Atlantic Yards Financial Documents Finally Public

We haven’t had time to look at them closely, and reading financials isn’t our No. 1 skill (and we’ll defer to Atlantic Yards Report and Norman Oder for the in-depth analysis), but Brownstoner scores an excellent scoop by posting several of the most sought-after PDFs in certain Brooklyn circles. You can check out the post here. The documents don’t seem to yet be up on the Empire State Development Corporation’s website. The document shows a cash flow of $1 billion from 2012-15, but the initial read by Atlantic Yards Report is that the document lacks vital information and that it only covers ten years of the project. Develop Don’t Destroy says that it “fails to shed light” on the developer’s profit. We’re sure there will be much more on this tomorrow.

Here’s the Video: We Are the Pool!

PoolAid screened its We Are the Pool! vid last night. We won’t rehash all the details about McCarren Pool here. Simply click on the embed below to watch or click on this link to go over to YouTube.

Another Erection in Williamsburg, Pt. I

This pile driver was at 165 N. 10th Street in Williamsburg for a couple, banging away until it moved on to another site a few blocks away. This device is making the round in the neighborhood, because we’d also spotted it parked next to the Roebling Oil Field a couple of months ago. The site in question, which got a mortgage for about $4.5 million back in December from Bank Leumi, will be a six-story number and have 14 apartments. The developer is the Kiska Group, which also did the building behind this new one on N. 11th Street. The architect is Gene Kaufman who also did the N. 11th Street building. The rendering is below. We think the building has a very 1990s Berlin kind of feel to it, and hope the rendering makes the structure look more hideous than it will really turn out to be. The N. 11th Street building also had a really frightening rendering on the Kiska website, but in reality, is not that bad, especially compared to other new construction in the hood. Except for the view of the new parking lot full of trucks across the street, but that’s not an issue of building design.

Rendering of the new 165 N. 10th

The new building on N. 11th

Speak No Evil: Thor Coney Tenants Required to Sign Confidentiality Clause

Lola Staar Boutique founder Dianna Carlin, who we reported in early February was evicted by Thor Equities, is speaking out about why she was forced to go. The entrepreneur says she was given the boot by the developer because she balked at a confidentiality clause that was part of the lease she was offered. Ms. Carlin tells Metro that “Thor has forced everyone to sign the confidentiality clause, so when people go to the businesses and ask about it, all you can do is shrug your shoulders.” She adds:

Before the confidentiality issue, Carlin had a “good relationship” with Joe Sitt, principal of Thor. When Carlin contacted Sitt’s office about her eviction, “The lawyer said the eviction had to do with negotiations with the city. I just feel like I’m this prop. It’s this game for [the developer], but it’s my business.”

Thor’s spokesperson did not comment to Metro about the allegations. However, a spokesperson for the city’s Economic Development Corp. did comment about the loss of the Staar boutique on the boardwalk:

“It’s businesses like Lola Staar’s that have given Coney Island its unique flavor and authenticity, and we hope to see it relocate and succeed in the area for many years to come,” said Yonit Golub, spokeswoman for the city’s Economic Development Corporation. “The city is committed to preserving and enhancing Coney Island’s historic amusement area, making sure it stays open to the public and creating economic opportunities for local residents. We have serious concerns that residential uses are not compatible with that vision.”

We’ll be having our own conversation with Lola now that she is no longer entangled in lease issues with Thor and will report back. Her former boutique, by the way, is part of the location of where one of the luxury highrises the developer wants to build would go.

Related Post:
Coney Island Deathwatch: Lola Staar Boutique Evicted

Release of Atlantic Yards Financial Data Coming?

Don’t look now, but all that previously private financial information about Atlantic Yards could be released soon. The Empire State Development Corporation had stonewalled requests for the release of the critical and revealing information during the Pataki Administration. That development is reported in today’s New York Sun. The release of the information would come in response to a lawsuit by Assem. James Brennan and State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery. The Sun writes:

An ESDC spokeswoman told The New York Sun it now intends to release the documents to Mr. Brennan, likely this week, which include development company Forest City Ratner’s business plan for the $4.2 billion project in Brooklyn. Assemblyman James Brennan, joined by state Senator Velmanette Montgomery, filed a lawsuit Monday against the Empire State Development Corporation alleging that the agency was improperly withholding documents detailing the project’s finances.

Critics of the project for at least two years have been attempting to determine the amount developer Bruce Ratner stands to profit, and they say the hundreds of millions in city and state subsidies should justify its status as public information.

A spokesperson for the ESDC says that the new decision is the result of a reevaluation of the original decision by the Spitzer Administration. More analysis of the possible release of the documents is available, as always, at Atlantic Yards Report. Meanwhile, No Land Grab offers that release of the information is critical (even after the approval of the project) because “it is important to know how much taxpayer money will be committed to Atlantic Yards and what the taxpayers will get in return…It is important to understand how much Bruce Ratner stands to make…If the density issue is driven by the need for the developer to make a profit, then the public has a right to know what Ratner will earn in exchange for the public’s acquiescence to an urban planning experiment of historical proportions.

GL’s Construction Site Du Jour: 110 Green Street

Our Greenpoint correspondent hit us off with multiple photos of the big neighborhood construction site at 110 Green Street that is destined to be the home of a very glassy new condo building. We present some of those pics here, taking note of the fact that it’s a very accessible site to anyone in the neighborhood that wants the privacy of a vacant lot. The wide open site, however, in the words of our correspondent, has “a brand-spanking new metal gate. This is kind of funny given that other parts of the fence are totally falling apart AND another gate had been left open.” The site also had a visit from the Department of Buildings today (for reasons that are unknown, although it has a couple of outstanding violations for work without a permit). More fence photos, and a shot of a visit from the Fire Department are below. If the past is an indicator of the future, this should be one of those spots that provides thrills until the day the last Sub-Zero is installed.

Decorative Main Gate

FDNY Visits
Related Post:
Demolition Porn: Greenpoint Snow Scene

Brooklinks: Wednesday Arrivederci February Edition

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images.

• 20 Years of “Temporary” Parking at Atlantic Yards? [Brooklyn Speaks via No Land Grab]
• Atlantic Yards Demolitions Could Start by April [AYR]
• Starrett City Buyer Said to Have Sketchy Record on Affordable Housing [NYT]
• Help Change the Gowanus Whole Foods Design [I’m Seeing Green]
• Vicious Parking Situation in Park Slope [NYDN]
• Inside the Grand Avenue Haunted House [Brownstoner]
• Williamsburg Trapeze School [Brooklyn Record]
• First Friday at RePop: March 2 [Clinton Hill Blog]
• More Details on the Proposed Coney Island Ampitheater [Courier Life]
• Borough Park Garment Factory Shut for Fire Code Violations [NYT]
• Talking Gray Parrots of Brooklyn [Metroblogging]
• What You Learn by Reading the Walls at Ferdinando’s [Lost City]

"© Snapple Coney Island Park, Inc."

We found this posted by Astrolander at the Coney Island Message Board. It touches on the subject of what we’ll lose with a Coney Island re-do that treats Coney as a brand name and nothing more:

The likes of Coney Island as we know and love, we will never see again, either with condos/corporate retail or just a new “Coney Island Park”.

What makes it so special, today, in 2007, is its low-tech, classic, mom & pop owned, non-branded/non-corporate/non-commercialized, very timeless essence that is still anchored to its glorious and outrageous past. You don’t have to look hard to see the old ghosts that frolicked there once. Coney is run, patronized and admired by people who really care about Coney, and obviously not the money or exploiting it for profit.

It is easy to criticize Coney today by some – it’s “dirtiness, open space of vacant lots, lack of ATM’s, no extreme spectacular death defying virtual reality sound barrier breaking worlds tallest/fastest rides called something like the “Beast” or “Nitro” in 3-D, and lack of mass crowds. The more difficult position to take on Coney is to see it and celebrate it as a one-of-a-kind precious jewel, the poetic art that it is, just as it is.

…To me, development should add to the critical mass of Coney that is there, not destroy it. Development could slowly add some spectacular new amusements that are a revision of some of the great lost rides of yore. Development could be designing new rides that incorporate grace, style, and kitsch rather than a ubiquitous indoor water park.

The corporate retail real estate developers are not motivated or driven by the same purpose as those who run Coney now. They are only guided by profits. In this day and age, they will resort to any tactics in order to maximize profits. This includes, playing both sides of the fence (condos/mall AND amusements) and holding the prize hostage (only amusements IF we can build condos/mall). Can you name any other amusement areas that could only be built from the proceeds of selling condos/renting corporate retail on the same property? There are many available plots for this outside of the Amusement land.

If they were interested in only creating a new amusement legacy at Coney, they would certainly figure out another means to fund this effort other than holding the prospect of continued amusement hostage…

We couldn’t have said it any better ourselves.

New Red Hook Resident Reminds Us It’s "Go-On-Us," Not "Go-Anus"

We stumbled across this item on Inprint, which comes from the New School University. It’s a “neighborhood profile” written by someone that just moved to Red Hook. It’s short and it moved us:

I just moved to Red Hook about a week ago. I still don’t know much about the place. There’s a lot of eighteen wheeler traffic and all the Fung Wah buses hang out in a warehouse about a block away from where I live. I met my neighbor yesterday, his name is James and he has a tiny dog with squinty eyes. I don’t have a bed yet so I sleep on a piece of cardboard on my floor.

Of Gowanus, the writer says, “The Gowanus Canal, pronounced “Go-on-us,” not “Go-anus.” Trash and heavy machinery are common sights.”

Indeed.

National Group Says Brooklyn Public Library Censored Art

The discussion about the Brooklyn Public Library’s exclusion–some would say censorship–of certain works in its current show about the community surrounding the Atlantic Yards project continues. The National Coalition Against Censorship is saying the exclusion of the works was censorship and takes the library to task for not including several works in the “Footprints” show. The group says:

When the Library offered to host the show, it also stipulated that some of the work, which could be perceived as advocacy against the pending development of the area, should be excluded. Even though the library offered other rationales– size and artistic merit – the political position advanced by some of the work was clearly the reason for the exclusion.

Is this censorship?

Libraries have traditionally been our best allies in defense of First Amendment freedoms. Librarians have gone to bat innumerable times to protect a book against groups calling for its removal and spoken fiercely in defense of the public’s right to access information freely. In this case, however, the BCPL made an error of judgment, which put them in the role of the censor.

The First Amendment defines censorship as the suppression of speech by public officials because of the point of view expressed in it. As the library personnel at BCPL are public officials and as the work was rejected because of its critical point of view, their action may well be defined as censorship.

Library officials insist that, because it “serves the entire community,” BCPL does not “offer platforms for one-sided advocacy on controversial political issues.” We doubt the library would reject a book because it laid out an argument on a matter of social importance no matter how one sided the argument was. Why reject an artwork?…

Removing work from a show because it takes a position on an important public debate not only goes against First Amendment principles, it also betrays the library’s mission to represent a diversity of viewpoints. It is a regrettable error of judgment on part of an institution that has traditionally been one of the most principled defenders of the free circulation of ideas.

A very reasoned and carefully worded opinion about the Library’s actions, yet one that ultimately comes to negative conclusions about its actions.