Hannah Sennesh Shalt Not Build on Courtyard
On Friday, Hannah Senesh, a 152-seat private Jewish day school in Carroll Gardens, announced it was officially dropping its plans to try to circumvent a 160-year-old zoning law in an effort to erect a two-story building on an empty lot at the corner of Smith Street and First Place. News that the school had hired…
On Friday, Hannah Senesh, a 152-seat private Jewish day school in Carroll Gardens, announced it was officially dropping its plans to try to circumvent a 160-year-old zoning law in an effort to erect a two-story building on an empty lot at the corner of Smith Street and First Place. News that the school had hired a lobbyist in December to gain an exemption to the city law that treats all front yards on the “Place” blocks of Carroll Gardens as public space resulted in a huge backlash from area residents and lots of bad publicity for the school and outgoing City Council Member Bill de Blasio, who had sponsored the change. We were most afraid that once law changed for [Hannah Senesh] other people would get the same idea and it would be changed again, and the signature courtyards would vanish, corner by corner, Triada Samaras, a member of the group Carroll Gardens Coalition for Respectful Development, told The Brooklyn Paper. Since then State Senator Daniel Squadron, State Assemblywoman Joan Millman, and Councilman Brad Lander have all come out against amending the law. “Their plan would have set a dangerous precedent,” said Millman in a statement on Friday. “The courtyards are an integral part of Carroll Garden’s charm and character and must be protected.”
School Comes to Its Seneshes [Brooklyn Paper] GMAP
Hannah Sennesh Backs Off Plans to Expand [PMFA]
Photo from Pardon Me For Asking
just because the reverse is happening in another area doesn’t make either side right, no?
bkre –
they ARE different than us; they need to take buses to get here! that’s the problem!
traffic on 3rd backs up to the canal most mornings because this school is crammed into a spot where they need to block smith street in order to unload their kids!
funny how that never happens with the public schools in the area…
bkre has a severe case of myopia (and also it seems a classic persecution complex). Talk about xenophobia: a couple of miles away in South Williamsburg, the religious Jews had a bike lane erased because they didn’t want people in shorts riding by and wanted to have free reign to keep their polluting school buses idling and double parked. I’d love to hear what that xenophobic community would say if a mosque or church decided to move in and try to get some changes made to accommodate its needs. Talk about snobbish enclaves and the poster group for a whining, self-serving community that doesn’t tolerate outsiders!
bkre – that’s par for the course with PMFA. i used to check it for happenings in the neighborhood but dropped it as it can get disgustingly xenophobic which is truly ironic, since the blogger is indeed a german immigrant.
Is it just me, or was anyone else made pretty uncomfortable by many of the xenophobic comments made on the Pardon Me for Asking postings of this story? There were an unusual high number of comments about how the kids who go to this school don’t live in carroll gardens. It seemed to be code for “they’re not like us”. Especially since this is a jewish school and the blogger is german.
Rob is right – Carroll Gardens seems to think that they are their own special enclave and not a part of a larger city. It wouldn’t surprise me if there started to be call for Caroll Gardens to secede from the City. It’s a shame too, because other than the whiny people, Carroll Gardens is a beautiful neighborhood.
by the snob issue, I’m sure you mean that private schools should be exempt from laws and regs that ordinary people follow.
The school knew the rules when they first went in. A combination of hubris and elected representatives who will sell their soul for campaign contributions, made them think that the rules in effect wouldn’t apply to them. Very few people on this site argue against any development, but most of us do get bent out of shape by under-handed, backroom deals destroying the character of a neighborhood.
Once again, our elected representatives elect to screw over a bunch of parents all to uphold some snob zoning.
Look for a lot of those parents to go to the suburbs.
is it just me does carol gardens rank #1 as the whiniest neighborhood in the boro!?
*rob*