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Foreclosure Auctions Set for 2 Big North Brooklyn Lots
Two large lots that at various points were set to be developed in Williamsburg and Bushwick will go up for auction on March 1st, according to Property Shark. The first is the 95,275-square-foot lot taking up the entire block of South 8th between Kent and Wythe avenues, 36-54 South 8th Street (pictured). Developer Issac Hager paid $42.5 million for the site in 2008, and building permits were renewed here as recently as last April. The lien for that one is $29,854,019. The second lot is at 1209 Dekalb Avenue, a 44,950-square-foot lot between Bushwick and Evergreen avenues. The DOB approved plans there in 2007 for a five-story, 126-unit build. There’s a comparatively modest lien of $10,716,077 on it. GMAP
02/13/2012 11:30 AM
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Empty Lot Snapped Up on St. Marks Place
The empty lot at 11 St. Marks Place, right off 3rd Avenue, was purchased recently for $1,450,000, according to public records. The land is zoned for residential but no plans have been filed with DOB yet. Luckily this block was included in the recent Boerum Hill downzoning so don’t expect anything too monstrous going up here! GMAP
02/10/2012 2:40 PM
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Thursday Blogwrap
Paul’s Daughter Scrubbed Clean of History [Lost City]
The Littleneck Dudes: Aaron Lefkove and Andy Curtin [Eater]
Knowledge and Power Prep Spared From Closure [BS Patch]
Cyclist Hit By Car Making Left Turn at Vanderbilt and Myrtle [FG Patch]
New Commercial Building at 231 Front Street (Vinegar Hill) [Dumbo NYC]
Troubled Fort Greene Condo-Turned-Rental Finds Buyer [The Real Deal]
Help Sustainable Flatbush with Composting at the Flatbush Reformed Church Garden [Ditmas Park Blog]
Photo by greenelent
02/09/2012 4:30 PM
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New Traffic Light Comes to Hall and Park
For Clinton Hill residents on their way home from Williamsburg or the BQE, Hall Street has always been a short cut in no small part because there was no light, only a stop sign, to get across Park Avenue. Well, those days are over. As of the end of January, there’s a new stoplight at the crossing. Evidently there were a number of accidents that happened with people pulling out across oncoming traffic on Park Avenue.
02/09/2012 12:00 PM
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The Insider: Apartment into Loft in Brooklyn Heights
Welcome to The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at interior design and renovation in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, a design journalist who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun & Profit. Find it here every Thursday at 11:30AM.
IN THE MID-’80s, a developer chopped up a former YMCA building in Brooklyn Heights, creating condominium apartments with dropped ceilings and sorry little galley kitchens. When a couple in the arts — she’s a fashion editor, he’s a screenwriter — bought a 1,344-square-foot duplex in the building a few years ago, they called on Brooklyn-based designer Elizabeth Roberts to help them realize the potential they knew was there.
Roberts removed walls, raised ceilings and doorways, and re-thought the uninspired staircase to the upper level, where three bedrooms were converted to a master bedroom and a home office (there’s a powder room on the lower level, a bath-and-a-half upstairs). Most strikingly, the kitchen area was opened up to bring in light and make the space more conducive to entertaining.
Fred Taverna of New York Interior Construction (212/251-0790) saw the project through. Total cost: approximately $300,000.
“When they purchased it, it was an apartment,” says Roberts. “Now it’s a loft.”
Photos: Sean Slattery
More, including ‘befores’ and construction shots, after the jump. (more…)
02/09/2012 11:30 AM
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MNS: New Development Prices Up in 2011
The Local has nicely uploaded the MNS 4th Quarter 2011 New Development Market Report market report to Scribd. Here’s the summary:
In Brooklyn, 2011 has fared better than 2010, with a peak median sales price in the third quarter of $575K, and a strong finish in the fourth quarter with a high median sales price per foot of $622/SF. Year-over-Year Brooklyn New Development Condominium sales price per foot numbers are up 8% ($622/SF this quarter versus $574/SF in 4Q10), and median sales prices are up 15% ($542K this quarter versus $471K in 4Q10).
The report also notes that sales inventory dropped 36% and sales dollar volume was down 35% from the 3rd to 4th quarter. Brooklyn Heights had the highest average price per square foot of $944 in the fourth quarter (driven largely by big sales at One Brooklyn Bridge Park), with The Edge taking that prize among individual developments with a whopping average of $1,142. Prospect Heights saw a big fall in prices, but that was largely due to a temporary pause in marketing at On Prospect Park due to a broker change-over.
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02/09/2012 9:00 AM
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Closing Bell: Bike Sharing Brain Storming
With the New York City Bike Share program set to launch this summer, now’s the time to decide wear the 600 stations (with 10,000 bikes) will be located around Manhattan and Brooklyn Most of the planning sessions seem to be aimed at Manhattan riders, but Brooklynites will their chance to participate in the process later this month. Community Board 2 will host a workshop on February 23 from 6 to 8 pm at 180 Remsen Street.
Photo by NYC DOT
02/08/2012 4:00 PM
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Will the Windsor Place Cafe Ever Open?
It’s been almost a year since the Windsor Terrace blog spotted signs of life in a long-vacant space in Windsor Terrace. When we passed by 199 Windsor Place on Sunday it didn’t look like the storefront was much further along, save for some plywood over one section. In fact, it looks a bit like the space has been split in two. Can area residents shed any light on the situation? Do tell. Speaking of the Windsor Terrace retail scene, did you notice that the former Lonelyville space (which closed in 2008) at 154 Prospect Park Southwest is for rent for $4,000 a month? GMAP
02/08/2012 2:00 PM
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Open and Shut
Columbia Street Waterfront
This week the blogosphere wondered, “Is the Columbia St. Waterfront the new Smith Street?” Brooklyn Paper points to the opening of Pok Pok, the coming Greenway and park, and new restaurants vying to move in. The neighborhood is still limited by its lack of transportation, construction, and geographic isolation. So what do you think? Meanwhile, the Columbia Street Post Office will be forced to close due to budget cuts, according to CG Patch.
Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens
Grub Street posts the menu for Arthur on Smith, the organic/local restaurant from Southfork Kitchen chef slated to open March 19th at 276 Smith Street. And Sweet Melissa closes at Court and Douglas after being in the neighborhood since 1998. Says PMFA: “Melissa’s will be missed by many.” A little further north in Brooklyn Heights, construction workers are combining the retail space at 214-216 Hicks Street – past home to Overtures and Dara Ettinger. No one’s leased out the larger space yet.
Park Slope
Owners of much-hyped restaurant Talde are opening another at the old Aunt Suzie’s place, says Park Slope Patch. The name and cuisine type has not yet been revealed. The owner of Prospect Perk is expanding to 253 Flatbush Avenue, the new spot will be called Hungry Ghost Cafe. They tell HPS, “It will be a little more upscale than Prospect Perk, with a full bakery in-house and lots of room to sit.” A burger bar is filling the old Oko Frozen Yogurt space at 152 5th Avenue, between Degraw and Douglass. And new Italian joint Feluccio opened at 364 Prospect Avenue.
Elsewhere
A roll-your-own-smokes place in Sheepshead Bay is being threatened by the city to close down. The White Castle on Willoughby has shuttered in Downtown Brooklyn. BHB wonders if it closed due to the recent arrival of Shake Shack. Greenpoint club Europa was temporarily shut down by the cops due to some previously violent incidents. And lawmakers are pushing to bring a summertime plaza to Third Avenue between 81st and 89th Streets in Bay Ridge.
Photo by Jay Woodworth
02/08/2012 11:30 AM
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Inside the New(ish) Brooklyn Bridge Park Offices
After a couple of years of camping out in a construction trailer, the folks in charge of building and operating Brooklyn Bridge Park finally moved into new offices in the old Building 50 at the corner of Furman and Joralemon Streets last November. Our poor photography skills probably don’t do it justice, but the million-dollar renovation of the 7,500-square-foot ground floor (which the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation shares with the Conservancy) created a really beautiful workspace–high ceilings, clean lines, modern but inviting at the same time. The two upper floors remain for the time being in their original state. We’ve provided lots o’ photos on the jump because the offices are not open to the public.
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02/08/2012 10:32 AM
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Downtown School Trying to Spurn P.S. 8′s Advances
In this town, everything comes back to real estate, even schools. Tensions can run particularly high when public and charter schools with strong track records and involved parents seek to expand by moving in on unused turf at schools where the student body has been shrinking. Just witness last year’s heated battle between the well-funded Arts & Letters and the less stable P.S. 20 in Fort Greene. A similar scenario is now playing out in Downtown Brooklyn, where P.S. 8, an elementary school in Brooklyn Heights which has enjoyed surging popularity over the last decade and recently completed a physical expansion of its own, is making a play to launch a middle school at the Westinghouse and Polytechnic High School on Tillary Street which is less than 80 percent full. (Great building, by the way. It was a Building of the Day last month.) According to the Brooklyn Eagle, more than 30 P.S. 8 parents turned out on Monday night to express support for the plan. Council Member Steve Levin was also there to speak in favor: “The expansion into a middle school will mean that students from P.S. 8 will be able to continue their education at a local, quality public school.” Levin is joined in his support of the expansion by State Senator Daniel Squadron and Assemblymember Joan Millman. Though everyone in the P.S. 8 crowd is saying the right things (we’re going to be good neighbors, this is not a take-over, etc.), parents of the vocational high school aren’t buying it. “I hear everyone talking about being a good neighbor,” said Khem Irby, first vice president of the District 13 Community Education Council. “A neighbor doesn’t live in your house.” She also warned that mixing middle school and high school students could be trouble: “High school students might be having sex in the hallways.” In addition to the obvious class and race tensions just barely below the surface, there’s also the conspiracy theory that city has been deliberately shrinking Westinghouse to make room for the P.S. 8 expansion.
P.S. 8 Middle School Plan Meets Westinghouse Resistance [Brooklyn Eagle]
02/08/2012 9:00 AM
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New Nightspot Coming to Wythe Avenue
One block at the northern end of Wythe Avenue is turning into quite the hotspot. First there was the Brooklyn Brewery at the northeast corner of North 11th and Wythe. Then came Brooklyn Bowl, mid-block on the east side of Wythe. The Wythe Hotel has been coming into focus at the northwest corner of North 11th and Wythe and should be opening in a few months. And now we hear that some sort of nightspot is under construction at the southwest corner of North 12th and Wythe, at 78 Wythe Avenue. A permit was issued in December to convert the 7,300-square-foot one-story industrial building into a 11,400-square-foot eating and drinking establishment with a penthouse and roof deck. As far as we can tell, the developer of this project is Jamie Wiseman, who did the rental building at 44 Berry Street just a block away. His firm, Cayuga Capital Management, describes its investment strategy as being “based on the acquisition, development and operation of deeply undervalued real estate assets in rapidly improving neighborhoods.” In this case, though, it does not look like they’ve actually acquired the building. GMAP
02/07/2012 2:01 PM
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Columbia Heights “Off-the-Radar Millionaires Row”
Following the recent sale of 212 Columbia Heights for $11 million (the second such eight-digit sale on the six-block stretch), The Daily News has declared the street the city’s “off-the-radar” Millionaires Row. (We guess that by “off-the-radar” they simply mean “not in Manhattan.”) In addition to being located in the neighborhood with the borough’s priciest brownstones in general, this block has the distinction of offering direct views of Lower Manhattan–or at least the houses on the west side of the street offer such views out their backsides. “Brooklyn was always considered a poor step child to Manhattan, but now it is really coming into its own,” said the guy who owned Number 212 until selling it for $8.9 million in 2005. That observation’s only, what, six or seven years too late?
It’s Brooklyn’s $10 million Street [NY Daily News]
02/07/2012 12:00 PM
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Cyclone Renovation Underway in Coney Island
We haven’t seen the Cyclone renovation documented anywhere else so even though this video’s almost a month old we thought it was worth sharing. Flickr user theoccasionalfag has a set of photos up from just a couple of weeks ago if you want to delve further. According to this post from Amusement Today, Zamperla has hired Great Coasters International, Inc. to do the rehab. Everyone’s shooting for the famous coaster to be back in business by April 1, 2012.
02/07/2012 11:04 AM
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Walkabout: Madame Jones comes to Brooklyn
When I was in college, I wrote an ambitious paper about black people in Classical music. At the time, Leontyne Price, Grace Bumbry and Shirley Verrett were among the best known of a small group of classically trained singers who were changing the face of opera in the 1970’s, and I wanted to know about them, and become one of them. These ladies, as well as the other men and women who were in the profession, had to overcome skepticism, criticism on both sides of the racial divide, and out and out racism from many sources in order to become the great divas they were (and are.) But they never let the “isms” stop them from succeeding, and today are legends, and the inspirations for later singers like Jessye Norman, who would later inspire younger singers like me, and so on down the generational line. They, in turn, gave credit to earlier ladies like Marian Anderson, the first black singer at the Metropolitan Opera. They also gave their props to some amazing figures of the late 19th century, African American divas who took the Western world by storm. Brooklyn was an important stop in any diva’s tour schedule, so in this month of Black History, let’s celebrate the remarkable career of one of the greats, Madame Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, known internationally as “the Black Patti.” (more…)
02/07/2012 10:30 AM
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Fort Greene Park Renovation a Go!
As The Local reported yesterday, a $2.55 million renovation of Fort Greene Park has been green lighted and is set to begin in the next three months or so. The news was delivered by Marty Maher, the Parks Department’s Brooklyn chief of staff, at last week’s Fort Greene Park Conservancy board meeting. The plan calls for work to begin on the public bathroom later this spring with extensive landscaping and drainage work to follow in the fall. It’s expected that the work will address much, but not all, of the flooding issues that have plagued the park in recent years. There will be a chance for community input regarding future park improvements at a meeting at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church on February 29th at 6 p.m.
Park Rehab Means Good-Bye To ‘Fort Greene Falls [NYT/Local]
Photo by Ed Brydon
02/07/2012 9:00 AM
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New Renderings for Bush Terminal Pier Park
Remember the Bush Terminal Pier Park? Public space project was first announced in 2005, when the city, state and federal government teamed up on a $36 million rehab of the polluted former port between 43rd and 51st Streets in Sunset Park. Here’s a description from the EDC’s Sunset Park Vision Plan, which was announced in July 2009:
The conceptual design for the open space improvements includes the construction of two multi-use baseball and soccer fields, viewing areas for restored and remediated tidal pools, a naturalized preserve area, and future space for a mini-golf and batting cage concession. The design also includes administrative and operational space designed in collaboration with the Department of Parks & Recreation. In keeping with the City’s policy to encourage sustainable practices, several environmentally-conscious design elements are being considered, including on-site stormwater retention, wind turbines, solar power, the reuse of existing on- and off-site materials such as granite blocks from the existing street, and the use of shipping containers as building materials.
This weekend an excited Sunset Park resident sent in a photo from the top of 47th Street of the public space starting to take shape. It’s a little hard for us to distinguish what’s going on, but luckily the tipster also steered to a set of renderings from Adrian Smith Landscape Architecture that helps flesh out where this whole thing is headed.
Big-Money Clean-Up for Bush Terminal Piers [Brownstoner]
Sunset Park Waterfront Vision Plan Announced [Brownstoner]
ETAs on Some of Brooklyn’s Waterfront Projects [Brownstoner]
02/06/2012 10:30 AM
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Affordable Nabes The Times Forgot?
As part of the feedback The Times got from readers on its article So You’re Priced Out. Now What?, a couple of readers wrote in to promote the affordable merits of their neighborhoods.
Not sure why Midwood in Brooklyn is constantly overlooked and undervalued. Home to Brooklyn College, one of the best schools in the CUNY system, and DiFara Pizza, this still largely Jewish (with huge influx of Russians and Ukrainians now) neighborhood is ridiculously safe and loaded with inexpensive shopping and services (I get a weekly massage for $50/hr at a fabulous Chinese spa). It could do with more restaurants and many are Kosher so closed on Fridays and Saturdays, but over all, great big houses at affordable prices (my husband and I bought a four-bedroom, 2,000-sq.-ft. town home for $550,000 two years ago) and near the subways (B/Q). – Sandi, Brooklyn
And one more…
Bushwick is still very underrated. The industrial area oof the Morgan L train gets most of the attention, but farther into the neighborhood (off the Dekalb, Mytle-Wyckoff and Halsey L train stops, and odd the Knickerbocker and Central M train stops), there are a lot of really beautiful streets of limestone brick houses that have a wonderful, family-oriented vibe. And of course there are new galleries and cafes constantly popping up farther into Bushwick. And it’s still more affordable than the “affordable” neighborhoods listed here! – hey hey, Bushwick, N.Y.
What other names were left out of the story?
Photo of Midwood by Matthew Chamberlain
02/06/2012 9:30 AM
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Boerum Hillers Not Psyched About House of D Reopening
When it reopens next week, the Brooklyn House of Detention on Atlantic will have one thing to boast over other jails: Proximity to $3 million townhouses. “It seems strange to have a jail in downtown Brooklyn,” a pizza chef on nearby Livingston Street told Crain’s. “I never would have agreed to buy this house for all this money had I known it was opening,” one woman who paid $3.4 million last summer for a house on State Street told The Times. “We took a gamble and lost on this neighborhood.” While some of the higher end restaurants don’t think the visitors to the 759-bed jail are going to do much for their businesses, the manager of the New St. Claire diner across the street is bullish. And while safety surely is a concern for some, like most contentious issues in New York City, this one also comes back to parking. The warden, though, has promised to limit the improper parking of official vehicles.
As Neighborhood Thrives, No Warm Welcome for a Reopened Jail [NY Times]
Sadly for Some, Brooklyn Gets Its Jail Back [Crain's]
02/06/2012 9:00 AM
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Monday Links
New York Sues 3 Big Banks Over Mortgage Database [NY Times]
Deal Is Closer for a U.S. Plan on Mortgage Relief [NY Times]
In Brooklyn and Manhattan, Owl Watchers May Have Their Day [NY Times]
Taking Responsibility for a Roof Leak [NY Times]
A Writer’s Leisurely Sunday in Fort Greene [NY Times]
Fighting For Drivers in Brooklyn Traffic Court [NY Times]
Four Occupy Williamsburg Protesters Indicted [NY Post]
4 Hurt in As Floor Caves In at Slave Theater Rave [NY Post]
Teens Busted for Break-In and Rape in Brownsville [NY Times]
New ‘Cash for Gold’ Shop Irks Slopers [Brooklyn Paper]
A New Type of Pizza for Midwood [Brooklyn Daily]
Flatbush Gardens Tangles With Obama Administration [Business Week]
Brooklyn Biz Groups Lobby for NYU’s Downtown Expansion [NYU Local]
Photo by Teri Tynes
02/06/2012 8:31 AM
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bklnite
Feb 09, 2012 | 11:02 AM