Tag: development

Fallout From Housing Official’s Arrest Hits Vulnerable Neighborhoods And Workers

NY World, writing in the City Hall News:

The impact of the alleged criminal activity is especially vivid on the streets of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, two low-income neighborhoods HPD programs sought to assist. Under HPD’s HomeWorks program… developers were supposed to take vacant city-owned buildings and sell them to new homeowners. But in one of those projects – the three-story brick townhouse at 53 Rochester Ave. in Bushwick – thieves have torn through immaculately painted walls in search of copper and pipes to sell. Once-polished floorboards jut out dangerously, splintered and cracked.

Douglaston to Develop Third Toll Tower

10/14/2011 | Comment

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.

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.

Tweak to the Whole Foods Williamsburg Rumor?

10/07/2011 | 3 Comments

Brownstoner, citing an a direct but unnamed source, is reporting that the rumored Whole Foods at Kent and Metropolitan is not going to be at the Monster Island, but instead on the other side of Kent Avenue. The site in question runs along Kent from Metropolitan to North 3rd, the open lot on the corner of Metropolitan, and a one-story green shed occupying the North 3rd corner. Unlike the west side of Kent, this side of the avenue is zoned for medium-density residential and commercial, so an as-of-right development would be similar in scale to that which is just finishing up at 175 Kent.

A quick search of city records shows virtually no activity on this site in ages. The property is owned by Manhattan LLC in Manhattan (the same LLC owns the adjacent property on North 3rd Street). There have been no property transactions since 2006, and no DOB actions since 1998. The lot is used to store building materials, and seems to be operated by a Chinese company, which would square with the address of the LLC, which is on Grand Street in Chinatown.

This site does seem to have more of the amount of space that a Whole Foods would require (particularly if you include the site on North 3rd), but with no plans filed, any mixed-use development is a long, long way off. Too long, it seems to me, for a retailer to commit to – particularly when there are large (but perhaps large enough) retail spaces at both 175 and 184 Kent. The west side of Kent still makes more sense for a retailer to build ground-up. Residential is not allowed as of right on that side of the street, so commercial development could be the best play there.

For the moment, I’m putting all of this in the category of Apple store and Starbucks speculation. Maybe Whole Foods (or some other high-end grocery store) is coming to the neighborhood, and maybe they’re coming to this part of Kent Avenue. We’ll see.

And while all of this (probably idle) speculation is going on about the Kent Avenue site, there is some serious demolition happening at the Con Ed property on the west side of River Street. According to DOB, Con Ed is demolishing “three (3) retired fuel tanks”, each constructed of concrete over 20″ thick. What will replace these riverside tanks is not known (how about a waterfront esplanade?!?).

Economic Downturn Breeds Stalled Construction Sites

After commenting earlier today that the number of stalled sites seemed to be dropping quickly, this article appeared in Google alerts:

Williamsburg and Greenpoint saw a pre-recession development boom. Since 2009, approximately half of the city’s stalled sites have been located in these neighborhoods. Currently, 92 sites are inactive in the area, compared to 129 in all of Manhattan.

I’ve always been skeptical of the City’s official count of stalled sites, both in terms of undercounting and overcounting (which means the gross number might be roughly accurate, but the actual site list probably isn’t). It would be interesting to map actual vs. perceived stalled sites and see where the discrepancies lie. Certainly there are still some big ones, like the Domsey site illustrated in the Epoch Times article, the North 4th and Bedford hulk, and the South 4th sites on and near Bedford, but often they have very atypical back stories (epic bankruptcies, construction accidents, lawsuits and the like). But a number of prominent stalled sites are back in construction or nearly so, including 111 Kent, the North 6th and Wythe site (steel is going up) and North 1st and Kent steel skeleton.

Ignoring the Waterfront That We Have

Tom Stoelker in The Architects Newspaper:

Now that Michael Marrella, who guided the massive waterfront plan, Vision 2020, into being last spring, has been bumped up to Director of Waterfront and Open Space Planning Division, he has miles and miles of shoreline to divvy up between two very different users—the public and industry. Charged with both implementing public access to the water for quality of life uses while also supporting a working waterfront, Marella made his position clear: “We’re not looking to relocate or displace industrial uses.”

The article notes that Con Ed is close to a deal with Brooklyn Bridge Park that will allow the Park to acquire a 5-acre site adjacent to the Con Ed plant in Dumbo. No mention is made of the two Con Ed-owned locations in Williamsburg – the transformer station to the south of 184 Kent and the former BRT power plan site just south of Division. Also not mentioned is why the City doesn’t development the parkland it has already created at Bushwick Inlet and along the Greenpoint waterfront, or why they City doesn’t develop land it already owns (and does not use for industrial purposes) like that at “Williamsburg Bridge Park”.

Quadraid Fills In

09/26/2011 | 2 Comments

Quadriad North 3rd

Quadriad’s North 3rd Street infill

Another data point for the continued growth of construction in Williamsburg – Quadriad has (rather quickly) moved forward on the infill portion of its North 3rd Street development. The Bedford Avenue piece finished some time ago, and the Berry section is about to come online. Now the in-between bit is pushing forward.

As I’ve noted before, the death of development in Williamsburg has always been over exaggerated – even in the depths of the recession, new projects continued to start up – but lately, it seems that there are fewer and fewer stalled sites, and a definite upsurge in construction.

(The retail portion of this project gets a lot of press – does anyone know people who actually live there?)

New Condos

09/26/2011 | Comment

Louver House

The Louver House


268 Wythe Avenue (aka 91 – 93 Metropolitan Avenue) has relaunched as the Louver House (it had been called the Louver Condominium). The new name is an intentional (I assume) play on the name of one of the iconic works of 20th-Century architecture. The project has languished on the market – either for financial reasons or otherwise.

I still think this is one of the nicer-looking developments in the Northside, though the wood slats and other details don’t look as though they will wear well. And if the Times is correct about the dearth of good condominium product on the market, it may sell this time around. (Certainly from an anecdotal point of view there are a) fewer and fewer stalled sites and b) more and more condos turning rental in the core Williamsburg area.)

In a Bronx Complex, Doing Good Mixes With Looking Good

Michael Kimmelman’s first architectural review in the Times:

The rebirth of the South Bronx isn’t news. But Via Verde is. And it makes as good an argument as any new building in the city for the cultural and civic value of architecture. The profession, or in any case much talk about it, has been fixated for too long on brand-name luxury objects and buildings as sculptures instead of attending to the richer, broader, more urgent vein of public policy and community engagement, in which aesthetics play a part.