Tag: greenpoint

Our Voices Exhibition Celebrates 50 Years of Activism in North Brooklyn: Sneak Peek

The end of May will see the premiere of Our Voices Seen and Heard: A First Hand Account, “an exhibit of artifacts from 50 years of protest, activism and victories in the communities of Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn.”

This should be very good – the organizers have been working on this for half a year or longer, and the source material is incredibly rich. Los Sures, El Puente, NAG (including in its original acronymic, Neighbors Against Garbage), GWAPP (including in its original acronymic, Greenpoint Williamsburg Against the Power Plant), and many more.

May 20th, mark your calendar.

Here’s What Happening with the Nuhart Superfund Site

After many false starts, it looks as though development and clean up of the Nuhart site might actually be going forward. Details on the clean up are still sketchy, IMO (this is a hugely problematic site, with contamination that extends under the street and maybe adjacent properties).

Greenpoint Ferry Riders May Be Stranded Until May 2022

This is nuts. LendLease, the new owner of the India Street pier, likely won’t be able make the Greenpoint ferry stop operational for a full year.

And this tidbit is just too rich – “A shuttle bus was offered from India Street to Hunters Point South, however citing low ridership, NYC Ferry discontinued it on June 9th.”

AOC Was Even More Wrong about Williamsburg Than We’d Thought

The Post, which seems pretty obsessed with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, gets their facts confused in an effort to prove her “wrong”:

…contra AOC, the rezoned area [of Greenpoint and Williamsburg] now has more Hispanic residents, city data show — reversing a trend of decline since 1990. Oh, and Williamsburg hasn’t seen a drop in the number of lower-income households.

The Post is referring to a presentation that the Department of City Planning made at a community meeting last week (of which, hopefully a more detailed analysis to follow – it is a very interesting data dump). In that presentation, DCP showed charts comparing the Hispanic population in 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2017. The Post reads this data as somehow excuplatory, but it really does not show what they think it does.

In their rush to a gotcha on @AOC, the Post ignores a few key facts that DCP also presented. Namely, that the share of Hispanic residents in the waterfront rezoning area dropped from 27% in ca. 2006-2010 to 23% in ca. 2013-2017. Yes, the population was up (by a small number in the waterfront rezoning area only – an area that historically has a smaller share of Hispanic residents). Overall, in the two rezoning areas (which excludes parts of the Southside and East Williamsburg with higher proportions of Hispanic residents), the Hispanic population did increase 15% between 2006 and 2017, but compared to 2000, the Hispanic population is still down in this area over 25% (and down almost 40% compared to 1990).

And the income factoid? Yes, the number of lower-income households (those earning less than $50,000 has stayed more or less flat (it has actually dropped very slightly). But the number of households earning more than $50,000 has tripled since 1990 and more than doubled since before the 2005 rezoning.

That sure looks a lot like gentrification.

But @AOC was wrong about one thing – there are not very many “hippies” in Williamsburg.

Greenpoint is Over

02/21/2019 | 1 Comment

“MarieBelle’s flagship store [is] in New York’s famous Soho District […and it] has a rustic-style Cacao Market in trendy Greenpoint, Brooklyn”.

Based on this press release, I think that we can put February 19, 2019 down in the calendar as the date that Greenpoint officially jumped the gentrification shark.

LongPoint Bridge Connecting Greenpoint to Long Island City Gains Momentum

I’ve always wanted to see this connection between Greenpoint and Hunter’s Point reestablished. The article mentions the Vernon Avenue Bridge (see below), which was constructed in 1905. But a bridge connecting Manhattan Avenue to Vernon Avenue was in place at least as far back as the mid-1850s, when Greenpoint and Hunter’s Point were being developed. Eliphalet Nott was involved in the development of both neighborhoods, which is apparent looking at the very similar building stock in both areas.

Newtown Creek GMDC

Vernon Avenue Bridge, 1905
Credit: Novelty Theater


DOE Says School Will Be Built Near Greenpoint Toxic Site

The Department of Education has told Laura Hanrahan at the Greenpoint Post that they are moving ahead with plans to construct a K-5 school at part of the Greenpoint Landing site that sits next to a Superfund spill at the NuHart Plastics factory. This comes as news to CM Steve Levin and local advocates who have working to find a less potentially toxic place for a grade school.

What the article doesn’t make clear is that the developer of the NuHart site has no plans to clean up the part of the spill that sits under the intersection of Franklin Street and Dupont Street. That part of the plume has been slowly migrating towards the school site, and based on the most recent data is now within a few feet of the school site.