The Eminent Domain

Growing Pains (Columbia Spectator)

High Rise Condos Divide West Harlem Residents (Columbia Spectator)

Manhattanville Expansion Raises Questions About Aesthetics (Columbia Spectator)

Harlem on the Line (The Indypendent)

A New Way to Kill a Community: Nets’ Ratner, Jay-Z, Barclay’s Bank in $5 Billion Hip-Hop Lawsuit (Chicago Sports Review)

Downturn! Big D’Town project hits the brakes (The Brooklyn Paper)

B’klyn is Making Chain-ge (New York Post)

Promise of ‘new’ school proves false (New York Daily News)

The Fort Greene Association met Monday night to discuss, among other matters, the controversy erupting over the grand but decrepit historic houses on Admirals’ Row, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard… and members think the solution might have a lot to do with freshly baked bread.

Check out last week’s New York Times City Section for the story on the 10 crumbling buildings on Admirals’ Row, which once housed high-ranking officers but now stand vacant. The city wants to purchase the structures from the National Guard and demolish them to make room for a grocery store that would serve and employ local residents, especially those from the nearby Farragut Houses. Historical preservationists, like those who make up the FGA, want the city to grant the 150-year old buildings landmark status and restore them — a project that, according to the Guard, could cost as much as $20 million.

At the meeting Monday night, FGA member Paul Palazzo suggested that the restoration of the houses would be a boon to the community, bringing in profits from tourism that could be used to improve other areas of the neighborhood. “We have a valuable historical asset that can be turned into cash!” he said. Palazzo, well aware that the majority of community members are in favor of the plan to build a grocery store on the site, assured his audience “we can have our cake and eat it too.” (The phrase comes straight from a December post by Brownstoner, which slammed David Yassky, Tish James, and other elected officials for contending that the pricey preservation of the buildings would kill any hope for a supermarket.)

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The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods) is sponsoring a workshop by the Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development to further the community based planning process for the area around the Vanderbilt rail yards. The area is currently proposed to house the Atlantic Yards development but with the global credit crisis there is a very strong possibility that project will never happen.

Community members and elected officials will participate.

Date/Time: Saturday, March 1, 2008, 10 am to 2 pm

Location: St. Cyril’s Belarusian Cathedral
                 401 Atlantic Avenue (at Bond Street)
                 Brooklyn, NY 11217

RSVP: Hunter College CCPD
             212-650-3328
             ccpd@hunter.cuny.edu

Background Information: What if our community was given a voice in planning redevelopment over and around the Vanderbilt rail yards?  What’s your vision for our neighborhood’s future?

The original UNITY Plan, the community-created alternative to Forest City Ratner’s “Atlantic Yards” project, covered only the publicly owned Vanderbilt rail yards.

FCR has since taken control of and blighted or torn down many properties around the rail yards. But now the financing for “Atlantic Yards” is in doubt, even according to the developer – the bond financing for the arena and the affordable housing may not be
feasible! What happens next?

Join your neighbors, elected officials and expert planners for a public workshop devoted to creating a community plan for the entire area – now that the global credit crisis threatens to scuttle “Atlantic Yards.”

Contact Information:
Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods
201 Dekalb Avenue
Brooklyn, NY  11205
www.cbrooklynneighborhoods.homestead.com, cbrooklynneighborhoods@hotmail.com

Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development
212-650-3328
ccpd@hunter.cuny.edu

The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, Inc. is a coalition of community groups formed to provide a community voice in the scoping and review of the Environmental Impact process as it pertains to the development of the Vanderbilt Yards in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. All block associations, church, community and business groups regardless of their position toward any proposed development are invited to join CBN and are  encouraged to attend and participate in CBN’s bi-monthly meetings. A calendar and all CBN documents can be found at www.cbrooklynneighborhoods.homestead.com.

The Fort Greene Association in conjunction with the Fort Greene Park Conservancy is pleased to announce the plans for the Centennial Celebration of the Fort Greene Park Prison Ships Martyrs Monument. Also on the agenda the FGA will be showcasing alternate designs for the adaptive reuse of Admiral’s Row which includes plans for new retail and community space in conjunction with the preservation of these historic structures.

Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, 85 So. Oxford Street, Fort Greene
Meeting starts at 7:30 P.M. Refreshments served from 7:00 P.M.

http://historicfortgreene.org/

City of Water: A Short Documentary about the Future of New York’s Waterfront

Screening and panel discussion. CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, Recital Hall. Free; no reservations accepted. Sponsored by Gotham Center and Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. For more information: www.gothamcenter.org or 212-817- 847.

Department of City Planning presentation on Sunset Park zoning study.
Community Board 7, 4201 4th Ave, 6:30 p.m. Please RSVP: 718-854-0003 or communityboard7@yahoo.com

Divisions Over Expansion Intensify Among Manhattanville Groups (Columbia Spectator)

Columbia Closes Real Estate Deal for Displaced Residents (Columbia Spectator)

City’s Sweeping Rezoning Plan for 125th Street Has Many in Harlem Concerned (New York Times)

Harlem Up in Arms, Again (The Real Deal)

Green Arts Complex Neighbor to New Brooklyn Nets Arena (Plenty Magazine)

City Planning: Fourth Avenue a “Missed Opportunity” (Streetsblog)

Plans for Ground-Floor Retail at Brooklyn House of Detention Floated at Meeting (New York Daily News)

Carrion to Meet with Armory Group (Norwood News)

Well, they’re talking. As the Daily News reports today, Councilmember Hiram Monserrate is meeting with Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Lieber to discuss the NYC Economic Development Corporation’s redevelopment plans for Willets Point. Monserrate, responding to appeals from housing groups (especially Queens for Affordable Housing and its members) and unions (via the Central Labor Council), has told the Mayor’s office that he won’t back the City’s proposal, which has to go through the City Council as part of the Land Use Review Process, unless it includes affordable housing, aid for existing businesses, and “livable wage” jobs (that’s the CLC’s preferred term).

Monserrate doesn’t sit on the committees that will vote on the Willets Point redevelopment plan, but typically Council votes on land use defer to local members’ wishes, and Willets Point is in his Queens district. As Monserrate made clear in a Feb. 8 letter he sent to his 50 fellow councilmembers, he’s especially distressed at the plan’s lack of specifics on many key questions of public interest, especially exactly how the City intends to help workers whose businesses will be displaced and how much affordable housing will be included among the project’s thousands of apartments.

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Development watchers should pay close attention to what happens over the next few months in Willets Point, Queens, where the New York City Economic Development Corporation wants to demolish a hardscrabble haven for auto-repair shops and other modest industrial-service businesses, building in their place a convention center, hotel, housing, retail, and other components of a sparkling new neighborhood, to be constructed by a single developer yet to be selected.

That project is about to go through the City’s land use review process, and a number of community organizations — including Asian Americans for Equality, Queens Community House and ACORN — are looking to bargain for affordable housing, well-paying jobs, pedestrian access and other benefits from the development. The groups brought workers in Willets Point and residents of surrounding neighborhoods, including Corona, Flushing and East Elmhurst, together for a series of brainstorming sessions, whose recommendations are compiled in a new report (careful — that’s a PDF).

Meta-disclosure: The sessions and report were facilitated by the Pratt Center for Community Development, which sponsors this website as an independent news source on development in New York City. I’m mentioning the Willets Point project here because groups all over the city should watch it carefully: it’s poised to be perhaps the greatest test yet of the extent to which neighborhood groups will be able to influence a major development project. The Daily News picked up the story today, and as ULURP proceeds — especially as the transformation plan for Willets Point heads toward the City Council — there will be a lot to discuss about how much the public can and should expect when a neighborhood goes through an extreme makeover.

Credit Market Puts Massive Myrtle Avenue Project On Hold (Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

Catsamatidis “Taking a Hard Look” at 162 Myrtle Project (Brownstoner) 

Ethics Inquiry Postpones NYU Merger With Polytechnic (New York Times)

Brooklyn Family Sitting on $100M in Property, Air Rights (New York Sun)

Markowitz Dreams of Atlantic Yards (New York Observer)

Kingsbridge Road Gets a Cleanup (Norwood News)

Whether Community Likes It Or Not, Hotel Coming (Norwood News)

Harlem Residents Split Over Development on Fredrick Douglass (Columbia Spectator)

Night Out in Manhattanville Highlights Changing Atmosphere (Columbia Spectator)