How one feels about this depends on how one feels about old shipyards and, say, graving docks that have been filled in versus huge parking lots. We will note that Ikea opted not build a parking garage at its Red Hook site, preferring the cheaper solution of paving over acres of prime waterfront land and filling in a working ship repair facility that could have been saved. Regardless, the Red Hook Waterfront Parking Lot is coming along quite nicely, with acres of blacktop being laid down and light poles starting to sprout. Also, as one can see below, they’ve repainted the big cranes that used to be used to repair ships from blue to gray. When all is said and done, however, the color of the (now decorative) cranes is a detail.

[Map from the Landmarks Commission via Dumbo NYC]

The hearing on creating a Dumbo Historic District takes place before the Landmarks Preservation Commission today. It’s an important step on the road to creating a Dumbo Historic District, which is widely expected to occur. Dumbo NYC has very thorough coverage of the issue as does the Dumbo Neighborhood Association, which has been one of the major advocates of creating the district.

“When my broker said ‘Park Slope is the next Chelsea,’ and I said ‘but what about the Park Slope Restaurant?’ she waved her and dismissively and said ‘the days of that place and the cheesy dollar stores that go along with it are numbered.’ I hope so. I’m growing impatient.”–Gawker

The city held another hearing yesterday on its plans to seize property for development–including the Underground Railroad homes on Duffield Street–via eminent domain. The repeat hearing was held because the city had to withdraw its original findings because it “mistakenly” failed to enter a blight study into the public record during original an original hearing held in May. In addition to the controversial seizure and planned demolition of homes believed to have been part of the Underground Railroad, the city would also evict 40 families living in rent-stabilized apartments, business with 100 employees, an arts venue and a parking lot. In all, 21 properties are involved on three different blocks.

The epicenter of the controversy is the block on Duffield Street where the Underground Railroad homes would be leveled for an underground garage for 700 cars and a street-level park and plaza known as Willoughby Square. Several major hotels are planned for the block including a 500-room Aloft Hotel and Sheraton and a 22-story hotel called the Indigo. The massive Albee Square development with at least 900 units of housing would also be nearby.

Of the hearing, Sarah Ryley wrote in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that:

City Councilwoman Letitia James said after the hearing, which she called “just procedural in nature,” that she suspected the blight study was created recently as the result of a legal challenge to first ruling in favor of eminent domain. “I did not see a blighted study in 2003,” she said, referring to when City Council was given the opportunity to consider the Downtown Brooklyn plan, including the use of eminent domain to realize that vision.

The new public comment period on the use of eminent domain runs through November 5.

Links:
Brooklyn redevelopment faces Underground Railroad conflict [amNY]
City Gives Downtown Brooklyn Eminent Domain Hearing Another Try [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]

The City Council approved a major rezoning of Bedford-Stuyvesant yesterday. The rezone covers 206 blocks. It downzones brownstone residential blocks and upzones the commercial spine on Fulton Street. The rezone covers the southern portion of Bed-Stuy, bounded by Quincy Street and Saratoga, Atlantic and Classon Avenues. A rezone for the northern part of the neighborhood is also planned.

Brooklinks is a selection of Brooklyn-related information and images:

• Traffic Congestion Mitigation Hearings This Week in Brooklyn [Brit in Brooklyn]
• Construction Worker Falls to Death in Brooklyn [Sun]
• Duffield St. Hotel Site Sells for $9.5M [Brownstoner]
• New Holiday Inn Coming to Downtown Brooklyn [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]
• BP Candidate Bill de Blasio’s Record Considered [AYR]
• Remembering the A&S Junior Angler Fishing Contest [Icky]
• Ask a Greenpointer: The Homeless Question, Part II [New York Shitty]
• Foodtown Renovation Begins [Kensington Brooklyn]
• Harvest Fest in Bay Ridge [Right in Bay Ridge]
• Circus at the Library [Brooklynometry]
• Correcting the Correction About Bike Seizures in the Burg [Streets Blog]
• Tour of the Shaker House Condo [Bed-Stuy Blog]

Joy: Muni-Meters that take credit cards are slowly coming to Brooklyn. There was a major installation of them in Bensonhurst last week, along the 86th Street shopping street between Bay 14gth Street and 21st Avenue. The Daily News reports 58 muni-meters that take credit cards took the place of 330 traditional meters. Also, there are 39 muni-meters on Atlantic Ave. between Hicks St. and Fourth Ave. and 13 on Bay Parkway between 63rd and 72nd Sts.

[Photo via Daily News]

It’s not the most dramatically damaged sign we’ve ever seen. Not even the most tagged up bus sign we’ve seen in Brooklyn. Nonetheless, this is the first one we’ve seen sitting on the sidewalk. We found it on Lorimer Street, not far from McCarren Pool and Park.

Check out some pics and a rundown of the Great Pupkin in Fort Greene. Some of the favorites include a Chi dressed as the devil, a dog in PJ with slippers and a Boston Terrier dressed as the G Train.–Clinton Hill Blog

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Check out all the empty shelves at the Smith Street Rite-Aid. You would have thought the reviled chain drug store would improve after switch over from being an Eckerd, but this?–Pardon Me for Asking

Park Slope, Brooklyn

Fun with Miss Heather (and Mr. Heather) on a weekend. It begins with hunger and ends (sort of) with Mr. H doing the old heave on Bedford Ave.–New York Shitty

Rarely has a construction site been so open and so dangerous so many times as 199-211 N. 9th Street, 208 N. 10th Street and 489 Driggs. For this reason we are giving it a Patricia Lancaster Award for Open Door Excellence. (This is not to be confused with the Bedford Avenue Door of Death, which hasn’t left open consistently enough to qualify, even though it presents and even more dramatic, unregulated public safety threat.) We’ve already named this a Construction Site Du Jour, not once, but twice. Even better, we identified it as a public safety menace. Yesterday, the fence around the demolition site had a huge gap on N. 10th Street and was open in two places on N. 9th Street and in one place on Driggs Avenue. You can judge for yourself be the photos of the site to which the public has full access as to whether the project is deserving of a Patty. We believe that it is. By the way, the building that will go here will be a seven-story structure with 170 units.

…And the winner is…525 Union Avenue in Williamsburg. We are rolling out a new feature today called the Patricia Lancaster Award, aka The Patty. It is named after the Commissioner of the Department of Buildings. We won’t be handing out a lot of Patties, but will be saving them for sites that have truly impressed us, both in terms of the high level of achievement that they show in their respective fields (Sunday work, potential threat to public safety) and in the lack of action by the Department of Buildings itself. (The Gold Standard Patty Award building isn’t even one we’ve personally covered. It’s that atrocious situation in Sheepshead Bay where 18 different inspections failed to note that a building’s foundation hadn’t been finished and that the building shouldn’t even have been under construction.) We digress, however. Our first Patty winner is 525 Union Avenue, which gets the nod for its perseverance in doing work on Sunday. Rare, in fact, is the Sunday on which we have not found work going on at 525 Union (examples include this, this, this, this, this, this and this.) DOB’s website shows that one complaint about Sunday work was filed on June 15 and that an inspector showed up on August 12, a Sunday, and found no problem. (We were out of town on that particular Sunday, so we can’t say one way or the other.) For those reasons and more, 525 Union gets a Patricia Lancaster Lifetime Achievement Award for Sunday Work.

The priapic Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower has finally been set free of the scaffolding and netting that have surrounded it for a year. As of yesterday morning, however, the clock wasn’t telling time properly.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting tomorrow (10/30) is going to feature a long agenda of designations and discussion. Among the two significant topics are the proposed Dumbo Historic District and the Eberhard Faber Historic District in Greenpoint. The Dumbo subject matter is an initial hearing. Eberhard Faber, however, is expected to be designated. The “Eberhard Faber District” includes many, although not all, of the buildings of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory in Greenpoint. (Some of the properties are already being developed. The WPA writes:

The Eberhard Faber Historic District will sit side by side with the larger Greenpoint Historic District and the Astral Apartments, and individual landmark. The former is comprised largely of 19th-century residential buildings for the managers and owners of Greenpoint’s factories and businesses. The latter was constructed by Charles Pratt to house the workers of his Astral Oil Works. All in all, the three designations encompasses factories, businesses, houses of worship and housing – forming a very unique view of a close-knit 19th-century community.

Given how much Brooklyn history has been bulldozed or otherwise destroyed in the last few years, it is alway gratifying to see landmark protection advancing.

Related Post:
Greenpoint’s Pencil Up for Landmarking

[Images courtesy of WPA]

City Council Member Bill de Blasio made it official on Sunday: He is running for Brooklyn Borough President. Mr. de Blasio was widely expected to run. He joins Council Member Charles Barron in the race. Others, including Council Member Dominic Recchia are also expected to enter the race to replace Marty Markowitz. Mr. Markowitz, in turn, is expected to seek another office. Mr. de Blasio is barred from seeking another Council term because of term limits and Mr. Markowitz is barred from another term as Borough President. Mr. de Blasio was elected to the City Council in 2001. He was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2000 and served in the Dinkins Administration.

de Blasio has been raising his profile in the borough this year. He made the work of architect Robert Scarano an issue in the context of the 360 Smith Street development, calling on the state to strip Mr. Scarano of his certification and has organized “town hall” meetings in Carroll Gardens. He has also sponsored an electronics recycling measure that would be a model nationally. Mr. de Blasio has held a series of meetings with Brooklyn bloggers and online journalists to discuss his position on issues.

During a meeting last month at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope, Mr. de Blasio answered questions ranging from rezoning Carroll Gardens to his support of Atlantic Yards. At the time, he said he was still “looking” into a run for Borough President. “A lot could be done with that position to try to bring an approach to development that would mediate these issues,” he said of the Borough presidency and quality of life issues related to construction and development.

“I think the world has changed a lot since the day Marty came into office,” he said. “It feels like it was decades ago. The next borough presidents is going to deal with increasing challenges.”

Do you experience a crowded G Train? When? What station? Is it toward Court Square or Smith-9th? How crowded is it? Take our survey. We want to know.–Save the G

Hotel Le Bleu’s sister hotel, Le Jolie, on Meeker Avenue in an almost under the BQE location that on the fringes Williamsburg, is almost ready for action. There’s no solid word on when the hotel will be open and it doesn’t even have a website yet. But, the curtains are in the windows. A big address decal and decal that indicates Le Jolie is Smoke Free have been added to the front door. A big dumpster is in the front parking lot to cart off debris. No word on what the abandoned former gas station next door will be once the property is sold, but it should be an interesting topic of conversation among the parents of Williamsburg residents who stay at Le Jolie. We apologize for calling Le Jolie a “Hot Sheets for Hipsters” kind of place way back when we thought it was going to be a generic place rather than a $200-$300 a night property.

There’s another hearing today on the use of eminent domain in Downtown Brooklyn, including the taking of the Underground Railroad House on Duffield Street that advocates believe should be preserved. The hearings were announced very quietly, in a small ad in the New York Post on October 17, and Duffield Street Underground blog says that owners of the buildings on Duffield Street weren’t even notified. The hearing is taking place because the Department of Housing Preservation and Development withdrew its original eminent domain findings earlier this month. Opponents of the seizure of the Duffield Street buildings and of their demolition are taking the opportunity to hold a press conference at 9:30 AM, before the 10:00 AM hearing at City Tech Auditorium, which is located at Jay Street and Tillary in Downtown Brooklyn. The press event will include Congresswoman Yvette Clark, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, City Council Members Charles Barron and Letitia James as well as “over 50 community members, preservationists and Black historians.” Here’s a bit from the press release we got in on our email:

As a result of legal challenges by Downtown Brooklyn advocates, the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development withdrew its eminent domain findings for Downtown Brooklyn earlier this month. The City’s withdrawal was an acknowledgment that it had no basis in the record for its use of eminent domain. This abuse of the powers of eminent domain would have proceeded if the City hadn’t been sued…HPD announced the new hearing in a small ad in the NY Post on October 17, 2007, yet they scheduled this new hearing without notifying the owners of the condemned properties.

The full press release is available at Duffield Street Underground and at No Land Grab.

What if they ran a bus to Manhattan through the Battery Tunnel while the Smith-9th Street Station is closed? Plus, some other off-the-wall ideas.–Cap’n Transit Rides Again

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images:

• Marine Park Golf Course May Be Shut Down Over…Uh…Problems [NYDN]
• Four Teens Shot, One Fatally, in Brownsville [NYP]
• Greenpoint Health Issues Not as Bad as You Think [Brooklyn Paper]
• Old Sign Sighted on Atlantic Avenue [Lost City]
• How to Float a Canoe on Prospect Park West a Fall Sunday [Brooklynometry]
• Weekly Coney Island Hoopla Links [Kinetic Carnival]
• How to Find an Apartment in Greenpoint [11222]
• Horrendous Accident on Abermarle [Kensington Brooklyn]
• Marco Polo Take Out Taking Over Fratelli’s Space on Court [Lost City]
• Halloween Bungalow [Brit in Brooklyn]
• Haunted-Looking House [Clinton Hill Blog]

That big film shoot in Prospect Heights at the end of last week? Here’s a photo of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino outside the 78th Precinct on Sixth Avenue.–People