Lincoln Restler's Illegal Agency Capture Mural

Impunity City

Riding my bike on Flushing Avenue two way bike lane on a very brisk January afternoon by the Brooklyn Navy Yard there was a very peculiar sight. A large mural on a commercial warehouse building featuring the name of current city council member of the 33rd District  Lincoln Restler was featured on it. Thankfully there wasn’t a picture of his mug there, but what made it odd is what else was written on it.

According to the information that seems to be advertised here, the borough of Brooklyn loves Council member Restler (and also safe streets) and also a date to vote on June 22. That date just happens to be the primary he won last year against about over a half dozen other candidates leading to his inevitable victory running virtually unopposed on election day in November. Yet this mural campaign advertisement has remained there during that time between primary and general election and still remains to this day in Mid-January.

Wonder why is that? And the other wondrous thing about this campaign mural ad is that it hasn’t been tagged over with graffiti, even though the Restler campaign deftly painted over a couple tags that are still visible,usually you would get your ass kicked for desecrating another graffiti artists work for that breach of street art protocol. Yet Restler’s campaign mural is still immaculate.

Brooklyn doesn't want streetcar

From DNA Info:

Downtown Brooklyn residents “don’t need” the mayor’s proposed streetcar running through their neighborhood, locals told city officials at a Tuesday meeting, citing the high cost to taxpayers and the disruption to traffic.

Officials from the Department of Transportation and the Economic Development Corporation presented proposed routes for the Brooklyn-Queens Connector, dubbed the BQX, through Downtown Brooklyn and the surrounding neighborhoods at a Community Board 2 Transportation Committee Meeting.

Proposed routes such as Flushing Avenue and Cadman Plaza East would take riders past the transit-starved Brooklyn Navy Yard and make connections to transit hubs including Borough Hall.

“You cannot maintain all the lanes of traffic, maintain all the sidewalk width, all the bike lanes and all parking lanes — that’s not possible,” BQX Director Adam Giambrone said. “There will be tradeoffs that need to be made.”

Residents and community board members raised opposition to the streetcar — which will cost $2.5 billion to build and $30 million annually to operate — calling the costs unnecessary and instead suggested the city spend the money on additional buses in the area.

It's all about the incentives

From Crains:

When Cumberland Packing Corp. said it would stop production at Sweet’N Low’s Brooklyn Navy Yard factory and lay off 320 people, the de Blasio administration did nothing. Public Advocate Letitia James demanded action, but the president of the Navy Yard, saying he was speaking for City Hall, issued a statement saying it was “unfortunate the global economic conditions in their industry forced [this] difficult decision to relocate.”

What Cumberland shows is that if the de Blasio administration’s goal is to grow the city’s manufacturing sector—and that’s what the mayor said last year—it can’t be done without incentives.

Monetary dispute shuts down Atlantic Yards construction

From the NY Times:

Forest City Ratner, the developer at the sprawling Atlantic Yards complex (renamed Pacific Park this month) in Brooklyn, boasted in 2012 that it had “cracked the code” sought by builders for more than a half-century, enabling the company to build residential, high-rise towers faster, better and more cheaply.

But a dark shadow was cast over those claims on Wednesday. Slow-moving work on the first tower shut down completely amid a battle over tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns between Forest City and its partner, Skanska, the giant Swedish construction company that is also the construction manager for the building.

This dispute over a high-profile development is unusually bitter and public, even for the typically rambunctious New York real estate industry.

Skanska on Wednesday unilaterally closed the factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard where 157 workers assembled and built the steel-framed modules for the first of a planned 14 prefabricated apartment buildings, at Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street.

A day earlier, Skanska ceased work at the construction site, where the building rises to only 10 floors of its 32-story height, 21 months after work started.

Admiral's Row supermarket: take 3

From Crains:

The Brooklyn Navy Yard, the huge industrial park on the East River waterfront below Williamsburg, is hoping that three's a charm for a large development site called Admiral's Row on the property's southwest corner.

On Monday, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. released a request for proposals to build a big supermarket there, as well as additional retail space that could house shops or restaurants and more office and industrial space.

It is the third time that the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp., the nonprofit that operates the area, solicited developers for the site in as many years after two previous winners for the site, PA Associates and subsequently Blumenfeld Development Group, were dropped.

The nonprofit predicts that the project will require more than $100 million of investment and will generate 500 jobs. The deal will be structured so that the winning developer will lease the site long term.

David Ehrenberg, the president and CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, said the development would provide both the neighborhood and the 300-acre Navy Yard complex with a long-needed go-to place for groceries.

"This area currently qualifies as a food desert," Mr. Ehrenberg said. "We wanted to provide a supermarket for the surrounding community and also give the growing numbers of workers at the Navy Yard a place to eat and get a cup of coffee."

The Admiral's Row development will also allow the Navy Yard to add about 127,000 square feet of office and industrial space. That square footage will largely be on the second floor of a new building that will house the supermarket on its ground floor.

Admiral's Row is named for the stately, but now badly deteriorated houses at the site that once housed the base's top naval brass. Those buildings have decayed to the point where they will have to be razed, Mr. Ehrenberg said. But two structures, one of the houses and also a historic lumber shed are required to be fully refurbished as part of the RFP. Those could be home to shops or restaurants in the new development, he said.

New flood zones sink Navy Yard project

From Crains:

Blumenfeld Development Group has been dropped as the builder of the $100 million Admiral's Row project, an expansion to the 300-acre industrial space in Brooklyn that is slated to include a supermarket and shopping center, Crain's has learned.

The move comes more than a year after the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development, the nonprofit that manages the city-owned site, selected Blumenfeld to build a 74,000 square-foot supermarket, 86,000 square feet of retail space and 125,000 square feet of industrial space at the city-owned industrial park. Blumenfeld was one of several companies to respond to a request for proposals to develop the project.
Navy Yard President and Chief Executive David Ehrenberg said in a statement that Blumenfeld failed to meet its end of the contract, declining to elaborate on the reasons for change in plans. Under the agreement, Blumenfeld was supposed to be granted a long-term lease at the site after selecting a supermarket operator. A supermarket has not been picked. Blumenfeld was slated to break ground on the development this year.

"We are still committed to Admiral's Row being anchored by a supermarket that meets the community's needs and an industrial facility that supports our core mission," Mr. Ehrenberg said. "The city-approved site plan remains in place and we are evaluating our options for moving forward."

Blumenfeld said it is no longer involved in the Navy Yard because the project became untenable after changes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's preliminary revised flood zones. The change would increase flood insurance premiums and construction costs, the developer noted.

Plumbers sue Ratner over prefab construction

From the Daily News:

Developer Bruce Ratner's plan to build pre-fab apartment buildings at his Atlantic Yards complex dangerously ignores key building safety rules, union workers charge in a bombshell lawsuit.

The Plumbing Foundation claims in its suit that the Building Department is wrongly allowing Ratner to build the first phase of the $4.9 billion, 15-building residential and commercial project without using licensed plumbers and fire suppression contractors.

Because Ratner is using pre-fabricated — or modular — units, more than 60% of the construction of the project surrounding the Barclays Center is expected to be completed off-site.

The modules currently being built at the Brooklyn Naval Yard includes plumbing, gas and sprinkler piping for the world's tallest modular building, a 32-story residential structure named B2, slated to rise at Dean St. and Flatbush Ave.

But that construction is not being done by licensed workers, a violation of the city's strict building Administrative Code, according to the lawsuit.

Brooklyn Navy Yard hit hard by Sandy

From the Daily News:

Dozens of Brooklyn Navy Yard businesses were socked by hurricane floodwaters that threaten their survival.

Businesses at the city-owned Fort Greene waterfront industrial park that were hurt in the storm include the maker of Sweet ‘N Low and manufacturer IceStone - headed by the former magnate of Tweezerman - where 39 workers’ jobs are on the line.

At least 40 companies at the Navy Yard suffered an estimated $50 million in losses because of Superstorm Sandy, according to an initial tally by Navy Yard officials, spokesman Lee Silberstein said.

The complex is home to more than 275 businesses that employ about 6,000 workers.

Brooklyn is better but will never be "back"

From City Journal:

The problem is that these boutique businesses have a limited impact on the borough’s total economy. For all their energy and creativity, Brooklyn’s young entrepreneurs tend to have few employees, and they’re not likely to be hiring large numbers in the future. The factories of the past employed hundreds, if not thousands; Dumbo alone once had three firms that each employed more than 1,000. Today, Etsy, one of the area’s more successful companies, has a staff of just 180. The old Brooklyn Navy Yard now rents space to 275 businesses, employing 5,800 people. That’s an impressive rise from 3,600 in 2001, true. But compare it with the Yard at its World War II peak, when it had 71,000 workers, or in 1959, when it employed “only” 15,000. Even Brooklyn Brewery has only about 50 employees, small potatoes when you consider that Schaefer Beer’s Brooklyn factory—now a luxury building called Schaefer Landing—once had 1,000.

There are numerous reasons for the disappointing employment stats. For one thing, Brooklyn’s young companies often appeal only to niche markets, usually people like their owners. For another, they benefit from the technology-improved productivity of manufacturing throughout the United States; it takes fewer workers to produce beer or chocolate than it did in the past. And if the firms do grow and hire a lot more workers, chances are that they’ll relocate. It’s extremely expensive and endlessly aggravating to transport raw materials into, and finished products out of, a borough strangled by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Young businessfolks also face the familiar hurdles of all New York City firms: high taxes and burdensome regulations. It’s enough to bum out even the most idealistic hippie-entrepreneur.

Brooklyn’s story, then, doesn’t lend itself to a simple happy ending. Instead, the borough is a microcosm of the nation’s “hourglass economy.” At the top, the college-educated are doing interesting, motivating work during the day and bicycling home to enjoy gourmet beer and grass-fed beef after hours. At the bottom, matters are very different. Almost a quarter of Brooklyn’s 2.5 million residents live below the poverty line—in the housing projects of East New York, in the tenements of Brownsville, or in “transitional” parts of Bushwick and Bed-Stuy, all places where single-mother poverty has become an intergenerational way of life. Between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of the area’s population on welfare did decline markedly, but the number of Medicaid recipients almost tripled, to nearly 750,000. About 40 percent of Brooklyn’s total population receives some kind of public assistance today, up from 23 percent a decade ago.

To make matters worse, according to Crain’s New York Business, Brooklyn’s unemployment rate doubled between 2008 and 2009, a considerably higher rise than in Manhattan, Queens, or Staten Island. When manufacturing jobs do become available, they tend to require skills that high school graduates—and dropouts—lack. East New York and Brownsville also remain the highest-crime areas in New York.

And no one believes that’s transitional.

National Guard wants to junk Admirals' Row

From Brownstoner:

Here's the latest in depressing Admiral's Row news: According to Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Patch, last week the National Guard sent a letter to local politicians telling them Building B has been deemed beyond repair, which means the Guard has washed its hands of one of only two buildings on the row that were supposed to be preserved. In February, the National Guard said the other building that was supposed to be salvaged, the Timber Shed, was also too far gone to be preserved. According to last week's letter, one of Building B's walls has partially collapsed and is unstable. Thus, the Navy Guard is not going to make any moves to preserve either building while it has custodianship of the row; as noted last week, it's unclear when the Navy Yard Development Corporation will be able to take control of the row and, in the meantime, the Development Corp. is not allowed to access the buildings in order to try and preserve them.

Admirals' Row in limbo

From the NY Times:

In recent months, preservationists and some advocates in the neighborhood have embraced the Navy Yard corporation’s plan, agreeing to save the shed and just one town house — Quarters B, the oldest, but the one in the best condition — and tear down the remaining buildings. The cleared land would then make way for a supermarket that the 13,000 residents of the three nearby housing projects have long desired, a retail plaza and a new light-industry building.

The entire plan’s price tag is $70 million, with $10 million dedicated to renovating the two historic buildings, whose costs the developer would pay as part of the lease.

But the hope that the steady decay might finally be stanched has been set back by the National Guard’s resistance toward allowing any work that would stabilize the dilapidated Admiral’s Row structures as long as the Guard remains the custodian.

The property cannot be transferred to the Navy Yard corporation until a historical and environmental review is completed. How long that process will take is unclear, and until then Admiral’s Row will remain in limbo.

Navy Yard needs new developer

From the Real Deal:

The non-profit Brooklyn Navy Yard Development removed PA Associates as a designated developer on its high-profile Admiral's Row project a day after one of the firm's founders was charged in a $1 million federal bribery investigation. The quasi-governmental entity today “terminated the designation of PA Admirals Row LLC as the developer of the Admiral's Row site," the corporation said in a statement to The Real Deal. PA Admirals Row LLC is an affiliate of Midtown-based PA Associates, which was approved as the developer to partner with grocery chain ShopRite on the $60 million project to build a grocery store. Yesterday federal prosecutors charged Aaron Malinsky, a principal and founder of PA Associates, of funneling $472,500 in bribes to State Senator Carl Kruger.

Electeds call for repair of Navy Yard structure

From HDC Blog:

February 28, 2011

The Honorable John McHugh
Secretary of the Army
1400 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1400

Dear Secretary McHugh:

We are concerned about the historic structures of national significance on the Admirals Row site at the Army’s former Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. Admirals Row is a six-acre section of the property which was vacated in the mid-1970’s but has remained in federal control. We ask that you ensure quick action to allow emergency stabilization of the Timber Shed and Building B in advance of the planned property transfer, while also completing the transfer expeditiously. These historic structures are severely deteriorated and in need of emergency repairs and stabilization if they are to be saved.

The National Guard Bureau (NGB) has identified these two buildings on the site to save. However, due to agency constraints is unable to perform the needed work on the Timber shed. The potential and likely purchaser, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (BNYDC), which controls the remainder of the Yard, has communicated their willingness to undertake that work, but has been unable to obtain the necessary agreement from the Army Corps of Engineers and the NGB. The BNYDC has successfully executed other building preservation efforts at the yard, and is the designated agent of the City of New York to which the property is slated for transfer, by an act of Congress.

It is disappointing to see these historic structures further deteriorate while their preservation is held up by administrative processes. The 1853 Timber Shed is the last remaining of its type in the country and Building B would be the only one of the row buildings preserved. Understanding that the Department of the Army takes its responsibilities for historic preservation seriously, the current delays are surely the result of well-intentioned actors. However, the urgency of the situation needs to be addressed. We understand that two million dollars of federal funding has been identified for preservation of this property. We applaud that level of commitment by the Department of the Army, and ask that while the transfer paperwork is being completed, all efforts be made to hasten the site access by BNYDC to perform the urgent stabilization work on these two historic structures.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Schumer, United States Senator
Kirsten E. Gillibrand, United States Senator
Edolphus “Ed” Towns, United States Representative
Nydia Velázquez, United States Representative

Admiral's Row building in danger of collapse

Photo from Gothamist

From the Daily News:

A historic Admiral's Row building could soon be gone for good if the feds keep neglecting it, Navy Yard officials and preservationists have warned.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. plans to restore the 1830s-era Timber Shed - one of two Admiral's Row buildings they agreed to save from the wrecking ball after a long fight.

But unless the 19th-century structure is stabilized, it could collapse this winter before the group gets its hands on the property, now owned by the National Guard.

And it's not just the Timber Shed that's at risk - a $60 million deal to develop the site with a supermarket and industrial space could also fall through if it crumbles, officials said.

"The building is in real distress. The roof is starting to fall in," said Navy Yard Development Corp. President Andrew Kimball. "If action isn't taken very, very soon to stabilize the building, it will collapse."

Part of the roof of the Timber Shed - which was used to store ships' masts while they cured and is believed to be the last such structure of its kind in the country - already caved in during a snowstorm last winter.

Experts say the building can still be saved, but could be beyond repair if it's damaged further. Navy Yard officials hope to rehab it along with one of the stately former officers' homes that make up the. The rest will be razed to make way for a ShopRite and industrial space.

Saving the shed is a required part of the city's development deal with the federal government, Kimball said, adding that demolishing it "could jeopardize the whole project."

The feds have begun the process to sell the land to the city, but it's expected to take at least until the end of next summer. In the meantime, the Navy Yard wants the National Guard to either stabilize the building or let the Navy Yard's own developer do the work.

Demolition by neglect at the Navy Yard

From the NY Times:

FOR three years, some of the most powerful forces in New York real estate — including the federal and city governments, developers, preservationists and community advocates — have fought over the fate of a cluster of historically significant turn-of-the-last-century houses known as Admiral’s Row in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Last month, the parties finally arrived at a compromise that seemed to strike a balance between preservation and development, in a $60 million project that would add a large supermarket to an underserved neighborhood, while also salvaging some buildings of deep architectural and cultural significance.

And now the delicate compromise, having been reached, is under threat. The federal government agreed to sell the city the land to develop as long as it met certain conditions. Because the timber shed and the homes on the site are eligible for placement on the National Register of Historic Places, the government required that the shed and one of the homes be restored and useable. Last month, after protracted debate, negotiators accepted a proposal from PA Developers of Manhattan to build a supermarket — serving the 15,000 residents who live in three public housing projects bordering the yards — along with new retail stores and an additional 125,000 square feet of industrial space.

But after the bid was accepted, Kristin Leahy, the cultural resources manager for the National Guard Bureau, the federal agency that controls the site, said engineers had found that the historic structures, particularly the timber shed, might be beyond repair. “We hired these engineers with tools to stabilize the buildings,” she said, “and that is when they came back and said we had a problem.”

One proposal at a subsequent meeting last month was to deconstruct the building and then incorporate the salvaged pieces into a new structure. But Mr. Herrera of the Landmarks Conservancy said that deconstruction was another word for demolition.

“What I don’t like is this attitude of ‘We can’t save it,’ without even really trying,” he said. “What we are really disappointed in is that during this whole process, nothing has been done to protect the buildings.”

Ms. Leahy said she could not explain why federal authorities had let the property basically decay for decades, except to cite confusion over issues of ownership and control.

Inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard

From Scouting New York:

I recently had the chance to scout the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is always a fun experience. The Navy Yard, for those who don’t know, is a massive shipyard complex near DUMBO dating back to the 1700’s. The land was purchased by the government in 1801 for use as an active Navy Shipyard, and at its peak during World War II, employed over 70,000 workers. It was decommissioned in the 1960’s and sold to New York City, and is currently being used in a number of different ways, including as the city’s foremost movie studio space, Steiner Studios.

On my recent trip, I had the chance to see the ship repair dry docks in operation, which was really amazing.

Admirals Row building collapses

SPECIAL PRESERVATION ALERT

Dereliction of Duty: National Guard Allows Admiral's Row to Collapse

The Historic Districts Council was dismayed to learn earlier today about the collapse of one of the NR-eligible properties in Admiral's Row, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. (http://curbed.com/archives/2009/06/19/curbedwire_am_special_collapse_on_admirals_row.php)

We are outraged that the National Guard has allowed this to happen in direct violation of their own policy. Since the beginning of the environmental mitigation process to supervise the transfer of these buildings to the City, HDC has repeatedly and publicly insisted that the buildings be secured against further deterioration http://www.nan.usace.army.mil/business/buslinks/admiral/pdf/aug08/minutes.pdf.

The unwillingness to protect publicly-owned historic properties, in direct opposition to Department of Defense Regulations (http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r200_1.pdf or

http://www.achp.gov/army.html), casts serious doubt on the independence of the environmental consulting process and suggests that the fate of these important historic resources was already determined outside of public purview. HDC demands that the National Guard Bureau explain why the mandated measures to protect these buildings were not taken.

Please email the National Guard at AdmiralsRowBNY@usace.army.mil to request that they explain their lack of action in securing these historic structures.

Photo from Curbed

Bloomberg will obliterate Admirals Row

From the Brooklyn Paper:

The city and National Guard reached an agreement to save two decrepit, yet historic, buildings in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and destroy eight others, ending an impasse and allowing the Navy Yard to proceed with its controversial plan to build a supermarket.

The deal, announced by a spokesman for the city-run Navy Yard, does not guarantee the preservation of the low-slung Timber Shed and one of the former officers’ homes, known as Building B, which faces Flushing Avenue. But it allows for the transfer of the federally owned “Admirals Row” area to the city, which owns the rest of the Navy Yard.

As part of the deal, the city would then solicit bids from developers to build a supermarket and an industrial building as well as to “test the market” to rehabilitate and maintain the two crumbling 19th-century structures.

It’s unclear how the historic buildings would be reused. The other eight buildings along the row could be demolished by the city, under this agreement.

Carrier launch at the Navy Yard - 1945

Cool photo!

Admiral's Row to go

From Crain's:

Most of the buildings that comprise the historic Admiral’s Row in the Brooklyn Navy Yard will be torn down to pave the way for a supermarket in an agreement reached by the Yard’s operator and the homes’ owner, the National Guard, sources close to the negotiations say.

The plan, which is slated to be revealed to community groups in late April, would salvage only one of the 10 crumbling residences and a structure known as the Timber Shed, according to sources. The compromise would likely enrage preservationists who were hoping for a plan that would save all the buildings.