Badillo Pushing for Lux Housing on RH Waterfront
It’s hard to keep an ambitious ex-politician down. On the heels of his proposal for a massively oversized residential development on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Herman Badillo has injected himself into the jobs vs. housing debate in Red Hook with a vague proposal for 1,500-unit housing development and a campus for charter schools and a…
It’s hard to keep an ambitious ex-politician down. On the heels of his proposal for a massively oversized residential development on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Herman Badillo has injected himself into the jobs vs. housing debate in Red Hook with a vague proposal for 1,500-unit housing development and a campus for charter schools and a college. The city as well as local business leaders and pols have been pushing a plan that combines more parkland with shops and restaurants with a moderate amount of mixed-income housing thrown in for good measure. Which direction in better for Red Hook? For Brooklyn residents in general?
Badillo: Luxury Apartments at Columbia Piers [Brooklyn Papers]
Photo by Josh Jackson
This area really has very little to do with Red Hook. It is the Columbia Street Waterfront District, or Carroll Gardens West, or my personal favorite, Left Hook.
The Red Hook Parks are as far as Prospect Park to Left Hook. And it is definetely in walking distance from the subway. I walk to the subway every morning in less than ten minutes.
The problem with parkland is not who is going to pay for it and maintain it, the problem is with setting priorities; the problem is with the city budget and alocating more money to our quality of life.
Right now the city just keeps on approving more development when the infrastructure is not there to support it. Look at the overcrowding in Williamsburg where you have to wait for 3 or 4 L trains in the morning until you can squeeze through the doors. And that is only the beginning for Williamsburg with how many hundreds more condos and coops still to come.
The environememtal impact statements that the EDC does are a total joke whose scope is a quarter mile radius. Right now while they plan the Columbia Street Waterfront they don’t take into account the traffic that IKEA will bring because it is outside the scope (quarter mile radius) of the environmental impact statement. And the traffic that IKEA will bring is far more than anybody is willing to admit. The BQE is already backed up all day long with no hope of relief in the future.
This mindless myopic development has got to be stopped. Lets start concentrating on improving what we have now instead of building more, more, more when the infrastructure is not there to support it.
maritime themed museum in red hook reminds me of the automotive museum in roger & me. sad.
what’s wrong with trying to keep a commercial place the way it is for a change?
10:23 AM
News flash for you – Many kids already walk from Red Hook to Carroll Gardens for school.
How are the kids going to get to this school. Are the walking past highways and over to the vast expanses of warehouses and abanodoned buildings, so that they can be more easily kidnapped or attached on their way to school?
The biggest problem with red hook is TRANSPORTATION. The buses, with their one-every-45-minutes schedule wont cut it. Until you can get people in and out wihtout a car or water taxi, you are spinning wheels.
Plus, no one has mentioned thew great parks that Red Hook already has – it is just that no one from outside walking distance can get to them.
The problem with parkland is, who is going to pay for it and maintain it? NYC Parks has said they will not acquire any new parklands unless it’s self-funding. The community can’t even get the Parks Department to finish the Mother Cabrini Park annex on the corner of President and Van Brunt Street. It’s been an empty lot for 15 years and that parcel is already under the Parks Deaprtment’s jurisdiction.
The problem with parkland is, who is going to pay for it and maintain it? NYC Parks has said they will not acquire any new parklands unless it’s self-funding. The community can’t even get the Parks Department to finish the Mother Cabrini Park annex on the corner of President and Van Brunt Street. It’s been an empty lot for 15 years and that parcel is already under the Parks Deaprtment’s jurisdiction.
Columbia street north of Hamilton Ave. isn’t Red Hook. It used to be 50 years ago before Robert Moses and the BQE, but it’s now a completely distinct neighborhood from Red Hook with a different population and development issues.
Herman Padillo is a moron who is totally out of touch with what the surrounding Brooklyn area wants or needs.