CB6 Land Use Approves Berkeley Carroll Expansion Plans
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…
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]
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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*
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…)
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.
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.
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.
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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*
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.
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5th grade and up at that location.
oh no, they are the worst! those poor neighbors hahah
*rob*
Landmarks committee of CB6, not LPC. This is just the first step.