Another potential development site north of Greenpoint Avenue moves forward. On tap is a 35,000 square-foot development for 50 new residential units.
West Street Land Sells in Greenpoint
Greenpoint Developer Wants to Build 10 Huge Towers, Giant Bridge
Vernon Avenue Bridge (demolished in 1954)
Source: Novelty Theater
It’s not exactly new news, but Gothamist has a piece up on the proposed mega-development at the top of Greenpoint. Not news because what’s proposed is exactly what the city approved in the 2005 waterfront rezoning. Aside from the proposed bridge to Hunters Point, the only real news is that it has taken so long for development to happen on the Greenpoint waterfront. No one has broken ground yet, but this is one of four projects that are actively in the pipeline. Taken together, these four projects would transform the north Greenpoint waterfront from Java Street to Commercial Street. (The same fate is in store for the southern part of the Greenpoint waterfront – why the northern projects are further along is a mystery to me.)
As for the bridge – connecting West Street to 2nd Street in Hunters Point South – it would be great to reconnect these two neighborhoods, but I’d much rather see it done the old fashioned way, running from Manhattan Avenue to Vernon Boulevard in Hunters Point. In addition to replacing an ages-old connection, a bridge at Manhattan Avenue would have the benefit of connecting two neighborhoods, not two developments.
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.
Relic of the City Beautiful Movement: The Greenpoint Bathhouse
One of my favorite Greenpoint buildings.
1892: In Praise of Small Parks
Montrose Morris digs up an 1892 Brooklyn Eagle article praising Brooklyn’s then-new small parks. On the list are Monsignor McGolrick (née Winthrop), Bushwick, Sunset, Ridgewood and Brower (née Bedford) Parks.
Residents Plan to Sue to Block Greenpoint Shelter
The lawsuit backed by the [unnamed] grass roots organization will argue that the city’s Department of Homeless Services illegally circumvented the stringent “fair share” approval process by converting the four-story industrial warehouse without formal Community Board or City Council approval.
20 beds in the facility will be set aside for Greenpoint residents – nowhere near enough to begin to address the local homeless population or their needs.
How Gentrification Transformed a Brooklyn Neighbourhood
Mieszko Kalita, deli owner and star of this BBC piece on Greenpoint, talks “artists”:
They’re definitely not illegal immigrants.
(Note to BBC – how about making your videos embeddable?)
Hipster Highway Hellzone
‘It’s well known that it is a dangerous place,’ said grieving mom Rachel McCulloch, whose hipster son, 28-year-old Neil Chamberlain, was killed during an early morning hit and run on McGuinness in April 2010.
Note to the Daily News – it’s not just hipsters who are losing their lives on McGuinness Boulevard. And Chamberlain’s mother is right – McGuinness Boulevard is a well-known accident waiting to happen. Since 1995, this 15-block, 4-lane “boulevard” has seen over 100 pedestrians or cyclists run over by motor vehicles1. 11 of those pedestrians lost their lives (almost half of them were 60 years old or older), as did 3 cyclists. As best as I can tell, only 2 of these 14 fatalities involved “hipsters”.
For the record, here is a partial list of the people who have lost their lives trying to cross the “hipster hellzone”:
Richard Iwaszkiewicz – 61, a baker was hit in April 1995
In 1996 an unidentified woman, aged 60 was killed
Joseph LoCurto, a construction worker on the McGuinness Boulevard renovation project was killed in December, 1998
In 2002, an unidentified male pedestrian in his 30s was killed
Liz Byrne, aged 45 was killed in September 2005
Maria Piatkiewicz, 67, a neighborhood resident was run over by a van in July 2008
Solange Raulston, a 33-year-old DJ was killed while riding her bicycle in December 2009
Neil Chamberlain a 28-year-old web designer was killed on his bike in April 2010
The thing is, McGuinness Boulevard has been a hell zone for years now. Write an article about that, and skip the gratuitous “hipster” headlines.
1 The data here was compiled from Crashstat.org, which has information through 2009 only; the names of the victims were compiled through Google searches and searches of local newspapers, like the Daily News.↩
Tower Day #2: Klein May Move Forward in Greenpoint
Greenpoint Waterfront: The Future
(Rendering by City Planning)
More tower news (it’s Greenpoint’s turn)! Matt Chaban in the Observer has a piece on the imminent launch of phase one (at least) of the 10-tower project at the very north end of the Greenpoint waterfront. The project would be completely as of right, thanks to the 2005 rezoning, and would presumably benefit greatly from the construction of Barge Park to the north, if that ever happens. As with other waterfront developments, the project will include the buildout of a waterfront esplanade and the construction of 20% of the units as affordable (onsite, I believe).