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Closing Bell: Performance by the PS 11 Drum Line
Here is the perfect video for your late Friday afternoon: the PS 11 drum line performing for their school field day at the Park Slope Armory. It was shot by Michael Galinksky, local Brooklyn filmmaker and Hot Seat interviewee.
05/17/2013 4:00 PM
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Closing Bell: Two School Silent Auctions This Week
Two Brooklyn schools are holding silent auction fundraisers this week: the Arts & Letters 2013 Speakeasy Gala and Auction, scheduled for tomorrow, and the P.S. 84 Second Annual Gala Benefit Auction, scheduled for Sunday. Arts & Letters is hosting an evening with live music and an open bar, and tons of deals on local camps, classes, meals, and backstage passes are up for bid. Bidding lasts through today at midnight. And on Sunday, the P.S. 84 PTA will host an evening with a live DJ, home-cooked food, cash bar, and a silent auction featuring local and city-wide businesses, including a night at the Wythe Hotel, dinner at Peter Luger, Yankee tickets, and a Catskills weekend getaway. Bid here!
05/16/2013 4:00 PM
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Renovations for Historic Building at 797 Bushwick Avenue
A reader snapped the above photograph of 797 Bushwick Avenue, the Bushwick Leaders High School building, which is currently undergoing serious exterior renovations. We featured this building, built in 1872 and formerly an old folk’s home, as a Building of the Day. Our tipster tells us, “I was told [by construction workers] they were cleaning the brick. I found out today they are covering the brick with cement to conserve heat… a whole wall has been covered with cement.” It’s up in the air if the facade will be preserved, because this building is not landmarked. The DOB application calls for a ton of work: facade brick replacement, repointing, parapet replacement, roofing, replacing windows, and repairing damaged plaster walls and ceilings. The architect for the job is Nelligan White Architects, who works on a lot of educational spaces. Both the architect and the School Construction Authority did not comment on the scope of the work.
Building of the Day: 797 Bushwick Avenue [Brownstoner] GMAP
05/06/2013 10:30 AM
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The Real Estate-Schools Connection
Over the weekend, the Times examined the relationship between real estate and school zone. Securing a place at a good public school has become more difficult recently, according to the paper; overcrowding and rezoning mean parents can’t count on admittance to certain schools based on where they live. (The recent rezoning of Park Slope’s P.S. 321, above, was cited as a prime example.) The paper offers several methods of coping: Rent until a child is admitted, then move; find an as-yet-undiscovered but good school; move into a developing neighborhood and either send the kids to a school several neighborhoods over or wait or help the local schools to change; move into cheaper housing and send the kids to private. The story related the experience of an editor and music booker who moved from a rental in Prospect Heights to buy an apartment in Crown Heights and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of a new school in their zone. Have any of these methods worked for you?
The Get-Into-School Card [NY Times]
Photo by DNAinfo
05/06/2013 9:00 AM
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Finally, Some Action at 414 Classon Avenue
For the past five years, the derelict property at the corner of Classon Avenue and Quincy Street in Clinton Hill sat with a “SOLD” sign plastered over the Massey Knakal listing banner atop the partially deconstructed building. The current owner purchased the 44-by-91-foot lot in 2007 for $960,000 but must have just missed the financing window. Thankfully, there has been action in recent weeks at the site. The old structure is gone and a new construction fence is up. According to the plans that were approved by the DOB in January, an 8,500-square-foot educational facility is set to rise on the site. The application says the name of the place will be “Phil’s Academy.” Anyone know more about what this place will be? GMAP
05/02/2013 2:43 PM
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Williamsburg Montessori Coming to Kent Avenue
The owners of Schaefer Landing haven’t been able to give away the retail space at 450 Kent Avenue since the big mixed-income housing development opened in South Williamsburg back in 2007. Finally, though, it looks like a tenant has been found in the form of the newly created Williamsburg Montessori school. The progressive school will serve ages three months to six years beginning this fall. GMAP
04/30/2013 2:00 PM
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NYU Opens Urban Tech School Downtown
New York University’s new Center for Urban Science and Progress officially opened Thursday at 1 MetroTech Center on the 19th Floor, reported The New York Daily News. The high-tech school will have graduate programs in engineering, planning and design. Research will focus on how to improve living conditions in big, crowded cities, from energy efficiency to better planning and infrastructure. “That research is expected to be crucial in the coming decades when most of the world’s population migrates to cities,” said the Daily News. The facility includes 26,000 square feet of office space and two visualization labs. The center will spin off hundreds of new companies and create thousands of new jobs, said Mayor Bloomberg at Thursday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. There are already more than 500 tech companies in the downtown area, he added. NYU plans to remodel a building at 370 Jay Street into a permanent campus for the school, pictured in the rendering above. The goal is to move the school there by 2017.
High-Tech NYU “Genius” School Opens in Downtown Brooklyn [NY Daily News]
Rendering via NYU Local
04/15/2013 9:00 AM
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Satmars Want to Buy Williamsburg Armory
The 19th-century armory at 355 Marcy Avenue that has been empty for two years is now for sale, and the Hasadim of South Williamsburg want to buy it, reported The New York Times. The overcrowded sect would use the 165,000-square-foot property, known as the 47th Regiment Armory, for housing, school and community space. The New York State Empire State Development Corp. plans to soon put out a request for proposals for repurposing the site.
While the state authority has said it hopes to spur “a competitive process” and capture “the best value for New York State taxpayers,” it also plans to require in its request for proposals that the site be used to benefit “the needs and priorities of the local community,” potentially giving an edge to the Satmar Hasidim — an important voting bloc increasingly courted by politicians.
The Satmars of South Williamsburg are pressed for space as gentrification moves southward from north Williamsburg and their own population rapidly grows. For example, a girls’ yeshiva, Bais Rochel, will graduate eight classes of eighth graders this year, but in September, it will need space for 16 classes of first graders. In 1959, the entire Satmar school system had 800 students, and now it has 30,000 in New York City and upstate. In five years, another 4,500 children are expected. “We know one thing: We are out of space,” said Rabbi Benzion Feuerwerger, head of the girls’ school.
Hasidic Sect Hopes to Buy Huge Armory in Brooklyn [NY Times]
Photo by Scott Bintner for PropertyShark
04/12/2013 9:30 AM
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Seeking Funding to Bring Technology to M.S. 8
A Brownstoner reader and P.S. 8 parent got in touch to highlight one particular project up for Participatory Budget funding this year. The proposal allocates $200,000 to M.S. 8, the new middle school extension of P.S. 8, to fund the purchase of laptops, laptop carts, and smartboards. The school opened this past fall without funding allocated towards technology. M.S. 8 serves students from Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo, and Vinegar Hill, and is expected to be at full capacity by the 2014-15 school year. Parents are aiming to get the word out and rally votes for the funding. The voting period takes place between between April 1st and 7th; check out the dates and locations for voting right here.
03/29/2013 9:00 AM
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No Garden for P.S. 133?
Over the weekend, a tipster noticed that the School Construction Authority paved all of the exterior space behind and beside the new P.S. 133 building along 4th Avenue. As part of the construction agreement, in which the original P.S. 133 building was torn down along with the existing garden, the SCA promised that they would build a replacement garden for residents. But here’s the latest:
We now hear that the replacement “new community garden” will consist of asphalt with a fence around it (the moorings for the fence post are visible in the picture above as little yellow dots on the asphalt — the much smaller garden is to the right of those dots.) Anyone who wants to garden there — parents at the school, former gardeners — will need to bring in everything from scratch — and pay for it. No paths, raised beds, no obvious drainage, dirt, tool shed, benches — nothing but asphalt.
Concerned residents are encouraged to get in touch with Council Member Steve Levin and Community Board Six about the issue. Residents had not been notified the SCA wasn’t planning on building a full replacement garden, and Levin told residents he would follow up with the SCA.
03/27/2013 9:00 AM
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All Done at the Voorhees Hall Renovation
This week construction workers are putting the final touches on CUNY’s Voorhees Hall, at 186 Jay Street. This wraps a massive, one-year exterior transformation of the building. The exterior reno is part of a larger $30 million dollar upgrade that includes classroom enhancements, a new lobby and other building improvements. The look matches the initial renderings pretty faithfully and is a huge improvement over the building’s previous incarnation. Check out a before picture after the jump…
Checking in at Voorhees Hall’s Glassy Reno [Brownstoner]
Voorhees Hall Getting Glassy [Brownstoner]
Exterior Transformation Under Way at CUNY Building [Brownstoner] (more…)
03/26/2013 2:40 PM
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Carmelo the Science Fellow to Open Preschool
The incredibly popular teacher Carmelo the Science Fellow is opening a science-based preschool at 11 Wyckoff Street in Cobble Hill! “I have wanted to create a school where kids get to learn science every day,” he wrote in an email to parents. “With science at the core of the curriculum, children will have fun learning math, literacy, and other core subjects.” The school, known as the Brooklyn Preschool of Science, is currently under construction, above, and will occupy two floors. Each floor will have a “rainbow wall, lit up with the colors of the spectrum,” as well as a green wall with plants blooming throughout the year. More details, as well as an online registration form, should be available within a month.
Photo by Nicholas Strini for PropertyShark
03/14/2013 2:00 PM
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Families Push for Elementary School Downtown
A Downtown Brooklyn resident started the website Downtown Brooklyn School Solutions to ask for a new public elementary school in response to the neighborhood rezoning and building boom. There are already more than 100 families behind the request and a petition’s up as well. As the website points out, “Nearly 15,000 people have moved to Downtown Brooklyn in the last 10 years and that number could double in the next five to 10 years thanks to the rezoning of the neighborhood and resulting residential building boom.” It does seem hard to ignore the huge amount of high-rise towers now under construction — 29 Flatbush, 388 Bridge, Willoughby West, and City Point, not to mention the residential plans for the Ashland/Fulton Triangle in the BAM Cultural District. The map above outlines all the new development for the area since 2005 (black building are built, blue are in development, and orange are announced). Here’s the DoBro School Solution’s take on the neighborhood development boom. And there is no public elementary school in Downtown Brooklyn, nor does the city have plans to build one. Elementary kids in Downtown are zoned into P.S. 287 near the Navy Yard, P.S. 8 in North Brooklyn Heights, P.S. 261 in Boerum Hill, and P.S. 38 in Gowanus. Some of the new developments planned for the BAM cultural district are zoned for P.S. 20 in Clinton Hill. The group of parents plan to meet with reps from public, private and charter schools and seek the support of local pols. If you’re interested in getting involved or joining the group to push for a local elementary school, go here.
03/13/2013 9:30 AM
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Steel up at St. Joseph’s College Gym
There’s lots of steel rising at the St. Joseph’s College gym site at 212 Vanderbilt Avenue in Fort Greene. Foundation work began in January. The gym building, a combo of brick, metal and glass, will include a basketball and volleyball court, athletic department offices and a fitness center. Check out a rendering of the final product here.
Checking the Progress at St. Joseph’s Gym [Brownstoner]
Construction to Begin at St. Joseph’s College Gym [Brownstoner]
St. Joe’s New Athletic Center, Revealed [Brownstoner] GMAP
02/22/2013 2:40 PM
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Bathroom Reno Complete After Participatory Funding
This morning the students at PS 124 in Park Slope cut the ribbon for their new school bathroom renovation. The PS 124 bathroom project won funding through a community vote in last year’s participatory budgeting program — this project is the first participatory budgeting project to be completed in New York City. City Council Member Brad Lander allocated the needed $150,000 for renovations. Before the reno, the bathrooms had stalls without doors and damaged tile flooring. Here are all seven projects selected through last year’s participatory budgeting. Since it was so successful, the second year of participatory budgeting started up this fall. Click through for more pictures of the renovated bathrooms.
Photos via Brad Lander’s Twitter (more…)
01/24/2013 12:00 PM
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Interior Demo Starts at City Tech Site
City Tech’s brand-new build is actually happening! The old Klitgord Building at 285 Jay Street, on the corner of Tillary Street, is closed and construction crews have started up with interior demolition. The school also filed an application with the Department of Buildings for a new eight-story build, although it looks like the DOB disapproved the plans this month. The architect on record is Perkins Eastman, an international planning, design and consulting firm that has worked on many campuses before. The rendering above comes from this Brooklyn Eagle article published this fall. Back then, they reported that the eight-story build would be 149 feet tall with 356,389 square feet of academic, community and facility space. The building will hold new facilities for the science and clinical health programs, a new theater, a wellness center and athletic facilities. The long-ago plans for a huge residential/educational tower built at the site by Forest City Ratner and City Tech never came through.
Construction to Begin Soon on City Tech’s New Klitgord Building [BK Eagle] GMAP
01/16/2013 10:30 AM
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Parents: Boerum Hill Playground Dangerous for Kids
A group of parents at P.S. 38 in Boerum Hill hopes to use funds from the City Council’s participatory budgeting program to improve safety at the school’s playground, reported DNAinfo. One six-year-old had blood streaming down his face after he hit his head on an exposed metal rivet on the underside of the jungle gym. The playground is closed after dark, but intruders cut open the metal fencing to get in, leaving jagged edges. Then the area is strewn with trash, broken glass, condoms, and dog droppings.
Boerum Hill School Playground Dangerous to Kids, Parents Say [DNAinfo]
Photo by Heather Holland for DNAinfo
01/08/2013 10:00 AM
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Entrance Almost Done at Voorhees Hall
The massive renovation of 186 Jay Street, CUNY’s Voorhees Hall, is almost complete. Remember what this building once looked like? The new glassy facade and entryway are part of a $30 million renovation including classroom enhancements, a new lobby and other building upgrades. Exterior work began exactly one year ago.
Voorhees Hall Almost All Glassed Up [Brownstoner]
Checking in at Voorhees Hall’s Glassy Reno [Brownstoner]
Voorhees Hall Getting Glassy [Brownstoner]
Exterior Transformation Underway at CUNY Building [Brownstoner]
01/03/2013 2:40 PM
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Checking the Progress at St. Joseph’s Gym
There hasn’t been much upward construction at the St. Joseph’s gymnasium site in Fort Greene, but there has definitely been progress since the construction fence went up this summer. It looks like they are busy digging the foundation. St. Joseph’s College plans to include a basketball and volleyball court, athletic department offices, and a fitness center here. You can see a rendering of the building, which is designed to glow at night, here.
Construction to Begin at St. Joseph’s College Gym [Brownstoner]
St. Joe’s New Athletic Center, Revealed [Brownstoner] GMAP
01/02/2013 2:40 PM
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P.S. 11 Celebrates the Holidays
This video of the P.S. 11 Holiday Show by Brooklyn filmmakers Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky will put you in the right spirit! The video captures the 4th and 5th grade performance, but the band, led by P.S. 11 teacher Ms. Iwanusa, includes students from 3rd to 5th grade.
12/24/2012 12:00 PM
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bobmarvin
May 16, 2013 | 09:04 AM