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CB6 Land Use Approves Berkeley Carroll Expansion Plans

Categories: Development, Park Slope, Schools

berkeley-carroll-gmap-0110.jpg
A controversial expansion plan for the Berkeley Carroll School won support from the Community Board 6's land use committee yesterday despite widespread opposition from Park Slope neighbors, reports The Brooklyn Paper. The plan for a one-story building with a rooftop recreation area had drawn criticism from residents of both St. Johns Place and Lincoln Place worried about noise and other quality of life issues. “We’ve lived with the noise from the school coming over the wall and permeating our lives,” said John Muir, who spoke on behalf of the portion of the St. Johns Block Association that still opposes the project. “It is indisputable that the noise of the new rooftop will spread to Seventh Avenue and affect those who live on Lincoln Place.” But some neighbors who had fought the proposal early on ultimately came around to accept the plan when it was modified to exclude rooftop air conditioning units that had originally been proposed and to set back the play area by 15 feet. “The school seems to have been compliant [with landmarks code],” said community board member Betty Lester, who backed the proposal. “Let’s agree to disagree. The compromise is there.”
Panel Backs Berkeley Carroll Plan [Brooklyn Paper]
Berkeley Carroll Expansion Stirs Up The Neighborhood [Brownstoner]



By Brownstoner at January 5, 2010 10:01 AM | Comments (22)

22 Comments

By Butterfly on January 5, 2010 10:11 AM

no offense, but people shouldnt be home all day to hear the noise coming from a school. dont the kids all go home at 3? yeah yeah i know some people "work from home", but if that's the case, noise from a school is something you need to put up with for having the luxurious perk of getting to "work" from home.

i hope they put fences around the roof before they let the kids run wild up there tho!


*rob*

By Montrose Morris on January 5, 2010 10:20 AM

OK, I may be a curmudgeon today, but WTF? Let me get this straight - the school needs to expand, due to more kids and need for more facilities. Parents in PS want to send their kids there, but now don't want said kids to make kid noise while enrolled in super expensive private school. Said noise would mostly take place during work hours when majority of complaining parents and other PS'ers are at work. School jumps through hoops trying to make itself, neighbors, and LPC happy, and neighbors are still complaining? The school has been there long before most of the people now in the neighborhood. Isn't that like moving next to the highway and then complaining that the cars are loud?

By slopefarm on January 5, 2010 10:22 AM

rob,

Your concern for the safety of kids is unexpected and heartwarming. ;) I am sure there will be some kind of safeguard up there, but these are not little kids. 5th grade and up at that location.

By daveinbedstuy on January 5, 2010 10:26 AM

I think MM has just about summed up the absurdity of the whole story. I bet the complainers are mostly childless spinsters and old gay men!!!

By WBer on January 5, 2010 10:31 AM

Landmarks committee of CB6, not LPC. This is just the first step.

By Butterfly on January 5, 2010 10:32 AM

quote:
5th grade and up at that location.


oh no, they are the worst! those poor neighbors hahah

*rob*

By Arkady on January 5, 2010 10:36 AM

The big brouhaha was initially the height of the building which has been modified. I would've hated to suddenly have my garden shaded by a new edifice too. It's also the case that B/C does a poor job of instilling "community values" in the kids - things such as moving out of the way when a blind guy w/ a cane walks by.

By Butterfly on January 5, 2010 10:40 AM

quote:
things such as moving out of the way when a blind guy w/ a cane walks by.

i thought youre NOT supposed to move out of the way when someone is walking down the street with a cane, otherwise they don't get used to using a cane to guide them?

*rob*

By Montrose Morris on January 5, 2010 10:51 AM

No manners, unfortunately, is something I find most kids, of all income and social levels, lack. Too many kids today "aint got no fetchin' up" as African-American folk wisdom says. Their parents, and probably their parents' parents, have let the ball drop big time in the social decency court. It's everywhere.

And I'm sorry, but get out of the way of blind people on the sidewalk. An entire life of navigating without sight is hard enough without punk kids being thoughtless jerks.

By 11217 on January 5, 2010 11:06 AM

The kids at Berkeley Carroll School are some of the nicest most well mannered children I've ever come into contact with.

I've been rather shocked at some of the things I've seen....just a few weeks ago I saw one of the kids hanging out on the corner of 7th and Lincoln and this teenage boy offered to help an old lady across the street because it was icy. You don't see that every day.

I'm not a huge kid person, but the ones I've encountered from this school have been impressive.

By Arkady on January 5, 2010 11:09 AM

Individual students are often thoughtful but the groups tend to be oblivious. As MM said, it's the parents who should be blamed as much as the school.

By Brenda from Flatbush on January 5, 2010 11:16 AM

I live sandwiched between TWO schools, a small day care center and a huge K-5 public school, and can assure you that the noise levels are a persistent, huge detriment to our quality of life; and no, we are not all away during school hours, some of us work at home. The congestion from delivery trucks, staff's vehicles, and the ever-present double-parking and idling of school buses and parents adds to the joy, which extends until late pick-up at 6 p.m...and the ear-splitting screeching of the tots in their play yard behind me is so loud that I have been known to conduct business calls inside a closet. We have no grounds for complaint--both schools were there when we bought (probably another reason our house was so cheap)--but it's kind of like living next to a foundry, one that manufactures highly vocal Munchkins instead of ingots. If the protesting Mr. Muir is the noted Brooklyn preservationist and educator (and founder of what became the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment), then you can be assured that his concerns (while reflecting those of a retired gentleman and streetscape conservative) are valid and hardly steeped in gratuitous anti-child animosity. (Unlike my own fantasies of pouring boiling oil off the roof like the Addams Family prepared for their carolers down below...)

By Butterfly on January 5, 2010 11:25 AM

quote:
The kids at Berkeley Carroll School are some of the nicest most well mannered children I've ever come into contact with.

actually i find it sorta creepy that you have any kind of contact with those kids :-/

*rob*

By Montrose Morris on January 5, 2010 11:42 AM

Brenda, I commiserate, I also work at home. But honestly, what can people really expect to be done? Kids are noisy creatures by nature, especially in groups. Have you ever heard the audible groan that arises from riders in a subway car when a group of kids is on the platform? We are all mentally willing the car to pass the kids, slower, slower, arghhhh, not far enough, they pour into the train, and the noise level rises like a thermometer in August. I've never understood why they have to yell when they could just speak, but I don't understand kids. Plus, I was one of those weird, quiet, book-reading children.

Anyway, can you imagine the public uproar if the school insisted on the kids playing or congregating quietly? I'm sure there would be parent riots on the school with people brandishing psychological studies showing that quiet kids are malajusted, and won't become A Type personality movers and shakers, and end up being underpaid creative types. Hey, wait a minute.......

By dt on January 5, 2010 12:17 PM

The school has been there for over one hundred years. It has actually done a nice job of expanding with character and beauty -much more so than the expansion of Lower Poly Prep a block or two over.

As far as the students go, they seem pretty well behaved to me. Any large group of adolescents will be oblivious to their surroundings. They're wired that way!

By 11217 on January 5, 2010 12:27 PM

While I would agree with you dt about Berkeley Carroll being a fine looking school, I don't really agree about Lower Poly Prep. They have done terrific things with their campus:

"Poly Prep received the Moses award for the outstanding renovation of—and modern addition to—its Park Slope Lower
School, the first LEED‐Certified school building in New York City, and the first LEED‐Certified primary school building in New York State. Poly Prep was also the only school to receive a Moses Award this year, and the only awardee that both renovated and added to an existing historic structure.

Built in 1889 for Henry Hulbert and his family, Poly Prep’s grand paired mansions are the last surviving example of the “Romanesque Revival” style designed by Montrose Morris in Park Slope.

Consisting of exuberantly carved white limestone, complete with turrets, grand staircases, and stained glass windows, the Hulbert mansions were used by the Brooklyn Ethical Culture School starting in 1925. Poly Prep acquired the school and buildings for its Lower School (Nursery through 4th Grade) in 1995, augmenting its historic 25‐acre Middle and Upper School campus in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.
The mansions posed three principal challenges, for both Poly Prep and the architects. First, Poly Prep—founded in 1854 and an historical institution in its own right—wished to preserve the Hulbert mansions and comply with the requirements of the Park Slope Historic District.

Second, Poly Prep sought to demonstrate good environmental citizenship by minimizing the Lower School’s carbon
footprint and modeling sustainable practices for students, faculty, parents, and the Park Slope community.
Third, the project needed to accommodate expanded enrollment and a top‐flight co‐curricular program involving athletics, dance, art, and music.

Platt Byard Dovell White’s design admirably meets all three challenges. Upon project completion, Poly Prep’s Lower School has nearly doubled its square footage with additional classrooms, and large indoor athletic, music, and dance spaces. In addition, the modern addition harmonizes beautifully with the Morris‐designed mansions and adjacent 19th century brownstones by using materials such as limestone, painted metal, and asymmetrical window bays and openings—all in a restrained palette.

Finally, Poly Prep’s Lower School became New York City’s first school building with LEED Certification (Silver) in New York City and the first LEED‐Certified primary school in New York State. LEED Certification involves reducing a building’s carbon footprint and environmental impact.
For example, Poly Prep’s new Lower School has reduced its potable water consumption by 31%, used 22.5% recycled
content in building materials, enjoys “green” landscaping using native plants and other features to minimize its “heatisland” effect, and diverted 308.4 tons of construction waste from landfill.

By Butterfly on January 5, 2010 12:45 PM

^^ jesus. im like halfway reading 11217's post thinking lol at this poly prep PTA member prattling on about her school, only to see it's 11217 hahha

*rob*

By dt on January 5, 2010 1:35 PM

okay, 11217, I get your point. I simply don't like the look of the addition.

By pparksloper on January 5, 2010 2:14 PM

Berkeley Carroll School has done little in the way of compromise. The point of the expansion was to decongest their cafeteria; not to increase their recreation area. The rooftop was originally going to include mechanicals and also a rooftop recreation area right on the property line of 8 brownstone; right now it was enclosed within the campus.

The mechanicals were not removed out of a spirit of compromise, but because a new NY Noise Ordinance was enacted that made it illegal to place the mechanicals within 30' of property lines; so they didn't have the room to keep them on the new rooftop and placed them inside existing buildings only after the new law.

Given that now they'd have a lot more room, they decided to increase the size of the rooftop recreation area by 30%.

Yes neighbors have had to deal with a recreation area now, but it is smaller and enclosed within the campus; now it will be the width of 7 brownstones and an extra 1,100 sq feet, 23' up in the air looking into neighboring brownstones for the first time - an invasion of privacy. It wasn't there when they moved in.

The new building will block the views for the first time of the lower residents of neighboring 209 Lincoln Place.

The 2 households that have embraced the "compromise" currently have the school's enormous A/C unit which is in violation of the old and new noise codes behind them; so demolition will mean that those will be gone for them; also, they live at the narrowest point of the new L shaped rooftop recreation area furthest from the main source of noise.

For the record, the neighboring brownstones are perfectly preserved and date to 1873; yes Berkeley Carroll Institute For Young Ladies was founded in 1886; but the lot was vastly empty; the lot was not substantially filled in until 1971 and 1996; after many neighbors who are protesting now were already living in the block [since the 1960s]; so the neighbors were in fact in the block first on both counts.

By wine lover on January 5, 2010 5:26 PM

ahhh the contradictions of park slope - move there for the schools and find out that there's no room in them! duh!

trick is to find a hood with a decent school that has room, then watch the hood gentrify, the school gets word of mouth praise, and by the time it's crowded, yours has graduated and your house is worth is more than double.

anyone moving to a dense hood because of the schools had better think about how much space the school has - it's so simple. go look at the damn building! read the dept of ed reports. tour the school(s) and see if they have any space left. or, move there and get re-zoned! or, have your kid lost in an overly packed classroom. or, say good-bye to the extras...

pslopers protesting this school are not thinking this thru - it'll help their property values go up.


By 11217 on January 5, 2010 5:38 PM

Wine lover,

Berkeley Carroll is a private school so your issue really doesn't make any sense.

People don't move to Park Slope to send their kids to Berkeley Carroll at 35K a year...PS. 321 for sure cause it's free. A lot of the kids at Berkeley Carroll aren't even from Park Slope...quite a few come from Manhattan, in fact.

I think a lot of people would rather move to a neighborhood which is already nice so that their kids can enjoy it and have a great neighborhood where they feel safe.

Your reasoning about moving to a sketchy hood and waiting for the schools to improve is more out of greed so that the parents can reap a housing windfall. I pity the kids who grow up with parents whose mission is to make money on their home over the quality of life their child will endure growing up.

I also don't think the folks on Lincoln Place really care much about their property values going up much more. It's already about as nice as you can get.

By dt on January 5, 2010 9:42 PM

11217, Berkeley Carroll doesn't cost 35K a year. 29K perhaps, but not 35K.

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