How many Brooklyn neighborhoods are being downzoned, upzoned or just-plain-rezoned? A lot. In fact, the list of neighborhoods that haven’t been rezoned recently, aren’t currently being rezoned and aren’t scheduled for rezoning may be shorter than the list of ones that were/are/will be. Zoning is generally something that is only of interest to hardcore planning […]

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Attention Brooklyn foodies: If you’ve been waiting for the increasingly well-known food stands at the Red Hook Ball Fields to open you are going to have to wait another weekend. The stands were supposed to open tomorrow (4/28), but the opening has been pushed back to May 5. The food blog Pork Chop Express got […]

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[Photo courtesy of Brit in Brooklyn] We don’t know if the collapse of a parapet at the Ward Bakery–which is being demolished by Forest City Ratner in its effort to clear blocks of property in Prospect Heights–was a harbinger of things to come or not. What we do know is that (a). it’s fortunate no […]

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Yesterday, we started to crack a joke about how McCarren Pool would become a swimming pool again around 2030. Boy, were we wrong. The Waterfront Preservation Alliance of Greenpoint and Williamsburg is reporting that money for recreating McCarren as a pool could be available sooner rather than later: …the Mayor’s FY2008 (begins July, 2007) budget […]

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Earlier this week, we posted an excerpt of an email from the Urban Divers about last weekend’s Gowanus Canal cleanup. It mentioned that a lot of “sanitary items” were in the canal after the recent Nor’easter. Ariella Cohen fills in some of the detail in this week’s Brooklyn Paper. Apparently the, um, sanitary items included […]

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The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods is holding a noon press conference today at Ward Bakery, which suffered that parapet collapse yesterday, to call for a halt to demolitions for the Atlantic Yards development in Prospect Heights. The group wants an immediate suspension of activity until a “thorough investigation as to the cause of the collapse […]

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A reader reminded us about 53 Bridge Street, pictured above, whose yellow growth has graced the Vinegar Hill/Dumbo skyline for some time. The building is owned and is being developed by Joshua Gutman, whose name you might recall from the Greenpoint Terminal Market conflagration. The architect is the Brooklyn King of the Thing on Top, […]

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[Photo courtesy threecee/flickr] Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images. Is Walking Missing From PlaNYC? [Streets Blog] So, Who Put the Rat in Ratnerville? [No Land Grab] Three Muggings in Three Years, What Would You Do? [Eating for Brooklyn via Brownstoner] Your Kind of People Aren’t Welcome Here [Brooklyn Record] Proposed Extension […]

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We suspend any attitudes momentarily and give it up for the kids at PS 321 in Park Slope who did this little earth day walkathon for three green-oriented nonprofits, including Transportation Alternatives. This is a Street Films production and we found it on Streets Blog, of course.

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It’s been a busy day on the Atlantic Yards demolition–or shall we say, building self-demolition–front. This morning a parapet on the Ward Bakery building, which is being demolished by Forest City Ratner, collapsed onto the sidewalk and street below. Fortunately, no one was injured, although a number of cars were damaged. In addition, 350 people […]

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Curbed is reporting via a tip and digital photo that a chunk of Wards Bakery, which is being demolished by Forest City Ratner, collapsed on to Pacific Street within the last hour. No one was injured (except for several cars), but there is significant Fire Department and NYPD presence on the scene. Apparently a parapet […]

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The other day, protesters were out on Flatbush Avenue to speak out against the “premature demolition” of buildings in the Atlantic Yards footprint by Forest City Ratner. On Sunday, we gazed at the big lot at Bedford Avenue and N. 3rd Street in Williamsburg that is half empty and has had a half-demolished building for […]

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At least one Coney Island gag provision in a lease (though not the one that Thor Equities forced most tenants to sign as a condition of renewing their leases for the 2007 season) has been found illegal. The saga of the Coney Island Arcade is detailed in Time Out New York. Yesterday, Dianna Carlin (Lola […]

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Does your day begin and/or end with the F Train? The other day, the Kensington Brooklyn blog mentioned that F Train service kind of sucks and solicited opinions on same, noting that something called the Culver Viaduct Rehabilitation is due to begin later this year. In any case, ee’re certain that many people will be […]

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We were amused to be thumbing through the Open Space section of the PlaNYC 2030 document and to find the following verbiage on Page Six: Opened in 1936, then closed in 1984 due to the deterioration of its systems, McCarren Pool will finally be rebuilt as both an outdoor Olympic-size pool and a year-round recreation […]

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Those who ride the F or (God Bless You) the G train in South Brooklyn know the glories of the Smith-9th Street Station, which at about ten stories, is the highest station in the New York City system. And, if you don’t know what it is, and have glimpsed it, you’ve probably asked, “What the […]

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Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images. Neglected Story of 9/11 Debris Hitting Brooklyn [Center for the Study of Brooklyn] New Life in Park Plan for Old Spaces [NYT] Scaffolding Suggests Flatbush Avenue Demolitions Are Coming [AYR] Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Rezoning Certified [Brownstoner] Way to Go: Brooklyn Assem. Who Filled Clarence Norman’s […]

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First, the good news: This building at 219 Withers, which we’d last seen in its construction phase, turns out to look pretty nice with the landscaping out front. (Although it does have the same feel as all of Tahoe Development‘s Greenpoint and Williamsburg buildings.) The apartments themselves have humongous floor to ceiling windows. Now, the […]

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East Williamsburg, Brooklyn

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Today is GL’s first birthday. During our first year we posted 2,200 items, the first of which is pictured above. We hope we’ve made a small contribution toward adding to the flow of information in Brooklyn and to shedding some light on the things that we cover. You may agree with us on some issues […]

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What you’re looking at above is part of the Gowanus “Land Use Framework” map in which the neighborhood has been divided into “subareas.” Despite the civil tone of last week’s neighborhood planning session, there remains strong opposition in the community to allowing residential development along the canal. One of the battlegrounds is going to be […]

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Don’t look now, but Lola Staar‘s return to the boardwalk has prompted a bit of a controversy among the regulars at the Coney Island Message Board. Words like “sell out” are being used to suggest that Dianna Carlin (aka Lola) used the Save Coney Island protest to get her store back after she’d been evicted […]

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We saw an email yesterday asking the Sanitation Department to do a trash pickup at 2nd Street and the Gowanus Canal. This is because volunteers appear to have picked up 1,500 pounds of trash and debris (about 50 bags) during a volunteer cleanup on Sunday (4/22) that was part of the 8th Annual Gowanus Earth […]

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Regardless of how you feel about redevelopment plans for Coney Island, the Coney Island Development Corporation is going to play an important role in setting the framework with which Thor Equities and other developers must work. Along those lines, there are a couple of noteworthy things to report. 1) Lynn Kelly has been named president […]

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Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images. Did Someone with a Grievance Tear Down the Wall of Grievances? [No Land Grab] Ratner’s Brooklyn Tech Plan Was Hot Air [AYR] Elected Officials React to Congestion Pricing [Streets Blog] Brooklyn Has Nation’s Bloggiest Neighborhoods [NYP] Unlicensed Vehicles Story, Part II [Kensington Brooklyn] Multi-Car Families […]

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