Small Protest Over Glassy PLG Tower
Hawthorne Street has an item on a protest held this weekend over a developer’s plan to build a 20-story tower in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The blog takes a dim view of the proceedings, saying that while protesters claim they’re against the tower because it might increase rents in the neighborhood, their main concern with the…
Hawthorne Street has an item on a protest held this weekend over a developer’s plan to build a 20-story tower in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The blog takes a dim view of the proceedings, saying that while protesters claim they’re against the tower because it might increase rents in the neighborhood, their main concern with the development is actually its height: “The real objective behind the formation of CRGPLG seems to be stopping a tall building from going up near Lefferts Manor. If that means shifting blame for the basic economics of supply and demand, exaggerated warnings about the coming avian holocaust, or stoking fears about gentrification, so be it. It may all be moot anyway. As the protest was going on, a backhoe was busily moving about the site.” Anyone on the ground in PLG who can tell us more about what neighbors are thinking about the tower?
Saturday’s Tower Protest Weak and Misguided [Hawthorne Street]
Glassy Tower Planned for PLG [Brownstoner]
Huh? Increase in renters is not a bad thing, 12:13. People have to live somewhere and not everybody buys a place.
Renters renting in the new condo buildings in Brooklyn that couldn’t sell are great to have around. They are young professionals. They spend money locally at restaurants and stores. And that improves amenities way more than families who always stay at home in their one-family houses and do not eat out and drink a lot in local bars. Also don’t forget the two commercial floors on the bottom of this building and the developer’s efforts to find decent tenants for those spaces.
It’s win-win.
i live pretty close and I’m looking forward to when this building is built. I think it its residents will support more restaurants, grocery stores, etc, that LG desparately needs.
I doubt that 12 people yelling and beating drums is going to accomplish anything remotely genuine.
Rallies and marches are useless and typically require little, if any, planning or energy. They usually give participants a feeling that something worthwhile has been done, when, in reality, nothing has changed.
As a LM resident, my concern about the building is the increase in the number of renters. Based on what is happening to almost all new “condo” developments, it seems highly likely that this will go rental too. Taht’s a lot of new short-term people for the area to absorb.
In general, I think the PRO faction is out of there minds in terms of what they expect this project to do. I fail to see how it is going to radically gentrify the area, as they expect. The CON faction is just silly.
Wasn’t the Dakota already built by the time Olmsted was finishing Central Park? It towered over the landscape at the time.
We have to ask these people to provide exact quotes as well as references to sources for their claims that Olmsted believed nothing tall would ever be built around his parks. The idea for these parks was to create a green oasis in what all the city planners at the time knew was a city that would continue to grow and grow and grow. And the technology for tall buildings was there and was happening. For them not to think tall buildings could or would ever be built near the parks of NYC is too hard to believe.
If people are worried about violating Olmsted and Vaux’s pastoral masterpiece, we should also get rid of the baseball fields and ice rink. And women should start wearing whalebone corset stays again. And we can all get cholera. Those were the days!
Not protesting the building, just the snotty attitude of the blogger
Most of those protesting this building do not live “next door” to it. They are in Lefferts Manor or the residential streets of PLG, which are long avenue blocks away from it.
They conveniently ignore the fact there are two 17 story buildings only one block away from this building site. Nice, doorman buildings at that. Whose presence when they were built a few decades ago raised the rent in the neighborhood.
If New York City can’t build high density housing on a huge commercial artery right next to mass transportation (both subway and bus stop) then where can they build it?
“Unless you lived next door to it, right gabby?”
This building is on a commercial strip right next to an above-ground subway and bus stops. It’s not a residential block.