The Army National Guard held its first consulting meeting yesterday on the transfer of the Admiral’s Row houses to the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation. National Guard spokesman Rick Breitenfeldt said more than 30 groups were represented. “We have groups that want to save the buildings and we have groups that want to demolish the buildings and build a supermarket,” he said. Four or five meetings are expected to follow “to really come up with a list of alternatives … like things that can be done with the property.” He declined to elaborate on each group’s stance, but said, unsurprisingly, “I did hear in the meeting from a lot of city [officials] that, ‘If we’re required to restore and fix up these buildings, the city isn’t prepared to put any money behind doing that, nor is the State of New York … so please look at funding it through private sources.” The city expected to obtain the properties under a previous agreement that allowed them to tear the homes down. A parking lot and light industrial space is also planned.

But alas, it looks like the National Guard’s sentiments have a decent chance of changing since that 1996 agreement. They released a report last year estimating the 10 quarters, some more dilapidated than others, could be restored for (an amended) $19.6 million or rebuilt for $24.9 million, acknowledging those estimates still assumed the buildings would be reused as homes, and excluded the cost of abatement and conversion to commercial use. The long report—now available on the National Guard’s new Admiral’s Row website—determined the quarters retained enough structural integrity to make them eligible for the state and national registers of historic places. The state’s preservation specialist issued a letter of concurrence; that the old agreement fails to address the new findings, basically rendering it moot. “We hope that appropriate alternatives will be considered including adaptive reuse and rehabilitation of the historic building and the site (including walls, fences and landscape features). We are not opposed to the redevelopment of the site,” it read, “but it is critical that the alternatives analysis seriously consider how these nationally significant buildings can be creatively incorporated into the overall plan.” Conveniently, nearby Pratt architecture students came up with just that. Some have suggested Fairway Market in Red Hook, which occupies the ground floor of a large old industrial building, is proof that these homes could also be refashioned into a market. Navy Yard Development Corporation president Andrew Kimball has said he’d like to bring something like Fairway to this supermarket-starved end of town—in the ground floor of a new industrial building—but he’s not willing to budget stringing together a bunch of loose, dilapidated houses. As a side note, the quaint six-acre property also has tennis courts and a tennis house with rules still posted, a park, and a timber shed.

As the cliche goes, beauty (and worth) is in the eye of the beholder. So, here’s one particularly amazing photo set to judge for yourself.
Admiral’s Row website [National Guard]
Pratt Professors Seek To Reconcile Competing Plans for Admiral’s Row [Brooklyn Eagle]
Officers’ Row Supermarket Not Happening Anytime Soon [Brownstoner]
Admiral’s Row fixup to cost $20M [Daily News]
Photo by incandenza.