Reply With QuoteThere's way too much affordable housing in this plan: http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categor..._id=5&id=17036
That's what makes a multi-story deck unacceptable. As long as you provide ground floor retail, the rest is a styling exercise; but nothing can redeem a garage with ground floor parking.Originally Posted by ramvid01
A simple rule: no ground level off-street parking.
too much affordable housing in domino
There's way too much affordable housing in this plan: http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categor..._id=5&id=17036
sorry - got cut off
Anyways, continuing the last post (not sure what happened to the rest of the text) the affordable housing should be reduced and the money gained should be spent on better public schools in Williamsburg. Given the population influx, we should be building schools there, not affordable units.
I agree with you. As someone who has invested in Williamsburg it needs more public services period, ie, schools, public transportation, etc...
Affordable housing is great and needed but many of the current developments in Williamsburg have included way too much affordable housing and the area lacks services that those living in affordable housing need.
New Development on S8 and Wythe
Can anybody tell me what is going up on the South West Corner of South 8th and Wythe? (Or direct me to somewhere I could find out?) I've known for years that I would eventually lose my view of downtown, now it looks like it's about to happen...
Thanks!
If you google map 470 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn 11211, you'll see where I'm talking about... the site spans the entire block between Wythe and Kent along South 8th
http://www.vosizneias.com/2007/12/wi...ac-hagers.html
Low-income housing for Hasidim. I'm not sure how that is legal, what with housing discrimination laws and all...
Exactly ^ what's up with that?
Discrimanatory housing -- and with 37 occupants per unit
Thanks so much for letting me know, except that is exactly the answer I was NOT looking for... I'd rather a glass tower hide my view of the river than those ugly Hassidic boxes with their barred windows... ugh.
Yeah, from reading that article I have a feeling it will be ugly, too.
Brick Fedder boxes.
Anyway, they should also have or the city's zoning laws should require that all new residentials in that area need to have ground floor retail. Before when it was mostly industrial, you didn't need services but now that they're making many of those areas residentials, people are going to need them.
Shortsightedness.
While Broadway seems to be the dividing line between Hasidic Williamsburg and hipster Williamsburg, with all the high end condos, restaurants, stores and bars edging ever further south, I am very suprised the developer chose to build low income housing for hasidics.
That lot, directly across from Schaefer's Landing, has stunning views of lower Manhattan, downtown Brooklyn and the river.
Kent Avenue tower
By kim+jeffrey
City Evacuates 11-Story Building in Brooklyn,
Citing Safety
NY TIMES
By BRUCE LAMBERT
January 21, 2008
An estimated 150 people had to relocate when city officials evacuated an 11-story factory building in Brooklyn on Sunday night, citing illegal loft conversions and fire safety violations involving a matzo bakery in the basement.
The city also shut an adjoining four-story factory building, which had been converted to a Hasidic school and catering service.
The loft building, a blocklong concrete structure converted from a pasta factory years ago, is at 475 Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg. The smaller building is at 32 Division Street.
Firefighters and buildings inspectors gave tenants a midnight deadline to leave. The American Red Cross was on hand offering hotel lodging for the night.
“People have been living here for 10 years, so why, all of a sudden on the coldest day of the winter, the night before a holiday, are we being asked to leave?” said Yuri Sivo, 48, a screenwriter, who said he had moved there last fall.
The local city councilman, David Yassky, called Mr. Sivo’s complaint “a fair question.” He said he “would like to see every option exhausted before putting people out on the street in 16-degree weather.” But he acknowledged that some violations at the loft building constituted “a firetrap.”
The hazards, city officials said, included the unauthorized basement bakery, with piles of coal, wood, empty cardboard boxes and large containers of combustible grain. Other violations, they said, included blocked exits, cracked windows, and unauthorized alterations.
The adjoining building was cited for inoperable sprinklers, cracks in the exterior wall and unauthorized alterations.
A man who answered the phone at the loft building’s management office, Sheila Properties, did not give his name and declined to comment beyond saying the city was responsible for the evacuation.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Bet you that the city will have the developer turn the place into condos or hell even knock the building down.
It simple artists don't have the money that office workers and the well healed have. So pull the rug out from under them and turn the place into condos.
For Evacuated Building’s Tenants, an Uncertain Future
Gabriele Stabile for The New York Times
A mover took a box from a loft at 475 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn on Monday. More than 200 tenants live and work there.
By DARYL KHAN
Published: January 22, 2008
To artists, photographers and writers, it is known as the “kibbutz” — a pock-marked pasta factory converted into a commune of creative types.
Gabriele Stabile for The New York Times
The building, a onetime factory.
Gabriele Stabile for The New York Times
Residents met to discuss the evacuation ordered after flammable materials were found.
It sits at the river’s edge in Brooklyn, between warehouses, idle factories and riverside industries in Williamsburg, a neighborhood emblematic of the economic success of gentrification as well as its character-flattening dark side. But on Monday, it was the site of a government-ordered evacuation.
“It’s weird seeing your home turned into a disaster area,” said Max Dickstein, a writer and editor for amNew York, who has lived in the building for a year and a half. He stood next to the entrance, where a sign taped to the doors read, “American Red Cross Disaster Relief.”
The day before, the Fire Department designated the building, at 475 Kent Avenue, a fire hazard after its owner, Nachman Brach, was said to have had flammable materials in a makeshift matzo bakery in the basement. That led to the evacuation, and to concerns by tenants as to whether they would be able to return soon — or ever — because of questions about the long-term use of the building for apartments.
Tenants, some of whom had lived at 475 Kent for nearly a decade, scrambled to haul whatever belongings they could out of their lofts from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, before the doors were shut. The residents get another chance to move items during the same period Tuesday. After that, they will be allowed to return on a case-by-case basis.
They bottlenecked the one freight elevator in the building trying to meet what many described as an impossible deadline. Inside, signs were haphazardly taped to tenants’ doors. One read, “We have left. Thanks.” A sad face had been drawn beneath the sign. Another read, “Do Not Break Open the Door Please.”
More than 200 tenants live and work in the building, which tenants described as a small town stacked 11 stories high, despite its being zoned exclusively for commercial use. A massive abstract painting hung on a 10th-floor wall.
The fourth-floor hallway looked like a photo gallery.
Late in the afternoon, one tenant, Lai Ling Jew, 41, held an impromptu meeting.
“We’re trying to figure out how to organize ourselves as tenants to get to the bottom of what’s going on here,” she said. “We love our homes. This is a vibrant community we created. People look to New York as the most creative city, and the city is pushing us to the edges.”
The meeting lasted past 4 p.m., in defiance of the deadline for the doors to be closed. Signs of confusion and sadness punctuated the frigid day. One tenant, Betsy Kelleher, said she had fought for years to get the lofts legally converted into apartments. She said it was suspicious that the evacuation came weeks before a court decision that could have made the building rent-controlled.
“They want to clean everyone out and then convert them into expensive condos,” she said.
Calls to Mr. Brach’s management office, Sheila Properties, went unanswered on Monday. Reached on his cellphone, Mr. Brach hung up.
Rob Swainston, who operates S11 Press from his 10th-floor studio, was one of a number of tenants whose livelihood was put in jeopardy. “I found out yesterday that (a) I was unemployed, and (b) homeless,” he said. “Bang. Just like that. Thank you.”
Mr. Dickstein left with good memories and apprehension about the future.
“This is a fantastic place,” he said. “It’s hurtful to see it described as a flammable matzo factory instead of a community.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
(Calls to Mr. Brach’s management office, Sheila Properties, went unanswered on Monday. Reached on his cellphone, Mr. Brach hung up.)
Typical. When desperate people need some answers.
Run away from the problem.
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