Real Local Florist

Superior Florist, Sixth Avenue 

Emerging from a hideous Christmas shopping vortex into the dwindling Flower District.  Exhaling.

Links: Libraries, Sewage & Back Door Deals

A Merry Kleinfeld Christmas

Council Approves Heights Library Sale  (Brooklyn Paper)

And the use of civic neglect to justify sell-outs to developers?

“The reality is our public libraries and underfunded and have been for decades,” said Councilman David Greenfield (D–Borough Park), the land-use committee’s head honcho. “Libraries across Brooklyn are crumbling and they need the resource to pay for it and cannot expect those resources to fall from the sky.”

And from Council Member Brad Lander?

Defending Libraries ‏@DefendLibraries  10h10 hours ago

Councilman @BradLander: Not likely to get library funding to prevent sales this decade. In this time of surplus?

Thanks Mr. Lander. That's certainly something to look forward to.  This is really a very sad moment in the history of the New York public library systems, and a sad day for democracy.  Like everything else in the city these days, the library system is now in thrall to profit-led interests.

Take Developers' Free Land Offer for Sewage Tanks, Gowanus Groups Tell City (DNAinfo)

New Yorkers Demand City End 'Back Door Deals,' Hold Developers Accountable (DNAinfo)

Fourth Ave.

Those empty storefronts on Park Place

Two years after the eviction of El Gran Castillo de Jagua, along with other fine, small businesses on Park Place, what's the status of the properties they were thrown out of?  In September I noticed that the Gran Castillo building, at the corner of Flatbush & Park, was available for lease.  As of today, it's still sitting empty, and still available.  Today I noticed that the four small, empty business spaces on Park, which once included Benoit barbershop, and the Little Miss Muffin 'N' Her Stuffin' bakery, are for sale for $4,200,000, marketed as a condo development.  Waste & greed all around.

As I noted in September, the restaurant, bakery and barbershop all managed to find new spaces, with El Gran Castillo around the corner on Flatbush, Little Miss Muffin on Washington Avenue, & Benoit's in Prospect Lefferts, which was good news, but these are all development hotspots too.  El Gran Castillo's new home at 355 Flatbush is still listed for sale,

Earlier : Out of the Frying Pan (and links back)

Overcrowded

Bullied by a newcomer - 7th Street

Warehouse Demolition at Third & 23rd

Demolition has been approved for a City-owned three-story industrial building at 738 Third Avenue (23rd/24th).  738, registered as Anchor Stevedoring Company in the 1990s, sits at the edge of the former Tebo Yacht Basin, which was taken over by Todd Shipyards around 1916.  In recent years the warehouse building appears to have been used for light manufacturing, and the lot was also used for NYPD parking.  The Lafarge cement works sit farther back on the pier abutting the property, and porn store Video Xcitement, where a store worker was murdered back in 2011, is next door on the avenue at 740.

If you can manage it, and don't mind the isolation, access to the water down here offers up beautiful views.

Next door to 738 in March, 2015. Winters were snowy once!

2013

Earlier: Third & 23rd

New Fitness for Old: Crunch Jumps into the Mix

(Updated 12/18)

If there's one thing we can't seem to get enough of round here it's fitness facilities. Damn it, we must get leaner & stronger! Fortunately our prayers continue to be answered, as another gym chain is headed our way.  This time it's a Crunch, coming in sometime soon at 555 Fifth (15th Street), and it's actually replacing smaller fitness businesses. The corner building, which most recently has housed 555 Deli, the Bikram yoga studio, Tina Beauty Nails & Sky Discount Store, and the Aikido of Park Slope, was sold in October to Fifth & Fifteenth LLC (c/o Botsaris Morris Realty Group) for $5,250,000, & an agreement has been settled with Crunch LLC.  Plans have been approved for a "commercial white box interior renovation." The 555 deli and the nail salon are shuttered, though Sky is still open for now.  The Aikido is reopening at 630 Sackett Street on January 8, and the Bikram studio will be closed by the end of the year.  555 Fifth also used to house a no-frills bodybuilding gym, which closed in the summer of 2011.  On a bodybuilding message board, comments refer to the alleged lurid history of an earlier owner, but it seems to have had a serious reputation in the bodybuilding world - "a badass gyn for getting work done."





The new arrivals are distinctly more generic, and arrive in an area with no shortage of studios already in place. Last month we learned that an iloveKickBoxing chain was coming in right across the avenue at 540 Fifth, adding to the martial arts studios and gyms already in the vicinity (Amerikick, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, United Tae Kwan Do, Harbor Fitness), along with a couple of nearby YMCAs, and a budget-boasting Retro Fitness studio newly arrived next to the now-closed 12th Street Pathmark.

If anyone can give me any information about 555's early history I'd be delighted to share it.

1/24/17: For links to some later posts concerning Crunch, including CB6 approval in March, 2016, read here.

Park

Revisiting the Brooklyn HOLC Map (1938)

Home Owners' Loan Corporation Map, 1938 
(NARA II RG 195 Entry 39 Folder “Brooklyn (Kings Co.)” Box 58) (Urban Oasis)

A couple of years ago I spent time exploring the 1938 Home Owners' Loan Corporation map of Brooklyn, which divided the borough's housing stock by graded levels of lending "security."  An infamous redlining map.  I was looking at it again today. I should have put the map right there in the earlier post, but instead I only linked to it.  Here it is now.  You can enlarge it & examine it in a better resolution right here.

Update (2018).  As you can see, the links to the HOLC maps now appear to be broken.  If anyone can suggest new ones, I'd be grateful.

Sunday

65 degrees of sunshine. In Washington Park dogs were posing for their Santa shots, and over on 7th the queue snaked back round Second for the Morbid Anatomy Holiday Flea. On Fifth a woman was carrying an umbrella for the shade, and a man off Sixth was puffing and sweating while putting up strings of outdoor Christmas lights. It was a slow day for tree sales - they slumped at corners, disregarded.  In a backyard planter we found strawberries.

Eastern Greetings

Second

Links

Council Bill Seeks to Make Construction Less Perilous in New York City (NY Times)
Comptroller expresses concern on Heights Library deal (Brooklyn Eagle)
No big surprise: Levin votes in favor of Heights library sale (Brooklyn Paper)
Next Steps for The Mayor's Controversial Zoning Proposals (Gotham Gazette)

Cats

Over on 11th Street

Better days, in 2013.  147, sitting well below street level, & towered over by its neighbors


Demolition plans have been filed for fire-damaged 147 11th.  It's in dire shape, so its fate is hardly a surprise.

Real Estate Monday
Looking Back
Chronicling America
The Wooden House

Update on 316 12th

Last week I noted the impending demolition and redevelopment of 316 12th Street.  The name of the owner-developer Omri B, was not familiar to me, but NY YIMBY shows the full name as Omri Bar-Mashiah, who is listed online as a founder of Minerva Capital Holdings LLC.  Bar-Mashiah appears to have been quite active this year, and is in the process of developing two properties in Bed Stuy. Plans for four-story buildings on Quincy Street & Jefferson Avenue have yet to be approved. Bar-Mashiah is also the owner of another Quincy Street property, no. 95, where just two months ago a botched expansion project caused a partial building collapse.  Next-door 97 was also structurally compromised.

Following the collapse, the Department of Buildings demanded 95 and 97 be demolished, and the houses touching on either side be temporarily vacated. Because the illegal construction work has rendered the ground beneath the buildings unstable, demolition has to be done by hand from a cherry picker. Hearings are pending for eight violations against Bar-Mashiah and his contractor Top Notch Construction related to the illegal work that caused the collapse. (Gothamist)

One Shade of Grey

23rd Street

Looks like this Chrysler New Yorker's just got back from China, but maybe it's suffering from the effects of area roadwork?

A tell-tale hint of its original color 

Links

City's decision on Brooklyn Heights Library sale set for Thursday (Brooklyn Eagle)

Michael D.D. White, co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, said via email that a compromise deal would not be acceptable. “A little more money or slightly more (probably underground) space for the shrunken library would not change the fact that this developer (not the high bidder) is not even paying ‘tear-down’ value for the property,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle. 
White says it would cost $120 million “to replace the library that was fully upgraded and substantially expanded not very long ago.” 
Advocates are especially concerned, he said, because Johnson has said that the sale is being viewed as a model for other transactions not only within BPL, but also the Queens and the New York Public Library systems.

Correction: I confirmed with Council Member Steve Levin's office that tomorrow's vote will be by the Land Use Committee.  The full and binding City Council vote will take place on Wednesday, December 16, at 1:30 p.m.  However, the outcome of Levin's committee vote tomorrow will almost certainly decide the the library's fate.





Brooklyn Flavors Captures the Scents of Brooklyn in Bath Bombs (Brooklyn Magazine)

“People come in looking for their neighborhood,” Sylvester says. “They love the scents. They even tell me that ‘you hit the mark. It’s really what the neighborhood would smell like.’ Some people get upset because we don’t have their neighborhood. Everyone wants a piece of Brooklyn.”

Manhattan's Little Syria (Ephemeral New York)

Goodnight House

273 14th (center right)

The year rushes towards its conclusion, but there's still time to squeeze in more wooden house demolition. 273 14th, between Fifth & Sixth, just got its marching orders.  The house was acquired in October for $1,800,000 by Unicorn Properties.  Unicorn made an appearance on the apparently-now-defunct wewanttobuyyourhouse.tumblr.com  (an offshoot of the now-apparently-defunct wyckoffheights.org blog), a collection of realtor mail solicitations.  Ah yes, so many familiar names! Plans for a new building have yet to be approved, but the rodent bait signs are in place.

Two doors down from 273, 269 is also set for demolition.

Balmy

December 7:  the last of this season's backyard tomatoes