Former Bloomberg and de Blasio city planning official continues to get major developments from the city

  Crains New York

The city’s former chief urban designer is planning a 300,000-square-foot mixed-use project in Red Hook.

Alexandros Washburn, who worked as chief urban designer at the Department of City Planning from 2007 to 2014, filed plans Thursday with the Department of Buildings for the massive new project at 145 Wolcott St. According to the plans, the development will have 160,000 square feet of residential space, 74,326 square feet of commercial space and 65,675 square feet of manufacturing space, and it will stand 15 stories and 172 feet tall, with 210 residential units.

The site is currently home to a pair of transportation and utility buildings, according to the city.

Christopher Short of Arquitectonica is set to design the project, which will feature retail and office space, an art gallery and 314 parking spots, the filing says.

An LLC linked to W-G Capital Advisors bought the site last year for $21.5 million, according to property records. W-G Capital and Washburn declined to comment.

The Covid-19 pandemic forced construction on most projects in New York to come to a halt in March, but work restarted during the first phase of the city’s reopening in June. Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, previously told Crain’s that there should be enough work to get the construction industry through 2021 but that 2022 could be a difficult year.

Other major projects planned for Brooklyn include a roughly 385,000-square-foot mixed-use development at 496 Sutter Ave. in East New York from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and a roughly 70,000-square-foot commercial project in Gowanus from Avery Hall Investments.

 This guy is a one-man gentrification machine.

 

Red Hook field hospital opens too late and goes to waste

NY Post

 A roughly $21 million Brooklyn field hospital authorized by the de Blasio administration at the height of the coronavirus pandemic opened and closed without ever seeing one patient, according to city officials.


The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook was one of several sites across the five boroughs converted into a medical facility as a way to relieve the city’s overburdened hospital system as the COVID-19 crisis mounted.


Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans on Mar. 31 — a day after the USNS Comfort hospital ship arrived in New York Harbor to aid in the coronavirus fight — for the $20.8 million Red Hook field hospital with an estimated capacity for 750 beds.
 
The field hospital was built by Texas-based construction company SLSCO.

Chalk up another pop-up medical care facility going unused and millions and millions and millions of tax dollars descended into the void.

Cuomo to propose subway to Red Hook

From NBC:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo plans to ask the MTA to explore the creation of a new subway connecting Red Hook and Manhattan in his state of the state address Wednesday.

Cuomo will call on the Port Authority to relocate its maritime shipping activities at Red Hook to the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park so that the Red Hook waterfront can be freed up for "more productive community use," he said in a press release.

He's also asking the MTA to study options for improving transportation access to Red Hook and other nearby neighborhoods, including potentially extending subway service from lower Manhattan to a new station in Red Hook through an underwater tunnel.

Typically, a new subway tunnel would take years to build and cost billions.

BQX would hinder BQE reconstruction

From the Times Ledger:

Transit honchos in charge of fixing the dilapidated Brooklyn–Queens Expressway want the mayor to hit the breaks on his controversial $2.5-billion streetcar plan because the two massive infrastructure projects will butt heads.

The Department of Transportation must repair the 1.5-mile stretch of the decrepit roadway between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street in Brooklyn Heights before the triple cantilever — which runs beneath the neighborhood’s promenade and above Furman Street — crumbles beneath the weight of the thousands of big-rigs that rumble across it daily.

But Hizzoner’s plan to lay 14 miles of light-rail tracks from Sunset Park to the outer borough of Queens that would run along streets in Red Hook, Fort Greene, Dumbo, and Brooklyn Heights, including on Atlantic Avenue, will impact the city’s work on the expressway and cause even more chaos on the local thoroughfares, according to the city’s Deputy Commissioner of Bridges.

“I had a conversation with somebody who was working on the BQX. They are thinking about it going down Atlantic Avenue and across Columbia [Street], and I said ‘Look we’re going to be there, I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ ” Bob Collyer said during a public meeting about repairs to the expressway’s triple cantilever on Dec. 11. “That’s as far as we got.”

No good deed goes unpunished

From PIX11:

Neighbors say the empty lot on the corner of Columbia and Woodhull streets needed the clean up.

"It looked like hell," said Roger who works right next door. "It was rodent infested."

So [Louis] Formisano started cleaning.

Formisano said items in the lot ranged from refrigerators to rodents.

"I caught 13 possums," he said.

Despite the undeniable improvement, a neighbor called the city and reported Formisano for trespassing.

The Department of Housing and Development put a padlock on the gate and told Louis to hit the road and take his things with him.

His things? A riding mower and some Christmas decorations he used to decorate the lot each year.

HPD accused him of cutting a city lock and using the lot as his own backyard, which Formisano denies.

Police evidence destroyed by storm

From the NY Times:

Perched on a narrow crook of land jutting into New York Harbor, the Erie Basin auto pound and evidence warehouse seems a logical place to store hundreds of seized cars, thousands of guns and 9,846 barrels of evidence containing sensitive DNA material.

It is easy for the New York Police Department to safeguard the secluded bunker, in Red Hook, Brooklyn, from potential thieves.

But not, it turns out, from the surrounding water.

As Hurricane Sandy lashed the city, the surge breached the warehouse’s roll-top doors and hurtled hundreds — perhaps thousands — of its barrels into the wet muck. The storm wreaked similar havoc at another Police Department warehouse by the water, along Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Now, the damage is having an impact on the courts.

In at least six criminal trials in recent weeks, a police official has had to testify that evidence was inaccessible, but still existed, said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers said they were concerned that many more cases could emerge. “This is likely to be the tip of the iceberg,” said Steven Banks, chief lawyer for the Legal Aid Society.

Concrete king owes $20M in fines

From DNA Info:

The Brooklyn developer and concrete tycoon who hopes to expand his Red Hook shipping terminal with toxic landfill owes the state tens of thousands of dollars in fines for illegally dumping into Gowanus Bay.

Records show the amount John Quadrozzi is on the hook for could be as much as $20 million.

Quadrozzi, the owner of Gowanus Bay Terminal and the 46-acre Gowanus Industrial Park in Red Hook, left a large pile of potentially contaminated fill on a broken pier near the bay in May 2006, according to court documents provided by the state's Department of Environmental Conservation.

The fill, comprised of dirt and other unknown materials, washed into the water during high tide shortly afterward. The pollution "compromised the ecology of the shoreline," the DEC said in an email to DNAinfo.com New York.

"Since the origin and composition of the material is unknown, it is…possible (not certain) that the material contained chemical constituents that would…not be acceptable in tidal waters," a DEC attorney wrote.

"The environmental consequences may have included... the clouding of waterways and interfering with the habitat of living things that depend on those waters."

The DEC ordered Gowanus Industrial Park to pay the state $60,000 in civil penalties in May 2007, an amount that was to be submitted in 10 monthly installments through 2008. The company has yet to pay $45,000 of that original fine.

The DEC also directed GIP to remove an 18-foot-tall, 200-foot-long corrugated metal fence it had installed without permission between Henry Street Basin and the Red Hook Recreation Area, which effectively walled-off the area's waterfront views.

Quadrozzi and his company ultimately fought both orders and submitted only the first three payments totalling $15,000, the DEC said.

They also left the fence in place for more than a year, contending that it kept trespassers out of the terminal and "promote[d] the health of the people of the State of New York by preventing a spreading of dust" — a claim the DEC labelled "a stretch at best," according to court documents.

Quadrozzi and GIP eventually removed the fence in 2009, but only after an appeals court found their contentions against removing the fence "without merit."

The fines could multiply hundreds of times over. In 2008, the DEC filed suit seeking $10,500 for each day the remainder of the outstanding $60,000 fine has not been paid since May 23, 2007, plus an additional $10,000. To date, that amounts to nearly $20 million.

The fines, however, have not stopped Quadrozzi from seeking to expand the Gowanus Bay Terminal, located in Gowanus Industrial Park.

Sounds just a little insane

From DNA Info:

Brooklyn concrete magnate John Quadrozzi wants to take toxic sludge dredged from the Gowanus Canal Superfund site, ship it by barge to Red Hook and dump it into the Gowanus Bay to expand a shipping terminal he owns.

The proposal, discussed at a Brooklyn Community Board 6 committee meeting Monday night, would allow Quadrozzi's Gowanus Bay Terminal on Columbia Street to accommodate larger ocean-going ships by extending the terminal into deeper waters.

The plan would also create more land above water, adding to the property that Quadrozzi rents to industrial businesses.

Many questions — from who would pay for which parts of the project, to what exactly will be dredged from the canal, to where the sludge will be shipped, how it will be treated, and whether Quadrozzi can even legally expand his terminal — have not been addressed.

Cleanup of the Gowanus Canal, [Quadrozzi's spokesperson] said, would involve dredging only the lowest-level contaminants, which would then be mixed with a "concrete-like…stabilizing material" that could safely be deposited in open water as landfill.

PCBs found in Red Hook park

From the NY Post:

The grassy fields of a park in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn are contaminated with PCBs at a level 110 times what New York environmental agencies consider safe, according to court records filed in a lawsuit by New York and six other states against bankrupt Chemtura Corp.

Linked to liver cancer, low birth weight and loss of motor skills, PCBs pose a threat to park visitors and nearby residents, said Judith Schreiber, chief scientist in the State Attorney General's Environmental Bureau.

State and city health and environmental agencies declined to comment or said they weren't aware of the risks at the 58-acre park, a popular spot for soccer games and family picnics.

Chemtura has resisted demands by the state environmental bureau that it clean up contamination from a leak at its plant, which abuts the park.

"Contamination at the site and in or near the recreation area is at unacceptable levels from a human-exposure perspective," Schreiber wrote in an April 22 affidavit in Manhattan federal court.

Gentrification of the area over the last 15 years has coincided with the opening of large retail outlets, including an Ikea furniture store and a Fairway supermarket, a passenger cruise-ship terminal, cafes and wine stores.

With the neighborhood's resurgence, use of the contaminated park has increased. Red Hook Park hosts soccer tournaments and food vendors that draw large crowds.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, have been banned since 1979. The chemical doesn't break down easily, building up in human and animal tissue, as well as in food chains.

Regulators have fought for a decade with Chemtura and the plant's former owner, Crompton Corp., which merged with another firm in 2005 to form the now-bankrupt company.