Charter School Inks Deal at 33 Nassau Avenue

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Believe High School Networks, an organization that operates various charter schools in the city, is taking a big lease at 33 Nassau Avenue (which is across the street from McCarren Park, back behind Automotive High). It looks as the organization has leased the entire 16,800-square-foot second floor of the building, and will put its offices and a charter high school in there. (Locally, Believe operates the Believe Northside Charter High School, the Believe Southside Charter High School and the Williamsburg Charter High School – BNCHS opened this year across McCarren Park at Ericsson JHS.)

It’s Here – Domino Rezoning Certified

01/04/2010 |

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Proposed Domino development, view south from the water side.


It’s been a long time coming, but the Domino Sugar Refinery rezoning is finally upon us. The Draft EIS has been completed, and City Planning is expected to certify the application today, allowing it to enter the public review.

As before, the project promises a lot of affordable housing (660 units) in return for a hell of a lot of market-rate housing (2,200 units), a lot of open space (four acres), and a heap of parking (acres 1,900 spaces), scads of retail space (125,000 square feet) and even more community facility space (150,000 square feet). The project also still includes a 14-story tower on the Wythe Avenue end of the upland block and a zoning envelope that is substantially larger than anything approved during the 2005 waterfront rezoning or since.

The biggest change since the preliminary presentations is that the project has now added some 50 stories (100,000 square feet, distributed among five or so towers) of commercial office space to the Grand Street end of the development.

If all goes according to schedule, the public review will kick off with a presentation to Community Board #1 next week, followed by CB1’s land use committee review in early February. The full board could vote as early as 9 February, and then it is on to the Borough President.

More eye candy after the jump.

Continue…



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The Bloomberg Era, Part One

Nate Kensinger nails it.

[During the Bloomberg era], many historic structures were demolished along the industrial waterfront to make way for developers. Neighborhood icons vanished, like the smokestacks of the Long Island City Powerhouse, erased from the skyline in 2005 by luxury condominiums. In Brooklyn, the rapid pace of development claimed so many historic structures that by 2007, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Brooklyn’s entire industrial waterfront at the top of their list of “America’s 11 Most Endangered Places,” stating “historic dockyards and factories are being demolished by developers anxious to cash in on the area’s newly hip status.” Some of the industrial structures lost included the Greenpoint Terminal Market – a potential landmark which was burned to the ground in 2006; the Todd Shipyard – a working shipyard demolished in 2006 by Ikea; the Revere Sugar Refinery – a neighborhood icon which guided ships into the Eerie Basin until being demolished in 2007, and the Kent Avenue Powerhouse – a grand structure completely demolished by 2009. Many of the industrial buildings destroyed throughout the decade were functional, stable, useful structures that could have been redeveloped and given a second life.

Gowanus Lounge is Back (in Little Italy)

01/04/2010 |

My RSS and Twitter feeds are suddenly alive with new posts from Gowanus Lounge. If you go to the site, you’ll see that it has a new design and all new content. (If that picture of Little Italy at the top of the page seems a bit familiar (and yet a little unBrooklyn), you may be remembering this post.)

It turns out that the domain name has been sold by Bob Guskind’s widow, and there is a new proprietor at the lounge. And while the content of the new Gowanus Lounge is certainly not what we all came to expect from Bob’s posts, happily, that historic content is being preserved at a new website (bobguskind.com). It’s the old familiar place, with all the old familiar posts. And that is nice to see.

Heather (who, with her husband, set up the bobguskind.com site) has more details.



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Sunset

01/02/2010 |

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Sunset, 2 January 2010.
Five development projects, in various states of completion.




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Greenpoint Hospital Bid Receives Shot in Arm

A private foundation has donated $500,000 to further GREC/St. Nick’s application to redevelop the Greenpoint Hospital site. GREC/St. Nick’s are one of four applicants who have been waiting for almost two years for the City to decide what to do with the site.

Broadway Triangle: Stop ‘n’ Go

12/23/2009 |

On Monday, the City Council approved the Broadway Triangle rezoning by a vote of 36 to 10, with 4 abstentions (Gotham Gazette and the Times both have excellent coverage of the vote and the process). The final agreement worked out by the council included an additional 10,000 square feet of public open space (at the cost of about 40 units of affordable housing), and vague promises to provide assistance to relocate businesses in the area. Also, Councilmember (and soon to be Public Advocate) was heard making noises about HPD’s process of sole-sourcing development rights here and elsewhere.

All of that is on top of the basic outlines of the plan that have been in place from the beginning – a substantial amount of affordable housing within a manageable and sustainable zoning envelope.

Proponents are citing a figure of 800+ plus units of affordable housing, while the opponents say that “much of the affordable housing… is not mandatory, but it is part of the city’s inclusionary housing program“. The truth lies somewhere in between. The number of units on city-owned sites is about 600 (and that is after the loss of 40 units for the additional open space). Those units are guaranteed to be affordable. The difference between 600 and 800 is the inclusionary housing program, and those units are not guaranteed. In fact, if the past any indication, it is likely that none of those additional will be built. But even if they are not, and the rest of the rezoning area is built out fully with market-rate units, this rezoning will still generate over 40% affordable housing.

Part of the reason the rezoning reaches that percentage (a number the entire community fought for in the 2005 waterfront rezoning) is that the overall zoning is contextual to the rest of the community. The R6A and R7A implemented as part of this rezoning does not seek to supersize development – it keeps development within a reasonable and sustainable density (again, something the entire community fought for in 2005).

But it’s not over yet.

The Observer was a tad premature in its assessment of the Council’s approval “seeming to conclude a saga over the large below-market rate housing site in Brooklyn that has been pushed relentlessly by Assemblyman Vito Lopez”.

That’s because last night, a judge “granted the Broadway Triangle Community Coalition’s application to halt implementation of the City’s controversial rezoning of the 30 acre Urban Renewal Area at the border of Williamsburg and Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.”



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291 Bedford Avenue

12/20/2009 |

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291 Bedford Avenue
Rosenbaum Design Group, Architects


This building has been going up on the corner of South 1st and Bedford for some months now (one of many green shoots on the Southside). Textbook example of how a small building can be completely out of context. Not surprising given the architect’s speciality – shopping centers and supermarkets (their website doesn’t even mention residential).



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