Too Tall in Park Slope
July 12, 2005, Village Voice — On a Saturday morning in April, neighbors on a quiet Brooklyn block on the southern edge of Park Slope looked into their backyards to see workmen erecting a construction fence on their properties. In brownstone Brooklyn this is the face of war: sneak attack by developers. One irate woman…
July 12, 2005, Village Voice — On a Saturday morning in April, neighbors on a quiet Brooklyn block on the southern edge of Park Slope looked into their backyards to see workmen erecting a construction fence on their properties. In brownstone Brooklyn this is the face of war: sneak attack by developers. One irate woman called her lawyer, who told her to call the cops, who promptly tossed the workers off the site. But it was a brief retreat. The developer quickly arrived, offering $3,000 in cash for the right to work on their properties. His goal, he said, was to start digging a big hole where a new building would rise on what had been a 100-by-100-foot parking lot on 15th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues near Prospect Park…
Too Tall in Park Slope [Village Voice]
The Developers Group is a marketing firm! They would as likely sell this montrosity as well as a Scarano building, and after dealing with them to buy a condo in the burg they are just as sleazy!!!
Good for rabid 16th for fighting the sleazy development and illegalities. And if I lived there, I’d want to push for a rezoning too.
But I don’t get the implication that there was something unusual or otherwise fishy about drawing the rezoning line down the middle of 15th street. Given that the rezoning would have to have some boundary somewhere, it’s perfectly normal to draw it down the middle of a street. That’s how school districts are drawn, police precincts, etc. etc. And considering that 15th has long been considered the south boundary of Park Slope (at least by many), it seems a pretty natural place to draw the line — even if any such line will always be arbitrary.
That said, the folks south of that line have every right to fight for their own rezoning, and having seen some of the monstrosities going up in Greenwood Heights, I wish them luck.
The story is just beginning. This morning we were startled by someone revving the engines of this huge excavator that is parked on the 408 15th Street site. The crew of workers arrived at the site to meet Verizon workers to begin moving the telephone poles from the lot. This after all the permits were pulled by the Dept. of Buildings back in May. Verizon reps. when confronted with the fact that they had been presented void permits, said they are not in the business of verifying whether permits are true or not. The contractors admitted that they are going to begin digging on Monday. You have to understand the law requires a 5 day notice before digging can begin. This is a hole 3 stories deep 100’x100′ wide that is surrounded by 100+ year old row houses and a church.
Radusky is an embarrassment to his profession. He is actually just the go to man, an expediter, for all those developers who want to build big with no questions asked about how it gets done. His number is up as the authorities are on his ass.
The story talks about how Methodist Hospital is renting out the 22nd street building and how this satisfies the original C of O issued for the Yeshiva’s faculty. This is false. According to Dept. of Buildings, they would have to remake the building into a medical facility for it to satisfy the C of O.
One thing left out of this story is why only the south side of 15th street was left off the rezoning of the rest of park slope a couple of years ago. Developers have pounced on this block buying everything and tearing it down to build luxe condo’s at $500/foot. By building multiple entrances to these developments they get around the off-street parking requirements. We now have 100 new residences with out any parking. Community Board 7 is trying to push through a rezoning effort before it’s to late. If you want to know more about rezoning, go to Southsouthslope.com. We are not against resposible developement, we just want everyone to play by the rules. Just to let you know there are two more 12 story buildings Radusky has started on 16th street, with the D o B’s permission! Maybe we need to bring back the good old days when then NYPD issued building violations and if you didn’t obey they would hall your ass to jail, not hand out $250 fines like the environmental control board does now!
From someone else who lives on 15th street — agreed! I don’t mind condos going in, but a 10 story monstrosity by the Bricolage Gang on a block with nothing else over 4 stories is just going to be awful. The Developers Group, Scarano, fine — anything but this Bricolage garbage built illegally through the misuse of zoning loopholes.
I live on 15th street across from Delmonico’s factory – and down the street from the two vacant new developments. I totally NIMBY this…
And, they’re all ugly buildings (http://brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2005/07/lying_fallow_on.html).
I mean its one thing to build a tall (or big) building that makes an architectural contribution to the neighborhood, its quite another to bring instant blight on a grand scale.
Surely they can press criminal charges against hime for this, no?
Funny, if you look at the village voice article, it refers to 22nd street as South Slope. I guess the brokers said it enough so it is true ….
Sounds like a real piece of work