Going off the rails on a Crazy Train

It's Friday. What the world needs now is a little diversion. BDB took his staff on the vomit comet because thats what the public demanded. Now go ahead and caption this photo!

The Blaz and The Brad flaunt pandemic protocols by partaking in events banished to their constituents

This is #deBlastopia

This is also the ultimate elitist statement and blatant display by a man and woman who treat the city like they own it. https://t.co/fG7QGzen9i

— JQ LLC: Good Troublemaker/Impunity City (@jqllc) January 2, 2021

We’re ready for you, 2021! pic.twitter.com/PfzkZmV9Rm

— Brad Lander (@bradlander) January 1, 2021

The original polar bears cancelled the plunge this year.

Curtis Sliwa goes for a forbidden swim in defiance of de Blasio's pandemic beach protocol

Luna Park affordable housing board members took nearly a million in bribes from people that got first dibs to apartments

NY Post


Three Brooklyn women at the helm of a Coney Island affordable-housing development pocketed more than $870,000 in bribes by fraudulently fast-tracking wealthy home-buyers into high-demand units meant for low-income families that needed them, officials said Tuesday.
 
Anna Treybich, Irina Zeltser and Karina Andriyan now face a 78-count indictment for the scam they ran from January 2013 through this month at the taxpayer-subsidized Luna Park complex, funding their luxurious tastes, officials said.
 
“Corrupt insiders got cash bribes, applicants got the apartment they wanted without having to wait, and honest families were left out in the cold,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said.
 
He was surrounded by a sampling of the trio’s alleged ill-gotten finery, including bags, shoes and jewelry bearing the names Chanel, Fendi and Cartier — and a rack of fur coats.
 
Playing gatekeeper in their respective roles as president, treasurer and office manager of the Luna Park Housing Corp., Treybich, Zeltser and Andriyan wormed well-heeled tenants into 18 apartments at the five-building, 6,000-resident Mitchell-Lama complex in exchange for cash bribes as large as $120,000, prosecutors said.

 In nearly all of the cases, they did so by doctoring applicants’ documents to claim that they were relatives of outgoing tenants, allowing them to cut ahead of non-connected applicants, some of whom had seen their names sit on waiting lists for decades, authorities charge.

Otherwise, Mitchell-Lama hopefuls coming in cold without relatives are processed on a first-come-first-served basis.
As of Tuesday, the waiting list for Luna Park included 585 applicants for studios, 3,806 for one-bedrooms and more than 9,700 each for two- and three-bedrooms, according to public records.

Developers love flood zones

From the NY Times:

Rather than retreating from flood-prone neighborhoods after Hurricane Sandy, some developers are wading deeper into waterfront markets, especially in Queens and Brooklyn, where they are finding large parcels of land close to mass transit. These are calculated risks, bolstered by years of flood-zone price growth and unwavering demand.

Whether these new apartment buildings can endure another major storm does not seem to be a concern for most residents, who are glad to have new options in inventory-starved markets. Critics, though, ask whether the neighborhoods can withstand the surge of new development and the stress it will add to an already strained infrastructure. These new buildings might remain unscathed in a flood, they say, but what about the damage caused by the torrent around them?

Waterfront building has continued apace since Hurricane Sandy, and it could soon accelerate. As of January, there were roughly 12,350 new apartments under construction or planned in the city’s worst flood zones, according to Localize.city, a real-estate data website. That means 12.4 percent — or roughly one in eight new apartments — will be built in a high-risk flood zone, up from 10.7 percent in 2014, said Tal Rubin, the company’s vice president of research. And last year, 2,362 flood-zone units were completed — nearly double the number delivered in 2014, she said.

The largest share of these buildings is on the southern tip of Brooklyn, in areas like Brighton Beach, Coney Island and Gravesend, where a total of 45 projects — about a third of all flood-zone buildings — are rising. They represent a combined 1,571 units. Pricier precincts near Manhattan, like Long Island City in Queens, and Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, had the most units overall, with a total of 5,561 apartments in 20 buildings, accounting for 45 percent of new flood-zone units.

How NYC protects the environment

From Brooklyn Daily:

The state has approved a permit for the city to pour up to 7.2 million gallons of contaminated groundwater into Coney Island Creek every day for up to two years while the city upgrades sewer and water mains in Coney’s west end.

The permit allows the city to overlook nearly a dozen heavy metals found in the water because only small amounts were discovered in the creek, and state officials say locals have nothing to fear because Coney creek flows into Gravesend Bay, which will dilute the pollutants. But with millions of gallons gushing into the inlet each day for years, experts and locals fear that the contaminates could amass to dangerous levels, and aren’t buying the state’s argument that being connected to a large body of water will mitigate the risks.

The project being run by the Economic Development Corporation will upgrade aging water mains and storm and sanitary sewers in an area bounded by W. 17th and W. 22nd streets from Neptune Avenue to the Boardwalk. Shovels are expected to hit the ground this summer and the project will last for roughly two years — with an embargo on Surf Avenue construction from May 15 to Sept. 15 so as not to clash with the swell of beach-goers, according to city records.

But to keep the construction site dry, the city applied for a State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit to “dewater” contaminated groundwater from several sites by pumping it into Coney Island Creek — where people swim, students routinely wade for city-run education programs, and some congregations use the waters for religious rites such as baptisms.

Coney Island still looks like crap, but getting more amusements

From the Brooklyn Paper:

The city is asking amusement-park operators to pitch rides and games for the empty lots between the Cyclone roller coaster and MCU Park — part of a long-running redevelopment plan to expand the amusement area.

It’s another step toward the new Coney Island envisioned under a 2009 rezoning, but officials say they will pick proposals that harken to the area’s glory days as a “publicly-accessible, affordable amusement park, a place for experimentation, innovation, whimsy and surprise.”

A stretch of W. 16th Street between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk could become a concession­aires’ row, while the empty lot between the ballpark and the Thunderbolt roller coaster may become a new thrill-ride hub, according to a request for proposals the city issued on Feb. 6.

What happened to the luxury condos and affordable housing?

Homeless number explosion means dumping on a lot of neighborhoods

The ridiculous numbers of hotels being used as homeless shelters and the total mishandling of the homeless situation by both the de Blasio administration and the providers that get paid millions to not provide services has now become a citywide concern. Check these articles out:

Pols discuss homeless, immmigration at Bayside Hills Civic meeting

Electeds debunk rumors that new buildings in Astoria complex would house homeless

Easy Access to Heroin On Manhattan Ave. Tempts Shelter Residents: Director

Luxe hotel near celebrity homes sued for housing homeless

Coney Island A “Dumping Ground For Homeless Shelters” Locals Complain In Protest to Proposed Shelter

And finally, 2 editorials:

Can DHS be trusted?

De Blasio’s homeless ‘strategy’ isn’t a strategy at all

Council Member wants Coney Island Boardwalk landmarked

From the Daily News:

The City Council threw its support behind landmarking the Coney Island Boardwalk on Thursday, passing a resolution urging the city to protect the iconic stretch.

Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn) got unanimous support for his resolution, although the Landmarks Preservation Commission has balked at making the move.

Treyger wants the landmark status in part to stop plans to convert much of the boardwalk from traditional wood planks into concrete and fake wood.

De Blasio plans to condemn Coney Island properties

From the NY Post:

Frustrated by stubborn Coney Island landowners, the de Blasio administration plans to seize property under the city’s rarely used power of eminent domain in order to spur long-stalled economic development in the People’s Playground, The Post has learned.

The Parks Department plans to create new amusements and other amenities by grabbing up three vacant beachfront sites through condemnation proceedings — including a 60,000-square-foot tract that once housed the original Thunderbolt roller coaster immortalized in Woody Allen’s 1977 film “Annie Hall,” officials said.

It’s unclear what type of attractions the city wants to bring to these sites, which together total 75,000 square feet and also include smaller tracts off the Boardwalk on West 12th Street and on West 23rd Street.

City officials said they’re turning to eminent domain because they’ve been unable to cut “fair-market” deals with the property owners after exhaustive efforts.

But area business owners said they were stunned by the scheme, which includes using seized land to build new streets and parks that were outlined in a rezoning plan approved in 2009, under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Coney Island's wooden boardwalk is now in Italy

From Brooklyn Daily:

Wood from the Riegelmann Boardwalk that was supposedly damaged during Superstorm Sandy is being reused in Italy — as a boardwalk.

In a classic case of one city’s trash being another’s tesaro, architects who designed the U.S.A. Pavilion at Milan’s Expo 2015 used lumber from Brooklyn’s Boardwalk to build an indoor boardwalk at the Italian World’s Fair. The city has for years been trying to convince residents that concrete and synthetic boards are better suited for beachfront walkways — and has routinely replaced portions of the wooden Boardwalk, which stretches from Coney Island to the edge of Manhattan Beach, with non-wood options — upsetting old-school Boardwalk advocates who say it is the wood that makes it good.

Lublin Dental Center
And to them, the ironic move to repurpose Boardwalk wood to make a boardwalk could be the last straw.

“What a travesty — shipping our Boardwalk’s wood off to another country to be re-purposed and enjoyed there, while we have plastic and concrete shoved down our throats,” wrote Coney–Brighton Boardwalk Alliance president Rob Burstein in a letter to us when he heard of the Italian job.

Biber Architects designed the Milan boardwalk and purchased the timber from salvagers Sawkill Lumber, who harvested the historic planks for the city after Sandy “wrecked” the wooden walkway in 2012, a Biber spokeswoman said.

Bloomberg, Markowitz screw over Coney Island one last time

From A Walk in the Park:

Under cover of darkness a beloved community garden in Coney Island was bulldozed beginning at 5am Saturday morning to make way for Marty Markowitz's $ 53 million dollar amphitheater. The developer – iStar – destroyed 16 years of a community gardening effort.

A developer bulldozed a beloved community garden in Coney Island on Saturday to make way for an amphitheater — uprooting 20 chickens on a decades-old plot that survived Hurricane Sandy.

Construction workers entered the Boardwalk Garden under the cover of darkness and chucked tools and wheelbarrows, along with farm fowl and a colony of feral cats, activists say.

The chickens were placed in pet carriers on the sidewalk and the felines were left fending for themselves.

“They destroyed life!” fumed tearful volunteer Elena Voitsenko, 60, a Russian immigrant who told The Post she’ll take in the birds until they find a new home.

“‎I came to America to escape from the communist regime,” she added. “This is more than the communist regime! They came at 4 in the morning.”

Workers razed the sprawling, 70,000-square-foot garden on West 22nd Street about a week after the City Council approved plans to convert the empty Childs Restaurant and its adjacent land into a 5,000-seat venue.

The $53 million project was trumpeted by outgoing Borough President Marty Markowitz, who tried previously to build a controversial amphitheater in Asser Levy Park in 2009.

Under the new plan, the city will buy the Childs building from iStar Financial and turn it into a restaurant and concert venue. The adjacent garden is slated to become a seating area.

The community board voted against the project in September, and locals have railed against turning the historic property into a noisy venue.

A film that may interest you

A story about greed, politics and the land grab of the century, ZIPPER chronicles the battle over an American cultural icon. Small-time ride operator, Eddie Miranda, proudly operates a 38-year-old carnival contraption called the Zipper in the heart of Coney Island’s gritty amusement district. When his rented lot is snatched up by an opportunistic real estate mogul, Eddie and his ride become casualties of a power struggle between the developer and the City of New York over the future of the world-famous destination. Be it an affront to history or simply the path of progress, the spirit of Coney Island is at stake. In an increasingly corporate landscape, where authenticity is often sacrificed in the interest of economic growth, the Zipper may be just the beginning of what is lost.

Zipper website

It opens Friday, August 9th at IFC in Manhattan.

Coney Island structure unstable

From Eyewitness News:

Luna Park on Coney Island was evacuated Tuesday as investigators checked out a report that the "Astrotower" was swaying.

The fire department, buildings department, and Office of Emergency Management are working together on sorting this out.

Witnesses say it wasn't windy, drawing more attention to the swaying structure.

Emergency crews evacuated Coney Island's Luna Park Tuesday afternoon after getting frantic calls saying the Astrotower, a 270 foot tall, 50-year-old structure, was swaying and possibly unstable.

UPDATE from NY1:

Luna Park officials say a portion of the iconic Astrotower will be removed beginning Wednesday evening, after the structure was first spotted swaying heavily Tuesday.
The city Office of Emergency Management said Wednesday that cranes and heavy equipment need to be moved in for the work to start, and that the goal is to get started on the removal Wednesday night.

It is unclear how large of a portion of the tower will be removed.

Earlier, Luna Park officials said the park owners were working on permits with the city Parks Department to take down the structure.

What's going on here?

http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A07168&term=2013&Summary=Y&Text=Y

Hi folks,

Someone gave me a heads up re: the NYS Assembly/Senate bill above. It is very disturbing.

Currently, the boardwalks on NYC's beaches are under the jurisdiction of the Parks Dept. Parks also maintains the public beaches by removing trash, staffing with lifeguards (though NYS law dictates how many lifeguards, how far apart lifeguard stations should be, etc). Parks can also allow temporary structures (i.e. removable handicapped access mats) volleyball courts, etc. on the beach. But the beach itself - the sand - is also under the jurisdiction of NYS DEC which ensures compliance with the Coastal Zone Management Act, among other things. Also, under Public Trust Doctrine, the shoreline and intertidal area is held, in trust, for the people, by the state. So in essence, there is a very nice checks & balances system that has been in place for years and that has worked very well. Brighton/Coney/the Rockaways/Orchard Beach/Midland Beach/Manhattan Beach, etc. are all governed by IDENTICAL guidelines.

All of a sudden, very, very, VERY quietly, the above piece of legislation has been proposed, by Assemblymembers Cymbrowitz & Brook-Krasny. It would take the beaches of Brighton & Coney Island - and ONLY those beaches, and give jurisdiction to the NYC Parks Dept, for 250 feet south of the Boardwalk. Basically, ALL OF THE BEACH, would now be turned over to the NYC Parks Dept. the most woefully underfunded city agency.

Interestingly, Manhattan Beach, which is within spitting distance of Brighton Beach, is also in Assemblyman Cymbrowitz's district. Yet he has NOT proposed a similar set up for Manhattan Beach. Why not?

This smacks of a special interest deal that will ultimately impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who live in a flood zone. The implications are enormous. And the fact that there has not been a single word in the media or anywhere else about this, is even more upsetting. Things that are done behind closed doors are usually kept hidden for a reason.

AGAIN, NOT A WORD OF THIS PROPOSAL HAS BEEN MADE PUBLIC. WHY???

Please call your NYS Assembly & Senate representatives and urge them to vote against these bills: A 07168 & S 04787.

Thanks,
Ida Sanoff

Bloomberg hiring developers to rebuild Sandy-damaged homes

From Crains:

The Bloomberg administration has launched a program to help speed up the restoration of New York City waterfront communities that were battered by Superstorm Sandy.

The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development released a request for qualifications last week seeking developers who would help rebuild one- to four-family homes. More than six months after Sandy, hundreds of houses across the five boroughs still need to be rebuilt. The city said putting the rebuilding work in the hands of a few experts would not only make it easier for displaced families to return home but also create more continuity within affected neighborhoods. The program is entirely voluntary, however, and if individual homeowners want to work with their own developers, designers and contractors, they can.

New zoning and building codes tied to new FEMA flood maps and other regulations stemming from the storms, such as raising homes and using new materials, have been implemented.

Under the request for qualification process, the city has divided affected areas up into six groups, and developers would take charge in each area: Breezy Point in Queens; the rest of the Rockaways and Broad Channel in Queens; Staten Island; Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach and Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn; scattered home sites in the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan; and scattered mixed-use buildings (residences with attached commercial spaces, usually ground-floor retail) in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

The program is aimed at rebuilding 400 to 750 properties with a portion of the $350 million in funding allocated to repair smaller properties from the $1.77 billion in federal Sandy aid being provided to the city. However, the total money spent for the program depends on how many homeowners participate.

Cuomo vs. Silver on casino in Queens

From the Queens Chronicle:

Gov. Cuomo reiterated his support for full casino gaming — including table games — in New York State, but under the plan he outlined in this week’s State of the State speech, Queens residents will have to drive a good long while on the Thruway to get to roll real dice at a real craps table or sit with an actual blackjack dealer.

In his speech, Cuomo said the idea behind limiting full gaming to upstate is to boost tourism and economic development in upstate counties, while New York City already has 50 million tourists a year. Under his plan, up to three casinos would open to full gaming in upstate counties should the state Legislature and New York voters approve a constitutional amendment to allow table games.

“I believe casinos in upstate New York could be a great magnet to bring the New York City traffic up,” he said. “They now go to New Jersey, they go to Connecticut — why don’t we bring them to upstate New York?”

The plan was unveiled as piece of a larger part of the governor’s agenda that focused on economic development upstate, including promoting New York agriculture and farming and opening the Adirondacks to a national whitewater rafting competition.

But legislators who represent the communities near Resorts World Casino New York City — the only casino in the five boroughs — said the plan to not allow full casino gambling at Aqueduct Racetrack will prevent much-needed jobs and tourism from coming to Queens.

From the NY Times:

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said Thursday that he was open to a Las Vegas-style casino in some parts of New York City, as he continued to soften his opposition to the idea of casino development within the five boroughs.

Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, said he remained opposed to a casino with table games in Manhattan, but would be open to the idea in other areas of the city, specifically naming Coney Island and Willets Point, as well as the Aqueduct racetrack — sites that he has reportedly been considering for some time.

He also said Thursday that the Legislature wanted to have a say in the siting of any full-scale casinos, challenging a plan by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to put the power in the hands of a new gambling commission.

“The Legislature would like to have a role in geographic selection,” he said in comments outside his Albany office.

Mr. Silver has historically been the biggest opponent of casino gambling in New York City, and has been reluctant to consider casino development even on the city’s fringes. But his tone has been moderating over the last several months.

Group home in Zone A intends to expand

From the New York World:

Like its neighbors along the Coney Island boardwalk, Oceanview Manor Home for Adults was seriously damaged after superstorm Sandy rushed in on Oct. 29. Staff reported that the home off Surf Avenue suffered major flooding and broken windows; the storm destroyed office equipment and cut power. Residents, most of whom have severe mental illness, weren’t allowed to return for a month.

And after all that, the home is looking to not just rebuild, but expand.

Oceanview has submitted a proposal to the city to add 24 beds to its current 176-bed residence and enlarge the building by more than 12,000 square feet, which would increase the square footage by over 33 percent.

Though Oceanview’s expansion plans were submitted to the city well before Sandy hit, they could face a new kind of scrutiny, given the widespread damage to buildings along the boardwalk.

Chuck Reichenthal, district manager of Community Board 13 in Coney Island, called the timing of the proposal “amazing.”

Reichenthal said he didn’t yet have a strong opinion about the proposal, and would withhold judgment until Oceanview had presented its case to the community board.

“One of the questions will probably be, is this the time to build more buildings while we’re still in the fog of getting rid of this? I don’t know,” Reichenthal said.

It appears unlikely that Oceanview administrators have any intention of modifying the expansion plans. It submitted a required environmental statement to the Department of City Planning on Nov. 9, less than two weeks after Sandy hit.

Though the plans acknowledged that the home is located within a federally designated flood hazard area, they misidentified its designation. The documents state that the home is in Hurricane Evacuation Zone B, which means residents have a moderate threat of being evacuated during a hurricane. In reality, the city’s Office of Emergency Management designates all of Coney Island as Zone A, where residents are at the highest risk of being evacuated in the event of a hurricane, and were under evacuation orders in advance of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 as well as Sandy this year.

Coney Island to get plastic planks

From the NY Post:

Plastic is the new wood, a judge has decided — at least when it comes to Coney Island’s boardwalk.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Martin Solomon has green- lighted the city’s plan to replace five blocks of the historic — but rickety — structure with concrete and recycled-plastic planks, according to court documents made public yesterday.

Some Brooklynites were quick to slam the decision.

“The Coney Island boardwalk is nostalgic, and it’s famous world-round,” fumed Todd Dobrin, president of a group called Friends of the Boardwalk.

“I don’t think tourists are going to come to see the Coney Island driveway.”

Photo from Kinetic Carnival

Will this matter?

From the NY Times:

Mr. Liu, a Democrat, has long criticized the Economic Development Corporation for not disclosing more information about its finances and contracts. And in July, the attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, found that the corporation, a nonprofit organization whose president is appointed by the mayor, improperly “played a behind-the-scenes role in the lobbying activities” of two local groups that promoted the mayor’s efforts to spur growth in Willets Point in Queens and Coney Island in Brooklyn.

But this time, Mr. Liu used the occasion of the corporation’s annual contract renewal, which must be approved by his office, as an opportunity to demand additional reforms. So in the $896 million contract, signed late Friday, the corporation pledged to make some financial information that is already in the public domain more accessible.

Among other pledges, the corporation, which offers financing, tax exemptions and other development programs, is expected to publish its capital and budget expenses on the comptroller’s Web site, Checkbook NYC. The corporation must also detail how companies that have received contracts from the corporation have lived up to job-creation promises — and how they may be penalized, if they have failed.

“After years of operating in the shadows, the E.D.C.’s books have finally been cracked open,” Mr. Liu said. “These new measures will ensure that E.D.C. focuses on its mission of boosting employment. If they still can’t get their act together, then they should close up shop and stop wasting taxpayer dollars.”