This is St. Kilda jewelry which has just opened on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope between St. Mark’s Place and Prospect Place. It look like they have a niece selection of merchandise. Here’s hoping they can ride out the recession-depresssion squeezing wallets everyehere.

[Read more →]

Friends, when the rezoning stuff hits the fan in Canarsie, you know you are dealing with some serious stuff. Yesterday, City Planning announced plans to rezone that far off neighborhood and make some major changes to a 250 block area. The rezoning area is generally bounded Foster Avenue to the north, Fresh Creek Basin and […]

[Read more →]

[Click to enlarge and read more easily] The case of the controversial Toll Brothers Gowanus development, which was approved by Commmunity Board 6, has just gotten a bit curiouser. The firm had promised 130 affordable units, or about 30 percent of the housing to be built on the banks of Brooklyn’s Grand Canal. Only, CB6 […]

[Read more →]

[Click to enlarge to all its glory.] In theory, Gowanus could get very big and very crowded, if the parcels of land the city is planning to rezone for residential use are built upon. It’s a big if–given the credit meltdown and the hideousy polluted nature of some of the sites–but that’s what could happen […]

[Read more →]

While most of the attention is focused on Coney Island, Brighton Beach, which has seen its share of out-of-context development is up for a rezoning. About 50 blocks of the neighborhood with either be upzoned or downzoned, with the city preferring to dwell on protecting block where bungalows have been demolished to build some fairly […]

[Read more →]

The Toll Brothers application to get property rezoned so they can put up their condo development on the Gowanus Canal has already been approved by Commmunity Board 6. Today, the Brooklyn Borough President will be having a hearing on the plan as part of the ULURP process. Per a community email (and there are many […]

[Read more →]

Carroll Gardens residents have started a letter writing campaign to Borough President Marty Markowitz asking him to support an eight-story height limit for building along the entire length of the Gowanus Canal rather than the 12 stories in the “MX Waterfront South” District (above) that the current city plan is calling for. Here is the […]

[Read more →]

Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden visited Gowanus last night to talk about the status of the city’s plans to upzone 25 blocks of Gowanus to allow buildings up to 12 stories tall, but she surprised everyone by announcing that a Carroll Gardens downzoning proposals would be ready by June, 2009. Ms. Burden claimed to want […]

[Read more →]

City Planning Chair Amanda Burden is comming to Gowanus tonight for a forum hosted by Commmunity Board 6. The general topic is the status of the contentious rezoning of the neighborhood to allow higher density, high-rise development. Per an emial alert: An update by Commissioner Burden on the department’s land use activities related to the […]

[Read more →]

You know the city is planning to make some progress on its Gowanus rezoning proposal if City Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden is going to be coming to the neighborhood for a “forum” with residents. Here’s the lowdown: An informational update by Commissioner Burden on the department’s land use activities related to the Gowanus Canal […]

[Read more →]

[Photo courtesy of galvarez51/GL Flickr Pool] Yesterday, we noted some meetings coming up in Gowanus and Carroll Gardens about zoning and affordable housing. Well, there will be sessions in Sunset Park presented by South Brooklyn Accountable Development Initiative, which involves the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Center for Urban Pedagogy. There will be a session […]

[Read more →]

Please don’t close your eyes and go to sleep. Both of these are important subjects and there are some interesting meetings and opportunities to learn coming up. We’ve long believed that one of the reasons that development in Brooklyn has been running wild (and is often hideously out of context) is that no one pays […]

[Read more →]

This is something you don’t hear very often, but there’s a sense that the city’s rezoning proposal for Flatbush “gets it right.” During a recent meeting the Department of City Planning “received accolades from board members and area residents for reworking the plan to take into account neighborhood concerns.” Here’s the low down from on […]

[Read more →]

So, the slowing real estate market is now making rezoning property–say, from manufacturing to residential–more attractive to developers. “In the height of the market, a lot of developers just wanted to buy it, develop it and get out,” on real estate lawyer says. “A rezoning can take two to three years. Now is a good […]

[Read more →]

Five of nine developments in Carroll Gardens questioned by the community after the “narrow streets” zoning change was enacted last week have been hit with Stop Work Orders by the Department of Buildings. (The photo above is of 360 Smith Street before work was halted.) This is because they are not complete enough to be […]

[Read more →]

An effort to officially define a number of very narrow streets in Carroll Gardens as actually being narrow for zoning purposes received unanimous support from the City Council yesterday afternoon. The “Narrow Streets” Zoning Text Amendment had won wide political and community support. It changes obscure, yet critical, zoning language that had considered very narrow […]

[Read more →]

There is significant excitement in Carroll Gardens neighborhood circles today as the City Council is slated to vote on the “narrow streets” Zoning Text Amendment. The technical change will redefine very narrow neighborhood streets as being narrow for zoning purposes. They have been defined as “wide” because the front gardens of buildings were counted as […]

[Read more →]

The Carroll Gardens group called CORD, which formed around the contentious issue of the design of 360 Smith Street (now known as the Oliver House Condos) and went on to push for a broader downzoning of the neighborhood, must be in a good mood. Late yesterday, the group started circulating a “thank you” email for […]

[Read more →]

With the raucous Coney Island Scoping Hearing an amusing memory, it’s worth noting that it is still possible to submit written testimony about the Coney Island rezoning proposal. While are appropriate, the scoping process determines the study of the proposal that is done, so specific comments related to what the city should study in terms […]

[Read more →]

The “narrow streets” zoning text amendment that would redefine a number of narrow Carroll Gardens streets as actually being narrow for zoning purposes was passed by the City Planning Commission today by a unanimous vote. The measure would define the streets as 50 wide rather than the current 130 feet (which counts front gardens) and […]

[Read more →]

Within the city’s presentation prepared for the Coney Island Scoping Hearing on Tuesday night were some new renderings of a proposed Coney future, as well as new detailed maps and diagrams of what would go where. The raucous meeting ended up with the following headline in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: “Coney Plan Overwhelmingly Rejected at […]

[Read more →]

For those that haven’t had their fill of the circus of the Coney Island Scoping Meeting on Tuesday Night, here’s a vid of NY 1’s report that’s been posted to the YouTube:

[Read more →]

[Photo courtesy of GerritsenBeach.Net/flickr] Normally, “scoping hearings” are boring in the deadliest way. Not last night’s hearing about Coney Island rezoning. Not by a longshot. You expected differently when the Mermaid Queen had been on a hunger strike to publicize it and get people to attend? There was a large turnout and it was a […]

[Read more →]

[Photo courtesy of GerristensBeach.Net/flickr] The second Coney Island rezoning Scoping Meeting took place last night in front of a large crowd with testimony that ran toward performance art. An earlier meeting had been held, but the process has had to be redone, because the plan has been revised since then. Kinetic Carnival said the meeting […]

[Read more →]

As has been widely noted and is now on live webcam, the Queen of the Mermaid Parade is on a short hunger strike to draw attention to opposition to the city’s revised plan for Coney Island and to try to get a big turnout at the “scoping” meeting on Tuesday for it. The hunger strike […]

[Read more →]