Because $7M for a boat club just isn't enough...

UPDATE: I was just reminded that the boathouse was the #3 vote-getter during the process. The Dutch Kills park was actually #1. So how did the boathouse vault to the top of the list? That needs to be investigated as well.


Besides the $7M from the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant settlement, Greenpoint is eligible for $19.5M from the Exxon oil spill settlement:

"The Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund is a $19.5 million grant program launched in 2011 by the NYS Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Environmental Conservation (the State). Funding for the GCEF was obtained by the State in a settlement with ExxonMobil over its Greenpoint oil spill. The overall goal of the GCEF is to secure significant environmental improvements in Greenpoint. More specifically, the GCEF is:

• Designed to support projects that address the community’s environmental priorities, such as improving water quality, groundwater, open space, toxic pollution and air quality.
• Committed to a transparent and objective process, and to engaging and partnering with the Greenpoint community. This includes ensuring the community has a direct, continuing role in guiding the GCEF’s development and implementation.

The State established a Greenpoint Community Advisory Panel (CAP) -- a group of Greenpoint residents, representatives of local organizations and elected officials -- to provide direct, ongoing input to the State on the GCEF. The CAP has played a central role in guiding the Fund's development and implementation, including helping to create the process used for selecting a General Administrator for the GCEF, as well as for soliciting, evaluating, and selecting projects to receive grant funding."

Some members of the advisory panel:

• Christine Holowacz, GWAPP (sponsoring NBBC for Wastewater Treatment Plant money)
  
• Dewey Thompson, North Brooklyn Boat Club
  
• Gina Argento, builder of hotel where boathouse will be located
  
• Kate Zidar, Newtown Creek Alliance (sponsoring NBBC for Wastewater Treatment Plant money)
  
• Katie Denny, Open Space Alliance (sponsoring NBBC for Exxon settlement money)
  
• Michael Heimbinder, Newtown Creek Alliance
  
• Phillip Muesgaas, Riverkeeper (sharing office space with boat club)
  
• Ronald Van Cooten, LaGuardia College (sharing programming with boat club)
  

What's wrong with this picture?  All of these people have a connection to the North Brooklyn Boat Club's boathouse project and they sit on an advisory board which will determine whether or not the project, which appears on the preliminary list 5 times, is worthy of funding. From the list of preliminary projects:

• Green roof on boathouse
• Additional funding for North Brooklyn boat club on Newtown Creek
• Fund purchase of boats for, or building of boats at, boathouse being constructed with Newtown Creek EBP funds at GMDC
• Expand boathouse to create youth employment via boat-building
• Kayaking program for Bushwick Inlet

From July 2013 minutes:

A CAP member asked for clarification on whether the construction of new buildings would be considered an eligible project and the conversation turned to whether it would be helpful to produce a list of ineligible projects? The GA explained at this time it is impossible to say whether a specific proposal would be eligible or ineligible because that decision is based upon review process and screening factors described in the RFP. But the RFP will describe ineligible project types to receive funding from the GCEF. The GA agreed to create a checklist for prospective applications with ineligibility criteria. However, the GA pointed out that a proposal for construction of a new building would have to meet a very high bar to be considered eligible for funding. The building would have to provide multiple environmental benefits, funds could be provided for specific environmental enhancements associated with the building such as solar panels etc., the applicant would have to have site control, and provide a high match.

Interesting how they ask if construction of a new building will be covered, and then the following month, Gina Argento suddenly is added to the board.

From August 2013 conference call:

CAP Recruitment. Filip Stabrowski, NBDC, announced the addition of four new CAP members:
Gina Argento of Broadway Stages
Heidi Shea Springer of Greenpoint Gardens
Joanna Micek an Independent Consultant
Ronald VanCooten of LaGuardia College
This brings the total number of voting CAP members to 15.

(No minutes have been posted since October. The panel has monthly meetings.  There was a deadline of December 2013 for submission of grant proposals, but there has been no update as to which were submitted before the deadline.)

These are large grant pre-proposals:

**** Applicant: Open Space Alliance For North Brooklyn, Inc
Title: Greenpoint Marine Environmental Center (GMEC) (#42888)
Description: This project proposes a fully developed marine environmental education center near the mouth of Newtown Creek, to connect residents with the plethora of issues and conditions present in our local waterbodies. The center will be part of the 10,000 square foot Greenpoint Boathouse and Environmental Education Center. Location: 437 McGuinness Blvd. at Ash Street.
Grant Request: $135,000
Matching Funds: $112,500
Contact Information: Kurt Cavanaugh, gcef@osanb.org, (347) 842-7915

**** Applicant: Open Space Alliance For North Brooklyn, Inc
Title: Environmental Education Shed (ED Shed) (#42742)
Description: The ED Shed is a hands-on environmental educational and research outpost dedicated to establishing and elevating the connection between Greenpoint residents and their surrounding marine environs.
Location: The North Brooklyn Boat Club (NBBC) - 437 McGuinness Blvd. at Ash Street, Greenpoint. The Ed Shed is located 100 feet from the Newtown Creek shore and the North Brooklyn Boat Club floating dock.
Grant Request: $24,426 Matching Funds: $3,600
Contact Information: Kurt Cavanaugh, gcef@osanb.org, (347) 842-7915

**** Applicant: Open Space Alliance For North Brooklyn, Inc
Title: Floating Classrooms on Greenpoint's Waterways (#42037)
Description: The North Brooklyn Boat Club will expand environmental education on Greenpoint’s waterways through the purchase and deployment of two large canoes and the development of an educational curriculum.
Location: Greenpoint Grant Request: $24,693
Matching Funds: $25,000 Contact Information: Kurt Cavanaugh, gcef@osanb.org, (347) 842-7915

And all this conflict of interest was found on a website operated by 

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the NYSDEC.

Miss Heather has more on the phoniness of the organizations involved in this whole thing. It's definitely worth a read to those who are opposed to tweeding, which this is in its most blatant form.

It's time to BRING IN THE FEDS.

Something reeks at Newtown Creek (and it isn't the water)!

Miss Heather has posted some eye-opening screenshots that seem to indicate that the Argentos of Knockdown Center fame have pulled another fast one on communities on both sides of Newtown Creek. How did they accomplish this? Let’s take a trip back in time to 2010…

Back then, it was announced that the City Parks Foundation was looking for participants to attend meetings to help determine how the Newtown Creek Environmental Benefit Project Funds were to be distributed. People from both sides of the Creek were invited to share their wishes, and ultimately a vote was taken to determine the top finalists.

Here is the list that was published after the vote tally:

The list was vetted by DEC and the NY Attorney General's office, and the final result was this:

You’ll note that a boathouse was the number one vote-getter. It wasn't. It actually came in third, but for some reason, it was given priority over the other projects ahead of it. It’s also controversial because the Dept of Health actually doesn’t want people paddling around Newtown Creek for health reasons, but the Parks Dept & City Planning convinced them to keep it on the list.

Christine Holowacz and "Commodore" Dewey Thompson.
Photo by Stefano Giovannini from the Brooklyn Paper.

Christine Holowacz is often referred to as a Greenpoint “community activist”. She and "Commodore" Dewey Thompson (that's what he prefers to be called) are allied with GWAPP, which is the group that pushed for the boathouse with a massive get-out-the-vote drive, including relentless blast e-mails. GWAPP members are also members of various other astroturf groups that were created to make it appear that the whole area wants a boathouse.

GWAPP seems to be under the impression that the entire $7M in Creek funds is theirs:

On October 25, 2011, the DEC and CPF submitted a letter [PDF (3.5MB)] approving the funds of the EBP to building out the boathouse, promising up to $7 million for the project. Runner-up projects would receive any leftover funding that was not used in the creation of the boathouse, however those project cannot receive funding until the principal project, the boathouse, is completed.

Unless there were some closed door shenanigans that we are not aware of, that is not the case. They were approved for $3M as noted in the screenshot above.

The address of the boathouse, as per the Newtown Creek website started December 2013, is now 437 McGuinness Blvd, aka 51 Ash Street. The website also says, "Holowacz and Thompson are currently working to finalize a location to house the boathouse and environmental education center."

Finalize a location? Why is that? The project was approved for 1155 Manhattan Avenue, the site of the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center. These are very specific, detailed plans, incorporating the architecture and history of the previously proposed site. How can they just pick up and move to a not-yet-built site? And how is DEC ok with this?

So, what do you get when you pull up the DOB filing for 51 Ash Street? An application to build a 4-story hotel, with a “private club” listed as the "community facility" that allows the owner to build larger than what is normally allowed. The owner? None other than Broadway Stages, co-owned by Gina and Tony Argento! If the "private club" is temporary, then how do they calculate an augmented FAR based on its inclusion?  Could it be the new permanent home of the North Brooklyn Boat Club?

Is the "Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning" actually pushing for a private boathouse? How do so-called environmentalists sleep at night knowing they have sold out their community to people who "lack good character, honesty and integrity" in exchange for a boathouse? The club currently charges $40 for membership per year. How can public funds be released to build a boathouse that is only open to members? Who the hell in Greenpoint, outside of these charlatans, wants to see a boathouse built with environmental settlement money inside a hotel right next to the Pulaski Bridge?

Bottom line: GWAPP is getting the money for their private club, the Argentos are getting an FAR increase to build a bigger hotel, and everyone benefits except the rest of the neighborhood.

AND NOW LET’S GET TO QUEENS.
From City Parks Foundation:

The Dutch Kills Basin Park Project proposed to construct a park with athletic fields and waterfront access. The proposed park location is along 47th Avenue between 27th and 29th Streets, in the area adjoining the Dutch Kills basin. Long Island City Roots is serving as the primary community representative for the proposed project. City Parks Foundation partnered with The Trust for Public Land (TPL) in evaluating the proposed park location. TPL submitted a letter of inquiry to the property owners of the parcels required to construct the park in the proposed location. The property owners did not respond to TPL’s letter. While awaiting response from the property owners, City Parks Foundation contracted with Goodman-Marks Associates to perform an appraisal of the proposed park location. The appraised value of the property greatly exceeded the proposed project budget. Given this information, DEC determined that the initial project location is infeasible. CPF is currently working with Long Island City community groups in an attempt to find an alternate location.

The decision posted in the second photo above states,

“If after all the projects in the primary group are implemented or projects have been determined to be infeasible to implement and additional mitigation funds remain uncommitted, the State will propose a prioritized list of projects for implementation from the secondary group.”

The language is quite clear. If a project isn’t going to happen, then it’s removed from the list and the DEC draws from the second group. It doesn't say that they'll sit and wait for the people behind a project to scramble to find an alternate location. Yet that is exactly what is happening with the Greenpoint Boathouse and the Dutch Kills Basin Park Project.

Wouldn’t it have been smarter to fund them in the order that they were ready to go? For example, planting trees could have been first and would already be making an impact. If the St. Saviour’s ULURP had been funded back in 2011, there might have been a park at that site instead of warehouses. The DEC knocked that relatively inexpensive item off the list completely, yet kept the construction of the park on, which expedited the death of the project.

The Pulaski Bridge Study was ready to go.
Renovation of McCarren Park would be finished by now.
The Greenpoint Monitor Museum was ready to go as well. (Oooooh, but that would have held back the development of the greenway along the coast! We can’t have that. The site of the Monitor Museum has been proposed for public restrooms. Which means the city will eventually own it. Which means eminent domain.)

Instead everyone now must sit by and wait for a hotel to be built next to the Pulaski Bridge. Because the actual polluting of the Creek wasn't enough punishment.

More to come! Stay tuned!