Hello my peoples. My name is Eric Pugh and I am a resident of Ingersoll houses. It’s located in the heart of Brooklyn right downtown. Downtown Brooklyn, a place where you get all your affordable shopping goods. “My Downtown,” is what I used to call it when I was young. Downtown used to be a very beautiful area.
Well, at least it used to be before the rezoning. Now where there was a neighborhood super market, local drug store, laundramats, your favorite discount store and your friendly neighborhood grocery store there stands nothing but a vacant lot.
My community was ripped away from me. It not only has an effect on me but to the residents of my community. Like our elderly. It was more convenient for our elderly to shop right across the street from where they live. Now that our stores are torn down they now have to walk three blocks up a hill just to get a little bit of shopping goods. So now not only do they have to go further than what they were used to, they also have to deal with the pain of heavy pushing or lifting. It’s just too much labor for them. My neighborhood only has one store now, on Myrtle Avenue and Prince Street, and they charge much more than they should.
So now our residents have to walk three long blocks just to get one item and to me, that’s just crazy. It’s as if downtown had its very own Katrina and the only difference it that, instead of water we are drowning from developers and this is a current that’s just to hard to swim with. The effect that was left on “My Downtown” is just heart breaking. How can you take away what yesterday owned and destroy the giving promises of tomorrow?
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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With so much cooking in downtown Brooklyn it’s hard to know where to begin, but the current tug-of-war over the future of Admirals’ Row speaks volumes about the cognitive dissonance Brooklyn is going through, painfully.
Here’s what’s going on, as explained well in the Daily News: The Navy Yard Development Corporation is looking to develop a supermarket on the site of 10 decrepit mansions that once housed top officers of the Navy. Historic preservationists have sought, without success, to get the structures landmarked. Now the National Guard, which owns the buildings, has issued a report concluding that the buildings could be restored — at a price of nearly $20 million in all.
Now, we’re all familiar with the usual development scenario in New York City, as we’ll amply cover it on this site: Big developer proposes a project, government greases the way with rezoning and subsidies, neighbors rally to block the project. At first blush that looks like what we’ve got here. But. Brooklynites are struggling right now with the deep contradictions of the current path of downtown development, and it’ll make the Admiral’s Row saga a fascinating one to follow.
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