Bushwick – one of the last unlimited height zones in northern Brooklyn – is ripe for a raft of finger-type buildings. A year and a half ago, the local community board’s land use committee showed little interest in the threat of height-factor buildings. Now, with development on the upswing throughout the area, the community may be too late to the game.
Leaders Want Bushwick Rezoning So It’s Not the Next Williamsburg
Domino Suit Thrown Out, Paving The Way For Factory’s $180 Million Sale
The State Appellate Court has thrown out a lawsuit seeking to block the sale of the Domino Sugar factory, paving the way for the real estate firm Two Trees to close on a $180 million acquisition of the property later this month.
This is beginning to feel like Restler v. Olechowski…
Greenpoint Hospital Redevelopment Plan Flatlines
The Great American Construction Corp. pulled out of the $52-million redevelopment of the vacant medical building this summer after its senior executive William Clarke was indicted on bribery charges at a separate job.
The news halts any development at the main hospital building, which was slated to become 240 units of below-market rate apartments.
Apparently the project will go back out to bid, meaning that St. Nick’s and GREC – the local groups that have been trying to do this project for years, won’t be getting it. The city should make the two other bids public before going back to the well and wasting another year or three.
Court Nixes Domino Suit
One of Isaac Katan’s two suits seeking to block the sale of the Domino site to Two Trees has been thrown out.
In the decision on Friday, the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Kings County dismissed Katan’s suit against CPC for, among other things, “breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith.” According to court documents, the decision was based on the fact that Katan “did not have right of first refusal on the property, a contract provision that was not a part of the second operating agreement.”
McGuinness Rezoning
231 McGuinness rendering
Michael Kwartler and Associates
[photo: Greenpointers]
Greenpointers has a report on a proposed rezoning for the block of McGuinness between Calyer and Greenpoint – aka, the “Blockbuster” site (remember Blockbuster? back in the 20th century they used to rent movies), across from Key Food.
CB1’s Land Use committee held a hearing on the project last week (which I missed), and the full board will presumably vote on the application at this Wednesday’s full board meeting.
The proposal itself is to rezone this block of McGuinness from M1 to R7-A (which would allow a building of the scale depicted above – hopefully this zoning placeholder will be developed into something a little insipid design-wise once the rezoning is approved). As Greenpointers helpfully points out, R7-A is the “type of zoning [that] is found along the avenues in the East Village”. It also happens to be the type of zoning that is found along the west side of McGuinness from Calyer south to Driggs (north of Greenpoint Avenue, the west side of the street is zoned R6-A, a slightly smaller medium-density zoning). The blocks from Calyer south were up zoned in 2009 as part of the larger contextual rezoning of inland Williamsburg and Greenpoint (City Planning looks to put higher density residential on avenues in part to encourage commercial development and in part make the use of inclusionary housing bonuses more viable – and yes, this application includes an expansion of the inclusionary program to this block).
This particular site was left out of the 200-block 2009 rezoning only because that rezoning focused solely on height limits and did not involve any use changes. Had the 2009 rezoning allowed change of use anywhere, it probably would have allowed it here (the owner of the property had already started the process, at least informally, before 2009).
So the main question here is not whether the property should be rezoned from manufacturing to residential like the rest of this side of the boulevard, but whether it should be rezoned to match the medium-density blocks to the north or the medium-to-high-density blocks to the south.
Coming to McGuinness Boulevard: R7 Zoning?
Seeing as this is the only block on the west side of McGuinness from Meeker Avenue to Clay Street that is not currently zoned R7, a better headline for Ms. Heather would have been: “Coming to the Rest of McGuinness Boulevard: R7A Zoning”.
(This is the only block on the west side of McGuinness that has historically been zoned for manufacturing use. The rest of the west side of McGuinness has been zoned for residential use since 1961, and was given an R7A designation in 2008, as part of the larger Greenpoint/Williamsburg Contextual Rezoning. Because rezoning the site would have required going from M to R, it could not be included in the 2008 rezoning, which left all use categories in place.)
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.
City Attempts to Develop Long-Stalled Greenpoint Park
The City has issued an RFP for the sale of the 65 Commercial Street air rights – which could be an important step in the process of breaking the log jam over the City’s commitment to turn this property into a public park.
J. Crew for the Bagel Shop?
In an article that is sure to be gasoline to the ever-smoldering Williamsburg-is-over fire, The Real Deal is reporting that “upscale clothier J.Crew is among the prospective tenants of a retail space coming online”.
But before everyone gets too worked up over this, it is worth emphasizing the squishiness of The Real Deal’s lede – “among the prospective tenants” – whose prospective tenants? A wish list put together by the broker? Remember that Bedford Avenue (and this site in particular) has had a long history of “prospective” tenants floated for it (including the perennial Bedford bogeyman Starbucks). Further down in the article, the broker says that they “are in talks with and interested in signing [more squishiness, ed.] restaurants as well as fashion and home furnishings retailers”. (Assuming all this is just primping up the property, let’s give the broker some credit for not saying that they are talking to Apple – as a rumor, J. Crew is at least creative.)
In terms of actual news, look further down in the article at what is said and not said. First, and not surprisingly, the broker has a rosy picture of the retail market on Bedford Avenue, noting that retail rents on the avenue are between $185 and $200 psf (that’s at least 50% higher than what a previous tenant was asked to pay less than two years ago – Bedford Avenue is hot, retail-wise, but that hot?).
The broker says that they “are also willing to re-sign tenants currently located at 247 Bedford, which include the bagel purveyor the Bagel Store and the health food shop Millennium Health”. That statement would indicate that the broker has a rather loose grip on the reality of current retail on Bedford Avenue – both the Bagel Store and the Millenium Health have long-since left the building and are happily ensconced in new digs further south on Bedford.
The big question here (and what is not said in the article) is what happens to King’s Pharmacy? They occupy a third to half the retail space in this building, and their lease is probably among those that are up in the next “six to 18 months”. Judging by the mooderific rendering provided by the broker (complete with a Shelby GT parked in front of King’s), I’m guessing that renewing the local pharmacy’s lease is not a high priority.
As for J. Crew, they actually might be a good fit for the neighborhood (their design aesthetic certainly fits in with – or even draws from – local fashion trends, and I seem to recall that their chief designer even lives here). But I bet that they’d go for a smaller, boutique space (a la the Liquor Store or their Soho spot) rather than a shopping center like this. And, if nothing else, a J. Crew at this location would lay to rest (once again) the 15-year old recurring Starbucks-is-coming-to-Bedford-Avenue rumor. We can’t kill it, but we can put another fork in it.
R.I.P. Rainbow Theatre
Rainbow Theatre
167 Graham Avenue
Photo: Laguardia Archives via Cinema Treasures
This was what the entrance to the Rainbow Theatre on Graham Avenue looked like in 1939. According to Brownstoner, the building is in mid-gut as part of a condo conversion.
The 1,746-seat house of the theatre was back along Meserole Street. Like many movie houses of the day, the public face of the establishment was a small structure with a big presence on a prominent retail strip. The house was on a side street, where real estate was presumably cheaper.
One wonders whether the Rainbow was a conversion of older residential structure such as that seen to the left of the theatre. Based on historic maps (which show a 4-story brick store and tenement at this location as late as 1929), that would seem to be the case.