Garage Plan for Heights Building Rears Its Head Again
Despite the firestorm of community opposition that greeted a proposal to build a car garage in the courtyard of Brooklyn Heights’ historic Riverside Apartments a couple years ago, the Brooklyn Eagle reports that the building’s owner is still keen on making the parking plan happen. Riverside’s owner, the Pinnacle Group, wants to build a 134-car,…
Despite the firestorm of community opposition that greeted a proposal to build a car garage in the courtyard of Brooklyn Heights’ historic Riverside Apartments a couple years ago, the Brooklyn Eagle reports that the building’s owner is still keen on making the parking plan happen. Riverside’s owner, the Pinnacle Group, wants to build a 134-car, two-level parking garage (one level would be underground) in the building’s courtyard at Joralemon Street and Columbia Place. Pinnacle hired a new architect this time round for the plans, which were presented to Community Board 2’s Land Use and Landmarks Committee last week. The committee voted unanimously against the proposal, which is now headed to the LPC for possible approval. Riverside tenants are opposing the would-be garage for a variety of reasons, including the notion—which Pinnacle denies—that their landlord wants to take the building condo.
Update: A representative for Pinnacle sent us a rendering of the current plan for the garage, above. An image of the old plan and building are on the jump.
Owner of Riverside Apartments Comes Back With New Plan [Brooklyn Eagle]
What’s Going on at Riverside Apartments? [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Architecture 101: The Riverside Apartments [Brownstoner] GMAP
Photo of Riverside Apartments by d.p.Hetteix; renderings from the Eagle.
I’m an architect who recently moved to the neighborhood from San Francisco. I was just walking by the building today with my wife (also an architect) and we were struck by the beauty of this building. This building is better than 99.99% of what is built today. To suggest that it be replaced with a modern structure with garages (in this neighborhood???) is just an astonishing comment. And I’m a person who believes in modern architecture and has committed my life to it. I’m truly stunned and depressed by your attitude, 12:47! Are you a real person, or a disney-esque villain?
My question is: what’s going on with the vacant ground-floor retail spaces in this building? That could be a nice little strip!
http://www.riversideapartmentsgarden.com
Parking is definitely needed. These dumps were built even before the automobile became commonplace in America! It’s a joke how so many people make a big deal about garbage that was built 100 years ago, for people who just came off the boat. These buildings are substandard firetraps, and should have been torn down years ago. Every so often you see one of these collapsing by themselves! When are people going to realize that living in a crap building like this is not being “trendy” or “cool”? Tear all these damn tenements down and build some beautiful, highly efficient, safe modern structures with garages. It’s been awhile since the people who lived in them tied their horses to their front gates.
Allow me to chime in as a former tenant here. These buildings and their tenants do not deserve to have their historic courtyard destroyed by an ill-conceived parking garage which will not benefit the majority of the tenants (most of whom don’t own cars). My windows looked out on the nearly-century-old oak trees which tower over the courtyard. I would have been devastated if those were destroyed, especially for others’ benefit (and to line the pockets of the absentee landlords).
Pinnacle Management is a faceless conglomerate that slumlords dozens of buildings in NYC and cares nothing for these buildings or their tenants. They have a growing file of complaints with the BBB (as I discovered when researching how to get my security deposit back). They would not care to beautify the currently neglected courtyard because it does not benefit them financially, yet their parking garage plan is obviously not thought out and would cause a number of the tenants to come eye-level with the cars of other (richer) BH residents. The tenants’ privacy woud be compromised once the garage was built, not to mention the construction noise during the buildout. It’s a bad plan, through and through.
I still don’t understand why anyone feels they need a car in Brooklyn Heights anyway… it’s the crossroads of the entire MTA network. Park your gas-guzzling luxury SUV in Long Island where it belongs. I don’t need to breathe in your fumes and neither do the residents of this historic building, who deserve to have a say in the project.
Reviewing some of the thoughtless banter tossed out in this discussion makes one suspect whether these contributors are perhaps not authentic brownstoners in the sense of actually owning a building but rather brownstoner wannabes. Given that the Riverside buildings may not be to your taste whether due to the 6-floor walkup, their Victorian roots or maybe just a preference for chocolate-colored plaster over red brick and to such an aesthetic, certainly subtle features such as the brick patterning and iron work would be lost, how would introducing the circulation of 135 cars thrown into the mix somehow make things better? How do the significantly high insurance premiums, garage parking fees [which is the sole impetus for this proposal] coupled with the absolute rarity of being able to drive your vehicle over 30 mph in these districts, unless you happen to get lucky on one of the socalled “express”ways very early on a Sunday morning, make keeping a car here attractive, let alone feasible? Why is it that energy measures favorable to a healthy environment are most often expressed in terms of their equivalence to taking x number of vehicles off the road? I get that cars are a necessary evil–they just don’t have that status in districts so well equipped with taxis, bus routes and subways and woefully short on green space. Dudes, you need a whole ‘nother planet to take care of your mess.
A neglected garden and parking garage is not any better than the neglected lot that is there now.
I was at the CB2 meeting (for something different) and heard the presentation and the impassioned objections from many, many tenants. It seems that the residents have been fighting with the landlord for years to address maintenance issues and so his garage plan, which is viewed by many to be a money making scheme comes as a slap in the face.
It is a fact that the landlord was ordered by landmarks, when he paved part of the garden, to restore the space to it’s original purpose and appearance. He apparently submitted fake photos to clear the violation.
There seems to be a consensus amongst the community board and landmarks that the parking would be cost prohibitive to the current tenants and that the landlord in effect is trying to take a garden space that he has neglected and altered and turn it into a public parking lot.
Then comes the concern about the wall that rises to mid window for some folks, and the fact that there is a narrow space between the building and the garage- not large enough for a fire engine but large enough to shelter street folks or to aid thieves. The plan also does not currently include a structural study of what would be involved in creating a garage with four feet of soil on it’s roof. The plan is to have huge mature trees that would start at a 10 inch trunk diameter. Then the issue of water, etc. . .
It is ill conceived.
Right on, U. Designer. This is one of the premier urban neighborhoods in the country.
If people want parking, they should move to New Jersey.
I oppose ths plan and don’t live there. You don’t need to live there, or to rent, you just need to consider the situation. Your need to park or to lord your real estate wealth over your neighbors is not a reason to trash a community . How about some facts? The majority of apts in Riverside are market rate. The majority of the tenants don’t have cars, nor will they use or want the garage. Many apts are rented to students who leave in a year or two. Then the owner can up the rent again! Who knows — maybe in a few years the rents willl be high enough for the pro-garage philistines out there to suddenly realize the value of the building and garden. Just because something is expensve doesn’t make it good–it just makes it cost more money. The Riverside is beautiful and important regardless of who lives there and what they pay for the priviledge of doing so.