Saturday, November 14, 2009

Brooklyn has worst case of "Bloomblight"

From the Daily News:

The city's count of stalled construction projects in the borough [of Brooklyn] has surged 42% since it began tracking them this summer, according to the Department of Buildings' latest statistics.

Brooklyn has the most stalled sites of any borough, with a total of 245. This makes up nearly half of the 527 buildings sitting unfinished citywide after the collapse of the housing market sent many developers packing.

"They went forward with all this stuff, and now we're paying the price," said community activist and Williamsburg resident Phil DePaolo, who said the metal frames and vacant lots strewn across his neighborhood are a magnet for drug addicts and homeless people.

"An area where you had factories and life, you [now] have emptiness and darkness, and it increases the fear factor in the community," he said.

Stalled sites in Manhattan have jumped 40% to 80, and have risen 38% to 25 in the Bronx. In Staten Island, the unfinished projects more than doubled to 33, and in Queens, they've risen 6% to 144.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a Queens resident I was shocked at the size and scope of diversity of industrial, commercial and residential areas driving the entire length of the BQE. The entire length is a construction site (last year) of all sorts of Condo in all areas pretty and especially gritty. Few or none related to the type architecture found nearby unless a structure had a gut rehab. All of these projects were in early or middle stages of construction, which most are now completed but empty or unfinished. What now?

Anonymous said...

What now?

Well hell, go over to Astoria where the fun is just getting underway!

No reason to stop just because the bottom of real estate market is about to fall out.

Anonymous said...

That is our stimulus money, tax dollars taken from services, and tax breaks that mean fees on everything is about to jump to cover the deficits.

Of course, the Chinese gave us the money (by buying our debt) expecting that we would use it to buy their goods, which, after sitting on docks, are now being sold to their own people.

Which means the Chinese are pissed, their people have discovered the magic of consumerism (and no longer the need to ship stuff to us), and we have lots of space to accomodate the floor of 3rd world who are ready to work for peanuts!

Anyone want to drive this story to its logical conclusion?

Anonymous said...

Anyone want to drive this story to its logical conclusion?

How do you say "screwed" in Chinese?