it, even grading on the curve that is NYC supermarkets.

    Maybe “Williamsburg Food Town” won’t be a proper supermarket either. It might be a supersized Khim’s Millenium Market (open this week at two new locations on Bedford Avenue!!) – a well stocked, overpriced bodega. It might be another Tops – a poorly stocked, reasonably priced not-so-super market. It may or may not sell condos (Williamsburg has a Food Town across the street from a Duane Reade – I’m moving there!). And it may soon be eclipsed by an actual supermarket (Whole Foods(!), Trader Joes(!), Shop Rite(!), or dare we dream – Fairway(!!!)) somewhere on the waterfront1.

    But right now, Williamsburg Food Town has the inside track for being the first supermarket on the Northside. And if it is, it is way overdue.

    1. For the record, I have absolutely no information in this regard. Seriously, nothing.

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  • DOE School Layoffs

    Last night, the Department of Education released a list of teacher layoffs [warning – Excel file] by school, district and area of study. The lists don’t say which teachers will be impacted, but you could probably read between the lines and figure out if your kid’s teacher was on the line.

    Overall, DOE is cutting the teacher rolls by 6%, but the pain is by no means evenly spread. District 14 schools (Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick and Bed-Stuy) will see an overall 7% cut; District 1 (Lower East Side and East Village, where a fair number local families send their kids) will see a 10% cut. District 31, which covers Staten Island, has the smallest number of layoffs in percentage terms – 3%. The layoffs are seniority-based, so schools and districts that have hired a lot of young, new teachers are particularly hard hit. Schools and districts with older, more senior faculty are hit far less, if at all. (And these are layoffs, not cuts – schools that lose teachers may be able to fill vacancies from the pool of senior teachers; schools that are not facing layoffs may lose senior teachers to schools that are heavily impacted by the layoffs.)

    326 of 1,569 schools will see no cut at all, and another 162 will see a reduction of 2% or less (usually one or two teachers). That leaves about two-thirds of city schools shouldering about 95% of the layoffs. Here is a select list of local schools and their layoffs:

    • PS 17 – no layoffs
    • PS 31 – 5% (2 teachers)
    • PS 34 – no layoffs
    • PS 84 – 3% (1 teacher)
    • PS 132 – 10% (5 teachers)
    • El Puente Academy – 8% (1 teacher)
    • Automotive High – 7% (5 teachers)

     

    And in the East Village:

    • East Village Community School – 10% (2 teachers)
    • Children’s Workshop – 17% (4 teachers)
    • The Neighborhood School – 4% (1 teacher)
    • The Earth School – 10% (2 teachers)
    • NEST +M – 20% (19 teachers across 12 grades)
    • Bard High School – 6% (2 teachers)

    UPDATE: The Times has a good rundown on the layoffs, their impact and the bigger picture (including the politics of brinksmanship at play). This post was edited to make the distinction between cutbacks and layoffs a bit clearer.

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  • Two Northside Piers is 50% Sold

    I keep hearing about how great sales are at the Edge, but next door, Toll Brothers’ Northside Piers project is quietly selling a lot of units.

    Two Northside Piers, the second phase of the much better-looking waterfront development, is now 50% sold (one Northside Piers sold out ages ago). If my numbers (and theirs) are correct, Northside has sold more than 310 of about market-rate 450 units, or about 69% overall. Next door, the Edge has sold about 38% (“nearly 40%”!) of its 565 market-rate units.

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  • Pfizer Plant Sold

    Two years after abandoning an attempt to redevelop its sprawling former manufacturing complex in Brooklyn, drug giant Pfizer announced Monday that it had reached a surprise agreement to sell a piece of that property to Acumen Capital Partners of Long Island City.

    Surprise move indeed. Then talk for a long time was that this site (the massive industrial building on the south side of Flushing Avenue) would be used for a non-profit industrial development and jobs training project –  along the GMDC or Navy Yard model. The good news, though, is that Acumen is a developer of light industrial properties, and their acquisition of the building has the potential to bring a lot of jobs to the neighborhood.

    For a company with a 159-year history in the neighborhood, Pfizer has managed to leave town very quietly. In the process, they have demolished significant historic buildings, taken tens of millions in tax credits from the City, and killed a 1,000+ local jobs.

    But what about the rest of their property north of Flushing? Will that become affordable housing? Or does Pfizer have another surprise up its sleeve before it packs up its tent and quietly leaves town?

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  • Quit Your Whining and Start Shoveling

    Fucked in Park Slope is not impressed with the fortitude of Park Slopers when it comes to the resumption of alternate-side parking. It seems to be a citywide phenomenon, though – car owners everywhere are appalled that after 17 days they should dig their vehicles out and let the city sweep and plow to the curb. Worse yet, there seems to this collective sense that this is all Bloomberg’s fault – as if the Department of Sanitation should be digging out your car.

    Get over it.

    it’s not just car owners, either:

    And, while I’m getting ranty, SHOVEL YOUR DOG SHIT too! Why does the snow make you think you’ve got a free pass to smearing fucking fecal matter all over the sidewalks????

    To which I would add: sidewalk clean up in general. As the grey glaciers finally start to recede, they are exposing piles of litter which property owners and residents alike seem to feel they are exempt from picking up. Your city is a mess, and it’s not all (all) “the City’s” fault.

    Stop whining and pick up.

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  • Kitchen Incubator

    EDC has issued an RFP for a “kitchen incubator” in Brooklyn. The project would create a “food-use related incubator program, such as food manufacturing, storage, or shared commercial kitchen space” in northern Brooklyn. The RFP identifies Bed-Stuy, Brownsville and the Moore Street market in East Williamsburg as some ofmthe potential locations. The latter location makes a ton of sense – a vibrant but underutilized WPA-era food market. The community and the merchants at the market strongly support locating the incubator there, and the city is planning a $1.2 million plaza upgrade for the exterior.

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  • Linderman Leaves the Gazette

    Nooooo!

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  • Photowalk: On the Williamsburg Waterfront

    Photo by Barry Yanowitz

    Photo: Barry Yanowitz
    via For the Love of Brooklyn


    For the Love of Brooklyn hosted a meetup of Brooklyn photographers last Thursday. The subject was the (very cold) Williamsburg waterfront, and the result is some very beautiful evening shots.

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  • Fire: 13 Conselyea Street

    Not much to go on, but Metro is reporting that today’s fire on Conselyea was the result of “hoarding” (or at least that the firefighters referred to it as a “Collyer’s Mansion“, which may or may not mean that hoarding caused the fire – like I said, not much to go on).

    Halden

  • Ruminations on Duane Reade

    Yes, way too much has been written about Bedford Avenue’s Duane Reade. But Williams Cole’s piece in the Brooklyn Rail is still worth a read.

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