A Last-Ditch Effort to Save Admiral's Row

As someone who actually knows alot of the intimate details of this project, I can say that there is no political favor. The author of the letter is just a paranoid conspiracy theorist who assumes that there must be some favor otherwise why would Bloomberg do this. What he doesn't understand is that these buildings are basically one stiff wind away from falling down on their own. I've been inside these buildings - you can still see how beautiful they once were, but you can also see how far gone they are. The cost to renovate them would be astronomical, and the Navy Yard and City have decided to dedicate their limited preservation funds towards other historic buildings in the Navy Yard which are more "savable".

Posted by: ella at February 14, 2007 10:32 AM

Anon 11:08 - what you're saying is basically just an out and out lie. I have been to the community board meetings about this issue and have also been at other meetings involving the residents of the public housing across the street. The large majority of these residents want the supermarket and at one meeting I was at, actually applauded when the supermarket idea was announced. I'm sure you can find one or two public housing residents who are against, but it's just dishonest to claim that all of the residents don't want this supermarket.

And for those of you concerned about a Walmart or some other type of big box, you should look at the size of the site. It's 6 acres, and the Navy Yard's proposal is to use 3 of those acres to develop industrial buildings. That leaves 3 acres for retail development. That is nowhere near enough space to house a Walmart (which usually sits on 8-10 acre lots). So even if they wanted a Walmart (which they don't) it wouldn't fit.
At a community board meeting last year, someone from the Navy Yard said that, while they haven't chosen a tenant yet, they've had initial conversations with Pathmark, Shoprite and Stop & Shop. That should give you some idea of the direction they are heading.

Posted by: ella at February 14, 2007 11:34 AM

Anon 11:33 - No. The only details that are still intact are the moldings (which are nice, but did not blow me away - there are plenty of nicer moldings in thousands of brownstones in brooklyn) and the stair bannisters and rails (although many of those are in poor conditions. All of the fireplaces have been removed (by scavengers, I'm assuming). Much of the wood structure is half-colloapsed. Many floor boards are to weak to stand on. Many of the houses have large holes in the roof, so the interiors have been subject to the elements for over a decade of winters.
Until recently, there were actually some interesting plaster medallions around the lighting fixtures in the public rooms, but over the past several years they have started to fall off and break. If you look up Admirals Row on flikr, I think someone actually had some good photos of the interior - including the medallions.

Posted by: ella at February 14, 2007 12:04 PM

All of you people who are trying to say that it's not worth getting rid of all that history in order to get a supermarket are missing the main point. All that history has already been gotten rid of. It was destroyed bit by bit over the past 10-20 years by the army corps of engineer when they refused to maintain these buildings. It's what preservationists call demolition by neglect. While the City is actually going to clear the site, they are not really demolishing these houses - they are already demolished in all but name. SO your choice is between a pile of rubble that used to be historic houses, or a supermaket on a site that used to contain historic houses. But the option of keeping those houses is gone. And of you who are upset about that should've tried to do something over the past 20 years while the Army corps of engineers let it happen. If you want to blame someone, blame the Army corps, not the City. The City is trying to make the most of a bad situation.

Posted by: ella at February 14, 2007 1:44 PM

OK Crown Hieghts Proud, here's an analyses for you. It would cost around $500/Sf to renovate those buildings. Without going through a whole spreadsheet, you would have to rent out the space at a rent of around $55/SF in order for that to pencil out. That's more expensive than an office building in Downtown Brooklyn (which has mass transit access, unlike Admirals Row) and even more expensive than all but the top of the line in Lower Manhattan. Who is going to pay that much for this site? No one, that's who.

What you ignore is the fact that the City's budget is a zero-sum game. If the City spends money on Admirals Row, it has to take that money from some other place in the City budget. While the City may want to generally save Admirals Row, the preservation of AR is not worth the kinds of services that the City would have to give up in order to do it.

Posted by: ella at February 14, 2007 1:57 PM

Nope - married.

CHP - All of your ideas are interesting, but ultimately they are all pipe dreams. Realistically speaking there's a 1% chance of any of those ideas panning out.

ANd neo grec - in general I am not opposed to combining new construction with historic (some preservationists hate it an refer to it as facadomy or facadism) but in this case, I don't think you'd wind up with a functional and attractive building. It's been looked at.

Posted by: Ella at February 14, 2007 4:55 PM

Nice try, but wrong. I'm not a community board member. I've got nothing invested in this. I just get frustrated by know it alls who think that everyone is government is either incompetent, corrupt or unimaginative. Some of the most moral, intelligent and imaginative people I know work in City governemnt (as did I earlyier in my career). It bugs me when people who don't know what they're talking about disparage those who do. And as for margaret mead, yes, that's a very nice turn of phrase but it doesn't make CHP's proposals any more pie in the sky. If CHP tells me that he's a developer who's actually used those strategies in the past and managed to fund a project using those sources, I'd be less dubious. But I suspect he's got no experience with development and he's just pontificating about funding sources that he's heard someone mentioned in some magazine article and has no idea how those sources would actually play out in the real world, whichas I'm sure you know Bx2Bklyn, can be swampy ground.

Posted by: ella at February 14, 2007 7:06 PM

One big flaw in your theory there Anon 9:45 - The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp is a mission based non profit corporation. They do not act because of greed, because it's not like they make a profit. Any money they make gets put back into the facility. Just a little history lesson for y'all. When the Navy turned the yard over to the City it was in crap shape. In the 1990's the city almost had to close down the whole yard because the place was literally falling apart. For the past 10 years or so the Navy Yard has been investing around $10 Million a year in the facility. That money has gone into replacing roads, replacing water sewer and electric infrastructure, and even into restoring some of the other historic buildings in the Yard. Even after investing all this money, there is still almost $100 million in deferred maintenance to make up. So if the Yard is trying to maximize their profits on Admirals Row it's not because of greed, it's to allow them to further their mission. Which by the way is to provide cheap space to over 200 companies that provide over 5,000 blue collar jobs to the working class population in NYC.

That being said the big problem with all these comments is that you assume that the Navy Yard hasn't looked into these alternate methods you're suggesting to save the houses. But your wrong. They've looked into many of these plans - including the suggestion of looking into federal grant programs that CHP suggested - and it doesn't work.

And finally, the reason that buildings even older than AR are in good shape is because they were recognized as treasures early on and were never left to rot the way these buildings were. I think everyone would agree that if these buildings were in better shape there's no way anyone would tear them down. This all happening because the Navy Yard believe that these buildings are beyond the point of being salvage.

Posted by: Ella at February 14, 2007 10:34 PM

The Navy Yard looked into federal funding options - they don't provide enough a subsidy to make the project feasible. There is no program from the National Trust for historic preservation that would help either. Also no state programs would apply. All of those programs are geared to much smaller projects. They've also spoken to some non-profits, none of whom have the necessary budget to renovate the buildings.

There is only one funding option that makes any sense and that is direct subsidy from NYC. But NYC views all of the money that they invest in the Navy Yard as one category, so directing money to this means the Navy Yard will have to forgo some of the other things they spend their City Capital on. Right now they spend that money on repairing leaking roofs, rebuilding roads, oh yeah - and rebuilding the bulkheads so that the whole place doesn't fall into the east river.

I don't know what you mean about brooklynnavyyard.org being password protected. I just typed it in and no problem.

Just because there's been no supermarket near the project for 40 years doesn't mean it's an acceptable situation. Have you ever tried to go grocery shopping in that neighborhood before. Try it. For one month I want you to live only on food that you buy within walking distance of those projects. Then come back to me and tell me there's no need for the supermarket. The Pathmark at Atlantic center is NOT in walking distance from the projects.

yes, hot air, the movie studios may not seem like a blue collar job to you, but you're ignoring two important points. First the studio only accounts for about 1,000 of the 5,000 jobs in the Navy Yard. Second, most of the jobs at the studio are in fact blue collar construction and carpentry jobs when they are building and taking apart the sets. The millionaire actors and directors only account for a very small number of those jobs.
And lastly B2xBklyn, I don't even know where to start with you - so much of what you said is just wrong. For starters while the intrepid is a very popular museum, you have no idea what the financial situation of that institution is. You are making huge assumptions here based on no actual knowledge. And as for the mayor saying that the Navy Yard is extremely successful. You assume that "successful" means "makes alot of money" which is incorrect. The Navy Yard is successful because it has gone from housing fewer than 1,000 jobs to over 5,000 jobs. It doesn't mean that they are rolling in dough and can afford to spend money frivolously on rebuilding pretty houses that the federal gov't let deteriorate.

Posted by: Ella at February 16, 2007 12:10 AM

What are you talking about? The Navy Yard has had concern for the community since it was taken over from the Feds. Its mission is to provide employment to the members of the surrounding communities. That's why they do what they do. Always has been. That's why there's an employment center in the Yard that has helped place over 1,000 people in jobs in over the last several years. That's why they funnel all their profits into building new industrial buildings in the yard and renovating those historic ones that are in good enough condition to to be converted into modern use. The Admirals Row thing is an opportunity that didn't exist until the Feds decided that AR was surplus property. That's why it's only being brought up now. What was the Navy Yard supposed to do about the lack of the supermarket before then? Build one in one of the dry docks? I don't think so.

You see this is what bothers me about the whole debate. It's really very simple and it's been made much more complicated. Everyone agrees that when it's feasible, it's better policy to renovate historic buildings and to re-integrate those buildings into the urban fabric. The real question here is this: Is that a feasible possibility here? The Navy Yard says no - you say yes. Basically you are all thinking that you know better than the professionals at the Navy Yard. You - who have no background in real estate development, economic development, historic preservation assume you know better than the experts who are trained in the field. You've never even been inside these houses or seen them up close. You've never sat down with a pro forma and thought about what it would take. In your heart you want it to be feasible so therefore you believe that it must be feasible. And you think that anyone who can't figure out a way to make it feasible is just not intelligent enough or creative enough, or else just doesn't care enough. But you know, sometimes something just doesn't work no matter how much you want it to. Reality gets in the way and so you're left with "what is" instead of " what should be" and I understand that that can be frustrating, but you do nothing by implying that there's some nefarious plan to screw the community by cutting some under the table deal.

Everything you and others on this thread has said is true. There are plenty of examples out there where some creativity and thought has managed to save a building that, at first glance, didn't appear to be feasible. But for every one of those that were save there are hundreds of buildings for which, despite the best efforts of intelligent people, no solution could be found. Surely you're not implying that it's always possible (or appropriate). You've got to at least admit that there are situations out there where, either the buildings are not savable or what is being proposed instead of the old buildings will have such a positive impact that it's worth giving up the old building. So the folks at the Navy Yard have looked at the cost of renovating these buildings, the list of uses that would make sense to put into the renovated buildings, the existing condition of the buildings, the needs of the surrounding community and come up with this plan. All you've done is come up with ephemeral notions of "it could be so much better" but you've got no concrete plan. You've got no non-profit museum lined up that is willing to pay for the renovation and occupy the space. You can't point to a single funding or grant program that would actually provide a grant that could make this possible. The supermarket plan was first announced in 2005, and in the past 2 years noone has brought forth a alternative plan that was doable. You want to shut me up. Bring me a real plan that could actually work instead of a bunch of "what if"s. That's all you've done during this whole discussion.

Posted by: ella at February 16, 2007 2:44 AM

Yes I think this has run it's course. But one last correction- when I said that these plans were announced in 2005, I mean publicly at a community board hearing. Since that time it's been covered numerous times Curbed, the brooklyn papers, the Brooklyn eagle, the city section of the New York times, hell even Time Out NY had a little piece aboutt it last summer. So if you've only heard about it recently that's your own fault. It's not because the Navy Yard has been hiding.

Posted by: ella at February 16, 2007 10:28 AM

Really no need for personal insults are there? No need to insinuate that I'm in bed with bush. All it really does is make you lose credibility.
It also bothers me when people claim that the government doesn't listen to the community, when what they mean is that the government doesn't listen to me. I've got news for you Bx2Bklyn, Pshark and CHP: you may not like the plan, but there are plenty of people in the community who do and they've let their voices be heard at the several community meetings that the Navy Yard has hosted on this event. The community does not speak with a unified voice on this issue. SO arguments about not listening to the community are self serving. The Navy Yard listened to a part of the community, just not the part that you align yourself with. And it would be impossible to realy know which portion is bigger.

And Pshark - there's alot of distant between "home depot owes us" and actually having the free material in hand. Just because you think it should be true, doesn't even come close to making it true. It's nice that you know how everything "should" work, but some of us have to live in the real world, where we have to live with the disappointment that people (and corporations" don't always do what they should. And sometimes you have to compromise between 2 worthy goals (preservation and community development) when there aren't enough resources available to accomplish both (even though there "should" be enough resources to do both).

Posted by: ella at February 21, 2007 2:48 PM