Gothamist on La Villita’s closing. 17 years doesn’t sound right – maybe 17 under this owner? But I’m pretty sure I was getting my egg sandwiches and cafes con leche there before 1996.
After 17 Years In Business, Beloved Williamsburg Bakery Gets Priced Out
Lights, Cameras, Williamsburg!
Williamsburg Cinemas will be one of the first places in the neighborhood that people can go to catch a blockbuster flick, filling the void left by the closure of the Commodore Theater in 2002.
I’m not sure the Commodore ever really filled that void, but first-run movies (sans alcohol) are back in Williamsburg.
Kickstarter Will Kickstart Greenpoint’s Tech Community
Kickstarter is buying the most decrepit pieces of the former Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory complex to serve as its new home and HQ. The building (actually fragments of three historic structures) is on Kent Street, just east of West Street. (This is old news in a way (Kickstarter went through a public review at LPC and CB1 last Spring), but seems to suddenly be on everyone’s radar.)
“It proves that if these companies can find the space, this is where they want to be,” said William Harvey, a sculptor, designer, and longtime champion of development in North Brooklyn. “Kickstarter shows that we have everything these companies want.”
More importantly, it shows that “industry” in New York is continuing to take on new meaning. This project is bringing 45 jobs to an industrially-zoned section of Brooklyn, and doing so without building a bar, hotel or bowling alley.
Manhattan Architect Jumps to Brooklyn
Welcome to the neighborhood.
War on Street Life
Community Board #1’s “war on brunch” has now officially became news last week, having been picked up by both WNYC and the New York Times. Credit for originating the story belongs to Aaron Short at the Brooklyn Paper. Too bad they let a catchy headline distract them from the real story (and no, it’s not about gentrification, though that’s a catchy headline too).
Sadly, these planters – civic though they may be – are
probably illegal.
The big story here is that the “war on brunch” is really a crackdown on street life. The Community Board, upset at a few bars and restaurants, has chosen to use a hatchet instead of a scalpel. Restaurants and property owners are getting summonses and warning letters about sidewalk benches, sidewalk planters and the like1. As with dining al fresco before noon on Sundays, these targets of the Community Board’s ire are actually the kinds of things that make a neighborhood more livable and more enjoyable.
There is a reason why city planners obsess over things like bench heights, and it goes all the way back to the great neighborhood advocate Jane Jacobs herself. Street life, be it seniors sitting on a bench or patrons waiting for a seat at an insanely popular restaurant, makes for better neighborhoods and better communities (or, as Holly Whyte put it, you can measure the health of a city by the vitality of its streets). Outlawing benches and planters isn’t going to make Pies ‘n’ Thighs any less popular (or any less good), though it will mean that more people – not less – are standing around waiting for a table and clogging up the sidewalk.
To be clear, all this wonderful street furniture is also illegal. But using laws against sidewalk furniture to go after a broad swath of businesses is a stop-and-frisk approach to a very specific problem. If the problem is that certain restaurants are flouting the laws about sidewalk cafes and creating an actual nuisance, go after those restaurants. If neighbors have specific complaints, the Community Board should (and traditionally has) acted as a broker, talking to the owners and the residents to work out a solution. If that doesn’t work, then use the relevant city agencies to crack down on the specific troublemaker.
In the long run, trotting out arcane, outdated blue laws is not an effective approach, if for no other reason than that it turns the target into a victim and the enforcer into a bully. The story now is not that some number of restaurant owners are breaking the law and creating a community nuisance, but rather that the Community Board, through City agencies, is using outmoded, ticky-tacky laws to bully a whole business sector (and in the process sweeping in private citizens who have rogue planters, benches and other contraband street furniture (lawns!!) in front of their houses). Ironically, the perennially bad neighbors on the nightlife scene haven’t been impacted by the crackdown, and may not be – most of their sidewalk cafes are legal, and they don’t open before noon on any day.
A nice place for seniors to sit or a public nuisance?
(Probably the latter – this bench looks to be on private
property
In other developments, Councilman Steve Levin is promising to introduce legislation to rescind the ridiculous prohibition on sidewalk eateries before noon on Sundays. Given that many of the neighborhood clergy – including Ann Kansfield of Greenpoint Reformed Church and Monsignor Calise of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (and a member of CB1) – have gone on record saying that Sunday morning eateries are not a threat to their religious observance, this is a good thing. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail on the bigger issue of the street furniture crackdown too.
1. It would be wonderful if this was the biggest issue facing our neighborhood – have we solved all our problems and are now ready to focus on this?↩
Williamsburg Bars Going to ‘L’
The constant weekend shutdowns needed to upgrade subway signals on the L line is taking its toll on the blossoming Williamsburg bar scene — with hipster hangouts reporting huge drops in profits.
Weekend closures are a problem if you have a business located near one of the City’s busiest stations on weekends.
Crackdown Hits North Brooklyn Bars
You wouldn’t know from reading Crain’s, but CB1 supports about 9 out of every 10 liquor license applications that come before it. (Proving Woody Allen right, the huge majority of rejected applications are for bars and restaurants that don’t even bother showing up.)
That’s some crackdown.
New Tenant at 475 Driggs
Fushimi gets a neighbor. Something tells me this isn’t going to be the hippest part of the neighborhood.
Retail Report
A few random observations on the Northside (more or less) retail/commercial front:
Kitten Coffee, a roaster located in Bed-Stuy is opening what looks like its first retail outlet at the former Blackbird spot at North 6th and Bedford.
Evolve Motorcycles, a manufacturer of electric motorcycles, is opening a showroom (its first?) at 155 Grand Street (the former location of East Street Gallery and before that Lawanna’s last outpost). The storefront next door is available – the pizza parlor that had been there was seized by the marshals last month.
208 Grand Street (at right, the new building with the best air conditioner grilles in Brooklyn) is getting a restaurant – Sensation – which will serve “new Shanghai cuisine”.
The newly-opened Hotel Williamsburg is changing hands – the potential new owners came to CB1 tonight for a transfer of the liquor license. One of the new owners was involved in the operation of the Barbizon, Ryalton, Paramount and Gramercy Park Hotels, as well as Coco Pazzo on the Upper East Side. The second partner is Meyer Chetrit (coincidentally, the Chetrit Group has just sold 175 Kent to Sam Zell).
Also on the CB1 docket tonight (but not on the Northside), the owners of Traif are opening Xixa, Mexican restaurant, three doors down at the old Aldo’s Coffee Shop space on South 4th Street.
Designing Food Trucks
Shanghai Stainless Steel over on Gerry Street turns out to be a major supplier of the city’s food trucks. Ernie Wong, the second generation proprietor (and a great guy) is leading the way.