A familiar story from Brooklyn

Courtesy of Pardon Me for Asking:

Is 100 Luquer, the vastly out-of-context 11-story Carroll Gardens finger building designed by architect Karl Fischer, showing signs of life after months and months of inactivity at the construction site?

After a few stop work orders, new permits have been issued on November 3, 2010 and for the last couple of days, workers have been observed behind the plywood fence. Yesterday, as I was walking by, someone was measuring a balcony (see photo above.)

Construction of the building began in 2007 and has been stop-and-go ever since. The site has racked up 54 complaints and 7 out of 20 Environmental Control Board (ECB) violations are still open, with some hefty financial fines now due.

That did not prevent the NYC Department Of Buildings from issuing post-approval amendments in early November. Permits attached to the fence at the site suggest that work can resume on electric and plumbing, but does not allow concrete work.

Unfortunately, the construction of this building began before the Carroll Gardens Contextual Re-Zoning was passed in October 2009. The re-zoning limits the height of buildings in the neighborhood.

A sad story from Brooklyn

From Pardon Me For Asking:

No building in Carroll Gardens illustrated the need for a neighborhood down-zoning better than the condo conversion at 333-335 Carroll Street, between Hoyt and Bond Streets. Back in 2005, owner Issac Fischman hired bad boy architect Robert "Mezzanine" Scarano to convert an old brick manufacturing building into a 31 unit condo. As part of the plans, a two story, 40 foot steel addition was erected on top of the old structure.

Alarmed residents asked the NYC Department of Buildings to review the plans, which revealed that Robert Scarano had been more than creative with the floor-air-ratio calculations. The Building's Department confirmed in March 2008, that the architect has lied on the application, claiming that the cellar was a basement. Scarano intended to use the "habitable" basement for parking and had transferred the square footage onto the roof.

The building's owner fired Scarano and the site was slapped with a full stop work order on March 4th 2008. Since that time, the empty building has been dormant. In the meantime, the neighborhood got organized and with the help of the Department of City Planning, was able to down-zone Carroll Gardens, in order to protect this historical neighborhood from out-of-scale developments such as 333-335 Carroll Street.

Unlike the original R6 zoning, the new R6B zoning has a 50 foot height limit. The City Council voted unanimously for the re-zoning on October 28, 2009. It went into effect immediately.

Unbeknown to local residents, the building's owner hired another controversial architect, Karl Fischer, to resolve his building's woes. Fischer, the architect behind the 11 story 'finger' at 100 Luquer street, filed for an amendement, which he self-certified. The record show an audit was accepted on October 16, just days before the new R6B zoning went into effect.

Since this was first reported, the site was hit with a stop work order.