A Last-Ditch Effort to Save Admiral's Row
Until the Navy Base at Wallabout Bay was closed in 1967, if you were a married officer, you got a chance to shack up in one of the ten historic row houses looking out over Flushing Avenue (drawn here as they were in 1855). When the Army Corp of Engineers took over the location, the…
Until the Navy Base at Wallabout Bay was closed in 1967, if you were a married officer, you got a chance to shack up in one of the ten historic row houses looking out over Flushing Avenue (drawn here as they were in 1855). When the Army Corp of Engineers took over the location, the houses were left to decay, though some Navy families continued to live in the houses into the 1970s. In 1996, the New York State Historic Preservation Office signed off on an agreement that gave the Army Corp the right to demolish the houses without any landmark review. The city, which took control of all of the Navy Yard except Admiral’s Row in 2001, is planning to knock the houses down to make way for a supermarket when it finally takes control. (The transfer is still hung up in bureaucratic red tape.) Despite the efforts of various preservationist groups in recent years, the Bloomberg shows no signs of budging, citing the $25 million cost of restoration as being prohibitively high. Now a group known as Brooklyn’s Other Museum of Brooklyn has made an eleventh-hour appeal to Governor Spitzer in a letter last month:
I am but one American, yet Admiral’s Row is mine and belongs to every citizen of the United States of America. Don’t allow the Mayor of the city of New York to demolish a national heritage site to satisfy a political favor. It appears you are the only person who, with a stroke of your pen, can undo this madness and insure longevity for Admiral’s Row. Please rescind the A.R.M.O.A. (Admiral’s Row Memorandum Agreement).
Does anyone know more about the “political favor”? How about a timeline for the expected demolition>
Admiral’s Row [B.O.M.B.]GMAP
Retail May Trump Admiral’s Row Preservation [Brownstoner]
City Trying to Demolish Admiral’s Row [Brownstoner]
Group Asks for a ‘Pardon’ for Admiral’s Row [Curbed]
The Navy Yard looked into federal funding options – they don’t provide enough a subsidy to make the project feasible. There is no program from the National Trust for historic preservation that would help either. Also no state programs would apply. All of those programs are geared to much smaller projects. They’ve also spoken to some non-profits, none of whom have the necessary budget to renovate the buildings.
There is only one funding option that makes any sense and that is direct subsidy from NYC. But NYC views all of the money that they invest in the Navy Yard as one category, so directing money to this means the Navy Yard will have to forgo some of the other things they spend their City Capital on. Right now they spend that money on repairing leaking roofs, rebuilding roads, oh yeah – and rebuilding the bulkheads so that the whole place doesn’t fall into the east river.
I don’t know what you mean about brooklynnavyyard.org being password protected. I just typed it in and no problem.
Just because there’s been no supermarket near the project for 40 years doesn’t mean it’s an acceptable situation. Have you ever tried to go grocery shopping in that neighborhood before. Try it. For one month I want you to live only on food that you buy within walking distance of those projects. Then come back to me and tell me there’s no need for the supermarket. The Pathmark at Atlantic center is NOT in walking distance from the projects.
yes, hot air, the movie studios may not seem like a blue collar job to you, but you’re ignoring two important points. First the studio only accounts for about 1,000 of the 5,000 jobs in the Navy Yard. Second, most of the jobs at the studio are in fact blue collar construction and carpentry jobs when they are building and taking apart the sets. The millionaire actors and directors only account for a very small number of those jobs.
And lastly B2xBklyn, I don’t even know where to start with you – so much of what you said is just wrong. For starters while the intrepid is a very popular museum, you have no idea what the financial situation of that institution is. You are making huge assumptions here based on no actual knowledge. And as for the mayor saying that the Navy Yard is extremely successful. You assume that “successful” means “makes alot of money” which is incorrect. The Navy Yard is successful because it has gone from housing fewer than 1,000 jobs to over 5,000 jobs. It doesn’t mean that they are rolling in dough and can afford to spend money frivolously on rebuilding pretty houses that the federal gov’t let deteriorate.
Why not spend the money on making the neighborhood a ‘fresh direct prefered site?’ Then leave the rotten admiral shells the way they are now and let them slowly rot away. This will preserve the history of the Navy Yard area as represnetative of Robert Moses era blight– a movie-romantic version of BKLN as dilapidated example of poor zoning, lost potential, and hardscrabble landscape. This might satisfy the Euro history buff, since it’s arguably more significant than officer housing. This would allow the preservationists to at least keep their romantic dreams about the potential of the row (which are always better than the restoration reality. It will also bring groceries to these sorely underserved people who can’t seem to go to the bodega or to the pathmark near atlantic center like everyone else in Brooklyn. Or, put the pathmark in the NYC DOT holding area, so that people who are forced to the Navy Yark to ransom their cars, can drive home with groceries (and maybe some overly priced, blue collar built Thomas Moser Furniture, or dailies from the blue collar movie studios.)
merychawick’s sole mission was to flip the conversation.
Damn I hate these key board gangsters.
Oh what??!! Now we’re dumping on the intellectually and character-challenged now? well, I am sure Meryckawick is doing the best he can with what he has. You know he can’t have much of a brain left after he’s done pissing it away on the remains of AR.
Note to M- Your and you’re are 2 different words. It’s “When you’re done” Hope this helps.
Meryckawick, it’s very easy to be smarmy over the internet. Why just take a look at these smarmy comments on this thread alone:
“Tear it down. Now.”
“Tear the dump down. When your done, let me know so that I can come and urinate on the site.”
“Smart ass.”
Oh, wait – that’s YOU!
No, because I know that you and the other cowardly asswipes who troll this site won’t have the guts to show up.
Why- do you like being laughed at?
Trust us, Meryckawick. we’re all real curious to get a look at you too. Although I doubt you would have the nerve to show up and admit who you are. Too embarrassing for you.
Ella, if the Navy Yard has looked into alernative methods of developing Admiral’s Row, why are they keeping their research a secret? Why haven’t they released their findings written up with facts and figures? Why is there no transparency to this process? If there are real indisputable reasons as to why these buildings cannot be preserved but must be categorically demolished, then we’d all like to know what they are, and how that conclusion was arrived at. Which organizations/grant agencies have been contacted by the Navy Yards? We’d all like to know, and the lack of information from the BNYDC (access to http://www.brooklynnavyyard.org requires user name and password??) only invites “conspiracy theories” positing the involvement of political favors by amoral, corrupt insiders.