Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Via YIMBY: current view in Greenpoint, house at left A 7/5/16 post by New York YIMBY, Landmarks Approves Restoration Of 218 Guernsey Street, Greenpoint , discusses the 1870-era home in Greenpoint's historic district. It includes some great architecture and some buildings that have been modified but are worth saving, because they convey the neighborhood's fabric (and thus were included in the district when it was designated in 1982). The building at issue is the modest, two-story building at left in the photo at right. About blight Note the rather unbecoming wall covering and modest size of the building, which is apparently 28 feet high . It may be built out to less than 60% of the allowable height--remember, the arbitrary blight designation with Atlantic Yards--given that  R6B zoning , at least for new buildings, requires a base height before set back between 30 and 40 feet, and the maximum height is 50 feet. The Floor Area Ratio, or FAR, allows a lot coverage of...

Billboard (a Barclays Center partner , remember) on 3/2/16 offered Inside the Sustainable, Green Rebirth of the Nassau Coliseum , noting the region's reliance on cars and parking: It all makes Long Island an unlikely setting for a project on the cutting edge of sustainable design. But both economics and rising concern for the environment are guiding the green rebuilding of Nassau Coliseum, says Rebecca D’Eloia, senior vp development, sports and entertainment for Forest City Ratner Companies, the project’s developer. (The same firm constructed the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which opened in 2012.) In the downtown Brooklyn offices of Forest City, D’Eloia spreads out plans for the coliseum on a conference table and points to a steel grid that will support the striking new external “fins” chosen for the arena by Manhattan-based SHoP Architects (which also designed the exterior of the Barclays Center). The raw material of steel “is almost all recycled,” she says, with the fins ma...

NYT Styles, 6/15/14 It was a night, it seems, of selective memories. On June 11, when the Municipal Art Society (MAS) awarded the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal, its highest honor, to Forest City Ratner executive chairman Bruce Ratner and CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin, the company's project were seen in a rosy glow. The gala helped the organization raise $1 million at the glitzy event venue 583 Park Avenue,  according to  the chatty real estate business publication Bisnow. The same night, an event at the more rugged Brooklyn Lyceum, sponsored by the "appalled" Historic Districts Council, didn't raise money, but raised questions--about the Atlantic Yards project, about the city's civic culture (and MAS's role), and about better ways to do development. The latter event--which attracted about 80 people--featured a showing of the documentary Battle for Brooklyn , dated but still vital, and a panel discussion in which I participated. The key line from the...

In the latest issue of n+1 , attorney Andrew Jacobs offers an intriguing take on Atlantic Yards, titled " Berman ’s Children" ( subscribers only), explaining how the legal doctrine that enabled  the state power of eminent domain--and the not-so-transparent agency overseeing the project--also brought us the Prospect Heights Historic District, and, of course, the earlier historic districts in the radius of the development site, thus creating enduring tensions from an expansion of state power. "Efforts to designate the Prospect Heights Historic District began in 2006 and came to fruition in the summer of 2009," Jacobs writes. "The Yards, in some sense, created the District." Jacobs finds a thread of connection in Suleiman Osman's The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn , who explains how postwar, post-industrial New York faced both "urban modernism and antimodern, romantic urbanism." The former, including eminent domain, relied on expe...

Sarah Williams Goldhagen's essay on the historic preservation movement in yesterday's New York Times, Death by Nostalgia , explains why historic preservation is under attack: the world of urban planning is tilted toward developers. She writes: Now, nearly a half-century later, New York is home to the most high-profile attack on the movement yet: in a recent exhibition at the New Museum, the architect Rem Koolhaas accused preservationists of aimlessly cherry-picking the past; of destroying people’s complex sense of urban evolution; and, most damningly, of bedding down with private developers to create gentrified urban theme parks. Some of Mr. Koolhaas’s criticisms are on target — but his analysis is wildly off-base. It’s not preservation that’s at fault, but rather the weakness, and often absence, of other, complementary tools to manage urban development, like urban planning offices and professional, institutionalized design review boards, which advise planners on decisions abou...

Will New York grow by a million people by 2030, the premise of Mayor Mike Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 sustainability effort? The latest statistics, growth of 2.1% over the past decade , suggest it's increasingly unlikely, though Bloomberg and others contest the numbers. Still, the PlaNYC update should at least acknowledge the new numbers--but it hasn't, as Michael D. D. White points out in his Noticing New York blog : Not only have the population projections not been changed in the plan... the old numbers remain firmly anchored in the plan. A history of misplaced predictions That got me thinking about the insightful keynote address given March 5 by historian, critic, and much-lauded guide Francis Morrone at the annual conference of the Historic Districts Council (HDC). One theme of his address: over the past 40 years, the span of HDC's existence, many predictions have been way off. And though Morrone didn't mention PlaNYC, anyone listening would have another reason ...

Someone asked me if Freddy's Bar & Backroom , fated for demolition after a court approved eminent domain, could be landmarked, and the answer is, of course, no: it's not a building of particularly architectural merit inside or out and, if the terra cotta Ward Bakery couldn't be landmarked , Freddy's sure can't. But Freddy's, which in its Backroom last night held an opening for an art retrospective over 13 years, does deserve a spot--anyone can enter it--in the Census of Places that Matter, the very democratic list published as part of the Place Matters project created by the cultural organization City Lore and the Municipal Art Society, a design/planning organization. (Photos by Steve Soblick. Most of the pieces in the collection are not related to Freddy's, but these two--a photo by Dan Sagarin at left and a mixed-media piece by Steve de Seve--do portray Freddy's.) Origins of the Census The project came out of a 1997 conference called History Happe...

The Prospect Heights Historic District, subject of a hearing last October, has been OK'd by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the largest landmark district created since 1990. The map below is courtesy of photographer Tracy Collins. Note how two fingers of row houses would bookend the southeast block of the Atlantic Yards site, slated to be a staging area for arena construction, and also a massive parking lot for workers and visitors, ultimately with 2070 spaces. Blight and the Ward Bakery The Atlantic Yards site, according to the Empire State Development Corporation, is blighted. I wonder how many blighted areas are abutted by historic districts. NoLandGrab's Eric McClure points to the loss of the Ward Bakery--mention of which unsettled the LPC last October--on that southeast block, and the role of the Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) and the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council (PHNDC) in advocating for the historic district. NoLandGrab : While ...

So, where’s the place of historic preservation on the city’s agenda? Not very high, according to speakers at the Historic Districts Council’s (HDC) annual conference March 7 , and according to a report released around the same time. The lack of attention to historic preservation has many reasons, including mayoral control of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), and a fractured preservation movement. There were suggestions for new forms of advocacy and reframing of the issues. The HDC invited all five “major” declared mayoral candidates to speak to them, and the two leaders, incumbent Mayor Mike Bloomberg and City Comptroller Bill Thompson, declined to attend. Maybe they calculated there was little profit in trying to convince a crowd of perhaps 100 who were not disposed to them in the first place. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who since has apparently put his candidacy on hold, did come, but delivered a variant of a stump speech. More on point were longshot Democratic candidate Tony Av...

Around the time of the Historic District Council’s annual conference March 7 , the results of the Preservation Vision: Planning for the Future of Preservation ( PDF ) in New York City project were released by Minerva Partners. The report offered much wise advice, but its message was ominous: The preservation community now lacks the capacity to address needs, opportunities, and trends that will be increasingly central to quality of life for New York City residents. Even if that capacity existed, it is a profession without refined and prioritized ideas about its biggest challenges or how they might be overcome most efficiently. Many of these shortcomings stem from a lack of leadership and acrimonious relationships within the field which undermine the development of shared goals, a clear message and a collective voice with which to engage citywide planning and decision-making processes. Needs are many things: new research to support arguments in favor of preservation, new tools beyond th...

At the 15th annual Historic Districts Council (HDC) conference, Communities and Cornices: Preservation in a Political World , held March 7, Dick Dadey, executive director of the Citizens Union (CU), offered some general observations on effective advocacy. The lessons apply not only for historic preservationists, but also, to my mind, offer context regarding the Atlantic Yards battle. (Here's his PowerPoint. ) From LGBT to CU Dadey described his background in activism, first in LGBT issues, then as a lobbyist on issues like homelessness, health care, housing, and reproductive rights. He then became involved in the Brooklyn Heights Association, the longstanding civic group in his neighborhood. “I wanted to be connected to the city in which I lived.” He became executive director of the Parks Council, then, for the last five years, executive director of the 112-year-old CU, a longstanding watchdog organization, with its focus on political reform, campaign finance, ethics, and transpa...