A Frank Lloyd Crap special in Bushwick

This is the 400 block of Stockholm Street, just over the Ridgewood border in Bushwick. You've got some lowrise semi-attached homes, built to be uniform. Well, we can't have that, now, can we?

Thanks, Frank!

As expected, this project is rife with complaints, violations, stop work orders, etc., and for some reason has multiple BINs.

The proposed vertical enlargement will make an 8-family out of a 3-family. But should we really call them "family" units? It'll probably be home to DSA transplants living wall-to-wall.

Bushwick bike spite racks

"Hi I saw your post about the spite racks and wanted you to know that Ridgewood is not alone.

I took these pics early Sunday morning (before 8am) along Irving Ave in Bushwick. It's the same story - the bike racks were installed last year and they didn't bother to put bikes in them. And judging by the lack of bikes all these months later, there isn't much of a market here as none have migrated over from racks in other neighborhoods." - anonymous

Ridgewood citizens assemble protest against recidivist slumlord

 Queens Eagle

Dozens of Ridgewood renters marched through their neighborhood Saturday to denounce a property owner routinely featured on the New York City public advocate’s annual Worst Landlord List. Their chants of “Fight Fight Fight, Housing is Right” prompted nods from passersby, supportive honks from an FDNY fire truck driving along Myrtle Avenue and words of encouragement from local elected officials.

The Ridgewood Tenants Union’s demonstration against Silvershore Properties attracted renters from Ridgewood and neighboring Bushwick who said they have been harassed by landlords who go to extreme measures to evict or wear down their tenants in order to jack up rents, especially in rent-stabilized apartments.

Silvershore’s former owner, Jonathan Cohen, was named the city’s worst landlord in 2017 by former Public Advocate Letitia James. The company owns nearly 100 buildings and continues the conduct that Cohen instituted, tenants say.

Gloria Nieves, a tenant leader at 1708 Summerfield St., described how Silvershore neglected tenants who went without heat or hot water and had to perform their own building maintenance.

“The people who run Silvershore Properties will say that they are good people and that we are the bad guys but to leave an entire building without any heat and oftentimes hot water during some of the coldest days of winter is not something a good person does,” Nieves said. “They have made our lives impossible and that is why we need landlords like them and all the other landlords in our neighborhood to understand that they cannot take advantage of us in this way.”

The demonstration began in front of 61-20 Madison Ave., a Silvershore Properties building, before community members marched down Fresh Pond Road and Myrtle Avenue, the neighborhood’s two bustling commercial strips. The event ended in front of 1708 Summerfield St., where at least one senior tenant watched from her apartment before heading outside to join the rally.

Several tenants told the Eagle about the bad experiences they have had with landlords — abusive companies with large property portfolios as well as opportunistic single building owners — who tried to drive long-term tenants out of their buildings.

Eugenio Vasquez said the owner of his Bushwick apartment building sold the property to a new landlord who immediately raised rent and took him to housing court to try to evict him.

Ahtziri Campos, a 15-year-old volunteer organizer, said her landlord has tried to drive her immigrant family out of the building for five years so that he can raise the rent and attract wealthier tenants amid Ridgewood’s gentrification.

“He only bothered us,” Campos said. “We are the minority in the building and he made us afraid of getting displaced.”  

The M train is back, baby!

Bushwick Avenue bushwhacked by FLC!

QC normally focuses on crap in Queens, but we were alerted to the presence of a very special dung pile at 908 Bushwick Avenue. The lobby is in the cellar? Top floors overhang community drive? The design elements seem familiar. A little TOO familiar.

Mama mia! Who could be responsible for this architectural abortion? (Also notice how the rendering differs from the reality.)

Sure enough, look who was spotted in the vicinity. It's none other than Frank Lloyd Crap!

Since we're in Bushwick...

This is the look of the "new and improved" Bushwick. It almost makes one nostalgic for the old Bushwick. H/T to Brownstoner.

Borderline crap sits undone

The St. Nicholas church-to-crap conversion is taking a while.

Everything at this corner is currently an eyesore.

Once again, all this for a supposed 3-family house.

Businesses evicted from Superfund site

From DNA Info:

The auto parts company that Albert Rodriguez built up over the last 20 years on Irving Avenue will soon be gone — for his own good, according to federal regulators.

His garage, Primo Auto Parts and Services, and six other businesses sit on the radioactive remains of the Wolff-Alport Chemical Company, a property stewed in carcinogenic toxins.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that all the tenants in this industrial corner of Queens must leave to allow the agency to remediate the site.

Business owners were caught by surprise by the announcement and left wondering what they're going to do next.

The agency has budgeted $1,112,500 to help move the tenants, according to the EPA's report on the remediation released Tuesday, but it has not given specifics on how the money will be spent or when the businesses will be evicted.

The business owners first got wind that they might have to move off the site permanently at a public meeting in August where the EPA presented four different plans, including one that would let them stay on site and another that would allow them to leave temporarily and return after remediation.

"I thought there was some chance we could stay," Rodriguez said in Spanish. He had left the meeting hopeful that he'd still be able to save his businesses.

The .75-acre site operated as a chemical company from the 1920s until 1954, according to the EPA. Wolff-Alport imported radioactive monazite sand from the Belgian Congo and used the factory to extract rare earth metals like uranium and thorium.

The EPA believes the toxins were dumped in the sewers and buried there.

St. Nicholas Ave church-to-crap

I missed the unveiling of this rendering back in 2015 when Curbed put it out there. But I had the misfortune of passing the site recently and saw it on their sign. Yikes.

Believe it or not, this is supposedly going to be a 3-family home.

Slumlord brothers sentenced to community service

From NY1:

Two Brooklyn landlords this week answered to charges of harassing and illegally forcing rent-stabilized tenants out of their apartments.

Joel and Aaron Israel own several buildings in Bushwick, Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

The brothers were arrested in April, accused of deliberately destroying the kitchens and bathrooms in several apartments under the guise of renovations.

Prosecutors charged they wanted to remove rent-stabilized tenants, to rent the apartments at market rate.

As part of a deal, the two have pleaded guilty to scheming to defraud and unlawful eviction.

Both will receive five years probation, perform community service, and pay a nearly a quarter-million dollars in restitution.

This doesn't look out of place at all

QNS/photo by Anthony Giudice

From QNS.com:

A huge two-story expansion has been added on top of a home on Cornelia Street near the Bushwick/Ridgewood border, and some residents are concerned that more of the same could be coming across to the Queens side.

According to documents filed with the Department of Buildings (DOB), the owners of 396 Cornelia St. filed for — and were approved for — expanding the existing two-story, two-family building into a four-story, six-family edifice. The application was approved in June 2015, and a permit was issued for the entire job on May 11, 2016.

This expansion will add a new second floor mezzanine level, a new third floor, a new fourth floor and a bulkhead on top of the building, effectively doubling the square footage of the building, from 2,254 square feet to 4,340 square feet.

The documents show that the building’s new additions are all in compliance with the area’s R6 zoning regulations, including the total height of the building, the required length and width, floor area ratio (FAR) and yard sizes. The plans even propose adding a tree to the site.

With the passing of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s zoning text amendments earlier this year, many residents feel developments like this could make their way into Ridgewood and neighboring areas.

Deck collapses with 50 people on it

From the Daily News:

A gathering in Brooklyn turned into a nightmare as a deck on the second floor of a building collapsed, injuring 13 people early Sunday, witnesses and FDNY officials said.

The collapse happened at a building at Bushwick and Willoughby Aves. in Bushwick around 12:45 a.m., an FDNY official said.

None of the injured was seriously hurt.

As many as 50 people were on the deck when it buckled, the official said.

A Department of Buildings official was on the scene to inspect the deck. It was unclear why it fell in, officials said.

Maybe because it had 50 people on it?

This is not a new building, Bushwick edition

Apologies for the poor photography on this one (I was a passenger in a moving vehicle at the time).

Before

So the Department of Buildings has decided to okay this obvious new building project at 399 Knickerbocker Avenue as an alteration. There's nothing left here but partial walls.

Now

Remember this as you get nickeled and dimed to death by the city with fines, fees and taxes for everything under the sun.

Alteration permits cost A WHOLE LOT LESS than new building permits. The city is throwing millions upon millions of dollars in revenue down the drain on a yearly basis in order to unofficially subsidize development.

Tell your elected official to stop using you as a piggy bank when there's so much wasted opportunity to collect real money to pay for needed services.

M train riders to get screwed next year

From DNA Info:

The M train will be temporarily suspended in Ridgewood and Bushwick next summer so crews can do repairs ahead of the L train shutdown, MTA officials said Friday.

Service between Myrtle Avenue and Middle Village—Metropolitan Avenue will be disrupted so crews can mend a bridge and rebuild a viaduct, according to the MTA.

They hope to complete the M train work before commuters start using it more when the L line shuts down for its extensive Hurricane Sandy-related repairs, officials said. Transit officials were still weighing when they'll close the L and for how long.

M line work will kick-off with crews undertaking a two-month rehab of a bridge over a rail yard, officials said. During that time, the M won't run between Myrtle Avenue and Middle Village—Metropolitan Avenue.

Then, crews will spend eight months tearing down and rebuilding a viaduct, officials said. There will be a shuttle ferrying commuters from Myrtle—Wyckoff Avenue and Middle Village—Metropolitan Avenue.

The M will run over the J and Z lines on Broadway between Myrtle Avenue and Broadway Junction, officials said.

Hipsters moving to Detroit

From the NY Times:

“Detroit, Just West of Bushwick,” read the first billboard that popped up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, this spring, with a working class scene from one of Diego Rivera’s “Detroit Industry” murals. “Detroit, Be Left Alone,” a second one preached soon after, again in Bushwick. And then a third sign appeared, in two locations in Brooklyn and two in Manhattan — “Detroit: Now Hiring.”

No one quite knew where they were coming from or who had put them up.

But when an unrelated photo popped up on Instagram — “Move to Detroit” spray-painted on a girder of the Brooklyn Bridge — the campaign’s anonymous crusader finally revealed himself.

“I rent billboard spaces where others don’t see value. That is how I saw Detroit on my first visit four years ago,” said Philip Kafka, the 28-year-old man who then put his passion behind the billboards with his SoHo-based company, Prince Media. “I saw great buildings, a deep and rich cultural history, and met amazing people.”

He now owns six buildings in the Motor City, one of which will house his new restaurant, Katoi, across the street from Detroit’s most photographed “ruin porn,” the Michigan Central Station. “I want people to know that in Detroit you can afford to make art, be a chef, buy houses, start a business, do anything if you work hard,” he said.

It is now well-documented that some of Brooklyn’s much-written-about creative class is being driven out of the borough by high prices and low housing stock. Some are going to Los Angeles (or even Queens), but others are migrating to the Midwest, where Detroit’s empty industrial spaces, community-based projects, experimental art scene and innovative design opportunities beckon, despite the city’s continuing challenges.

“Brooklyn lost its whole sense of adventure for me,” said Ben Wolf, 31, a Pratt Institute graduate who, after more than a decade in New York, moved to Detroit almost three years ago to continue creating his site-specific installations and sculptures, made from rotten boards, rusty stairwells and peeling paint, or as he said, “the decadence of abandonment.”

Bushwick: the next Dutch Kills?

From Curbed:

Developers think that Bushwick will be the city's next tourist destination, and after the neighborhood was named one of America's coolest by Vogue, they're probably right. Case in point: three hotels are rising in the neighborhood, the most recently announced of which is a 10-story, 144-room hotel at 232 Seigel Street between Bushwick Avenue and White Street.

Also coming to the 'hood is a seven-story, 112-room hotel at 71 White Street between McKibbin and Boerum streets that's being developed by All Year's Management. Riverside Developers, also behind Williamsburg's bonkers, cantilevering William Vale Hotel, want to bring a 140-key hotel to 27 Stewart Avenue between Flushing and Johnson avenues.

Brooklyn slumlords arrested

From the NY Times:

Two Brooklyn landlords accused by tenants of trying to drive them out by making their buildings uninhabitable have been arrested, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said Thursday.

The landlords, the brothers Joel and Aaron Israel, were scheduled to be arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Thursday morning. Prosecutors did not immediately disclose the charges, but planned to speak about them in the afternoon outside a building owned by Joel Israel, 98 Linden Street in Bushwick.

Longtime tenants in several buildings owned by the Israels have complained of hazardous conditions they believe are an effort to force them to leave, so their units could be rented out at much higher rates.

Prosecution of landlords on criminal charges is rare, but the case of 98 Linden was particularly egregious, law enforcement officials and tenant advocates said.

Reporter murders Ridgewood history

I had the misfortune of watching this last night. Toni Senecal really needs new researchers because she got just about every fact about Ridgewood wrong.  You can watch the entire disaster here.

• Ridgewood was never part of Brooklyn. Yes, there is a section of Bushwick that locals refer to as "Ridgewood" but the Queens section has never, ever been located in Brooklyn.
• Note the way she pronounces "Arbitration Rock"...
• She visits 2 foodie locations that are just barely in Ridgewood and considers a third one to be Ridgewood although it's most definitely in Bushwick.
• The "English" did not "name it Ridgewood after the area's green and hilly terrain". The area was named after the Ridgewood Reservoir, which itself was named after its sourcewater in Massapequa.

How do you "tour" Ridgewood without hitting Myrtle Ave, Forest Ave or Fresh Pond Road?

If you want to do a Bushwick piece, do a Bushwick piece.

Someone please make these people stop.

Neglecting most of your district is not a wise move

He plays up Bushwick history, fails to mention Ridgewood at all, but he loves Mexican food.

Peter Koo uses the phrase "24 hours a day, 7 days a week" twice in his video, but of course the main highlights are diversity! and food! They also somehow shot video of Flushing without showing the huge trash piles on the sidewalk. Impressive! And there apparently are no other neighborhoods but Flushing in Pete's world.

Vito has left the building

You may recall that back in June, the Bushwick United Democratic Club, founded by Vito Lopez, had moved into this space on St. Nicholas Ave.

Well, now they're gone.

Perhaps the NY Times' hipsters gentrified them out.