Developers Giving "The Finger" To Burg Residents
The Daily News plots the rush of new developments looking to get approved before the zoning changes, which could go into effect as early as May, restrict height and density in inland Williamsburg and Greenpoint and limit taller buildings to the waterfront. The Finger Building at 144 North 8th, rendered above, has provoked particular ire…
The Daily News plots the rush of new developments looking to get approved before the zoning changes, which could go into effect as early as May, restrict height and density in inland Williamsburg and Greenpoint and limit taller buildings to the waterfront. The Finger Building at 144 North 8th, rendered above, has provoked particular ire from local residents while other developments like 20 Bayard Street have carried on the nabe’s legacy for shoddy consruction practices. We agree these things are going to look ridiculously out of place and wish they weren’t going forward, but opponents should probably be focusing their energies on trying to influence the aesthetics and quality of these buildings instead of trying to block them outright. After all, the developers are working within the legal limits. Just makes us glad we’ll be out of the Burg and moving to landmarked neighborhood.
Developers: Race You to the Top [NY Daily News]
The Bloomberg administration is really the ones falling down here in not stopping this building. The Dept. of City Planning totally met three times with the developer of the finger building and had an opportunity to stop the ridiculous transfer of development rights that permitted it. Yet they are saying publicly that their rezoning would solve the problem. Seems like that’s a bit disingenuous.
Would the administration allow this to happen in a Republican-leaning neighborhood? Fat chance. They’re all getting downzoned.
Why dont all you dog owners in Williamsburg pick up after your dogs? Before complaining about housing and parks and development. Maybe you should clean up after your own animals before worrying about other things like buildings.
Greenpoint Guy –
I appreciated most of your points. However, I’m confused at how the ‘finger building’ is ‘played out’. Maybe the label is, but that building and the developer/architect responsible for it (and many other hideous structures that do not mesh with any neighborhood they have built in…) is precisely the central piece to the point you and most of us have been making all along. It does not fit in with the neighborhood. It is 250 feet high, everything else on the block is 50 feet at most. To reiterate, it is 5 times larger then anything else in that immediate area. This is an egregious foul, executed by another in a long string of developers who build and profit handsomely outside of their own neighborhood. (Were there an open lot next to their own home would they build something 5 times as large?) And, there strategic execution of rampant disregard for community will not be solved by a few anthropology courses (I like the idea anyway) or the cliff notes of Jane Jacobs. They are profiteers and capitalists, intent on taking the whole pie, not even just a very large slice. For chrissakes, a 100 foot building would yield a huge profit – I’ve done the math.
For me, however, it is the representatives of that neighborhood – David Yassky et al – that have absolutely fallen down on the job. A building like that should have been laughed out of the DOB. Instead it, and many others, are going up unchecked. Why is this that? Perhaps it is for the same misconception that you cite, that Williamsburg is not Brownstone Brooklyn. While it has substantially more mixed use structures, there are literally hundreds – entire streets – of pre-19th century brownstones throughout Williamsburg that make up a neighborhood with a rich history. The aesthetic difference today is largely due to that neighborhood’s long depression enabling houses to fall apart, get covered in aluminum siding (or worse), increase C of O’s , build illegal extensions built, etc. Bottom line, Brooklyn Heights was only slightly less seedy in the early 70s when I lived there.
My only gripe about Curbed and Brownstoner is that there is not enough outing of these kinds of architectural fouls. Want more, see anything these two rookies every developed:
http://www.thedevelopersgroup.com/
http://www.scaranoarchitects.com/ (the animation to enter this is an endless loop of cheese, but entirely fitting for this firm)
Does anyone else think that Williamsburg is WAY OVERRATED?? The city has all these plans for these new hi-rises, yet nobody mentions the already over-crowded L train is the only way to get to Manhattan. Good luck to those buyers… I hope the developers of the new luxe buildings include helicopter landing pads on the roof cause they are gonna need ’em. Then there is the toxic land! Who is gonna clean it?? That huge oil spill of the 1950s near Newton Creek in Greenpoint was never cleaned up… not to mention all the years of Williamsburg industry that has polluted the land. But, nobody has mentioned that either… I just cannot fathom these prices based on pure hype. There is also no major grocery store, no movie theaters, no major drug store chain… I mean, I love that small-town feel — don’t get me wrong. But for 700K, if I am sick I wanna be able to get some friggin Robitussin.
i think the navy yard green corridor might simply be an upgraded bike path (along flushing ave) which will connect the major spaces in dumbo and wmsbrg. and i’m not sure that this stretch will necessarily have much “green” in it. don’t know for sure though.
rumor on the street is that the “development” at 297 driggs – currently casting its ugly shadow over beloved Enid’s – just received approval to add four additional stories. we were all wondering why they started framing before capping off the top…..
This reminds me: My understanding is that this park is going to extend– in a bike path or something– up past the Navy Yards to the park that’s planned in Williamsburg/Greenpoint. Does anybody a) know if that’s true, and b) understand how it’s going to work? Is the bike path going to go along Flushing Ave.?
I’ve been hoping they’ll squeeze something pretty & useful between the Navy Yards & the BQE, but I can’t quite figure out how they could.
As a new resident in the area, it is confounding how elected officials can stand by and let this sort of thing happen… Speaking of politicians, is anyone as dumbfounded as me by the ‘solution’ to the limited amount of affordable housing… if developers agree to build 15% affordable housing they can then build 20% higher buildings… how is that positive for the community? How about, in order to build 25 story buildings in front of previously unobstructed water views on the East River, you have to build 20% affordable housing…