PM Update: City Sued Repeatedly Over Injuries From Coney’s Trip and Fall Boardwalk

If you read GL, you know we’ve written quite a few items over the last year or so about the awful condition of the boardwalk in Coney Island. GL has learned that the city was sued seven times in 2005 and 2006 over injuries that occurred as a result of fall due to the boardwalk and settled nine other cases. We don’t know what the total bill to taxpayer’s has been because of the Parks Department’s failure to keep the boardwalk in good condition.

This is what we wrote about it last June:

The Coney Island Boardwalk–other than the very small portion that was replaced for $500,000 over the winter–is in a disgraceful state of disrepair. We’re not talking about a couple of loose boards here and there, either. We are talking about it being in such a sad state that all an ambulance chasing lawyer has to do to get new clients is find a particularly odious part of the boardwalk and stand there and wait for people to trip and fall. These spots are easy to locate. They’re the ones where boards are see-sawing up and down as people walk on them or where there are holes where the wood is rotted or where bolts are sticking out.

And, this is what we wrote a few weeks ago:

there are still ample opportunities to break your face or sprain an ankle and get a chance to meet one of the many nice and friendly NYPD officers patrolling the boardwalk as they call EMS to cart you away to the Emergency Room. We haven’t seen any statistics, but it is our understanding that there were a large number of injuries last year and, to judge by the bad condition early in the season, this year probably won’t disappoint. The city has cited the unusual wear and tear caused by the NYPD driving on the boardwalk as well as the fact that sand is directly underneath the boards and contributes to rot. What we don’t understand, however, is how it is cheaper to settle trip and fall injury lawsuits than it is to fix the boardwalk. (Not to mention why it is okay to allow conditions to persist that allow people to become injured.)

Repairs seem to have started on a small segment of the boardwalk near Astroland this week. Just last night, we were walking on the boardwalk and felt boards sagging under our feet. We looked down and saw you would fall least six to eight feet in that particular spot and wondered how long it will be before the boards split open and someone plunges through. The good news is, the victim will be able to sue or the city will settle!

Related Posts:
Coney Island’s Trip and Fall Boardwalk is Back for Another Season
Tripping (and Falling) in Coney Island

Coney Island Friday Night Fireworks Season Blasts Off

The Coney Island Friday Night Fireworks series kicked off last night with a fun pre-Fourth of July display. The crowd was a little smaller than usual thanks, no doubt, to the cool, breezy and cloudy weather. We’re always surprised by how long and how nice the displays presented, in part, by Astroland are. We noted that, this year, Taconic Investments–one of the big Coney Island developers–is a sponsor. The fireworks will take place every Friday night between now and Labor Day, and we must say that they’re a fun way to end a summer Friday.

Daily 360 Smith Battle Update: 850 Petition Signatures Gathered

Opponents of that controversial building at 360 Smith Street have gathered 850 signatures on a petition calling for zoning changes and a moratorium on new buildings more than fifty feet tall. The Carroll Gardens Petition Blog, meanwhile writes:

This week has seen a flurry of new activity for CORD! The petition ‘s call for a moratorium on the building of or alteration of any structure to a height of over fifty feet until WE can be presented with and decide upon the type of zoning or landmarking that will reshape our beloved neighborhood, is rapidly spreading! Numerous blogs, newspapers, and people on the street are carrying the word, and to date we have 800+ signatures in under a week and we are still collecting!

We urge, no, we BEG you to please keep spreading the word.Encourage your Carroll Gardens neighbors to get informed.If you love living here, love the neighborhood we have all made, and what we say makes sense to you,please sign the petition.

It’s the Fourth of July so why not reflect on what the word DEMOCRACY means to you and your family, friends and neighbors? For a democracy to work for the benefit of ALL THE PEOPLE concerned, the people must speak up! Why not make an effort and contact the POLS over the next two weeks and let them know how you really feel about this important movement?

A resident emailed us to say:

We are giving people the two weeks to do this as we know that most Pols are off on expensive yachts selling brooklyn brooklyn piece by peice while the
rest of us make BBQ hotdogs in our backyards this weekend so we wanted to account for that “time difference.”

There some local print media coverage too, but the story isn’t posted online yet.

Thor’s Big Fence, Now Blue and Finding Use

The huge fence that Thor Equities has put up around the properties it has demolished in the heart of Coney Island’s amusement district has been painted blue. More interesting, though, is that people are already finding a way to use the aesthetic monstrosity as something other than a streetscape killer. It gets at the issue that the Coney Island Development Corp. should have already acted to encourage vendors and others to use the space and keep it alive for the summer season, which is now in full swing. While W. 12 Street, which is in this photo, still has life because rides are open, Stillwell Avenue is a depressing dead zone. It serves as a block-long passageway and parking lot devoid of fun or life. It also stands as a depressing, if not alarming, omen of what Coney Island could be like next year if demolitions are allowed to go forward and the city takes no action to replace what is destroyed.

Yes, it’s only a fence, but sometimes, a fence is a lot more than just a fence. It’s a glimpse into the inner workings of an entire process.

GL Analysis: Fun with the 421-a Developer Tax Break

Not all the changes made in Albany by the special interests and others that attacked the 421-a developer tax break legislation are bad ones. We have always believed that the huge tax abatements that developers receive are a holdover from a 1970s/80s mentality of desperation that fail to reflect in any way, shape or form the reality of New York City–and, especially, Brooklyn, in the 2000s. The tax break both provides an unnecessary giveaway of taxpayer money to developers and affluent buyers, it can serve as a taxpayer-financed tool to promote displacement. Residents in some neighborhoods are, in effect, contributing their taxes to the buildings that will force them out and the affluent buyers who won’t have to pay property taxes for years to come.

One way to turn some of these lemons into lemonade, however, is to extend the exclusion zones that require developers to produce affordable housing in return for getting the tax breaks as widely as possible. For the Bloomberg Administration to object to the expansion of the exclusion zones pushes the limits of credulity. There are things in the bill to object to (keep reading), but the bigger exclusion zones are to be applauded. If you’re not going to kill the developer welfare turkey known as 421-a, affordable housing should be a minimum requirement in every building anywhere in the city that gets one of these generous tax breaks. Failing that, the exclusion zones should be as big as possible. If anything, the bill in Albany still doesn’t go far enough in adding gentrifying neighborhoods to the exclusion list. If the Bloomberg Administration succeeds in killing the added exclusion zones, it will be just as scandalous as the special tax breaks that Atlantic Yards supporters got written into the law.

In today’s Atlantic Yards Report, Norman Oder takes a look at the 421-a issue in the context of Bushwick, the Village Voice investigation of displacement in the neighborhood and the marketing effort for the building at 358 Grove.

All that having been said, however, one of the more fascinating lessons in special interest perks is the creation of a slew of exemptions and special tax breaks for Atlantic Yards. So, who was responsible for Forest City Ratner’s Christmas in June in Albany?

No Land Grab looks at the likely suspects identified so far:

VITO?

The prevailing wisdom during the past week was that it was State Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s fault. Lopez is the Chairman of the Assembly’s Housing Committee that drafted the bill, a project supporter and has received campaign contributions from Bruce Ratner’s brother and sister-in-law.

The NY Observer reports:

What the apparent contradictions in the bill represent are a series of horse trades that Mr. Lopez, a loping giant of a man who carries power like a running back headed to the end zone, brokered with fellow legislators.

SPINOLA & THE SENATORS?
Todays’ NY Times advances a separate theory, which fingers the State Senate and the head of the Real Estate Board of NY (REBNY):

But many advocates, city officials and even some Senate Republicans are saying that Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, betrayed the city’s effort. By all accounts, Mr. Spinola, the leading industry lobbyist, played a major role in negotiating the compromises and the tax deals for Atlantic Yards and other developments that led to Senate approval.

“SHILLY” SILVER?
There’s a third theory that starts with Lopez and leads to Sheldon Silver’s office. This week’s Brooklyn Paper explains:

Lopez’s motivations for slipping in the Ratner-favoring clause are unclear. One source said that the Brooklyn Democratic Party boss might have done it as a favor to Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver. “Silver and [Forest City Ratner lobbyist] Bruce Bender are old friends,” said the source.

The exception is so outrageous that no-one seems to have the guts to stand up and take credit.

There is some irony in the $300 million in special Atlantic Yards tax breaks that are now at issue, if not the Bloomberg Administration’s opposition to a great expansion of affordable housing provisions in the 421-a tax break bill. We have long believed that the entire Atlantic Yards process has been one of the most anti-particpatory, backroom, top-down and arrogant public processes we have seen in the United States. The process has been so wretched–and so corrosively divisive as a result of the way that it has stiffled real community input and discusision–that a generation of future planning students will be studying Atlantic Yards as a way to learn how not to do things. Why would anyone be surprised that the backroom wheeling and dealing has extended to slipping the project a few hundred extra million dollars in taxpayer money or to toying with increasing the income levels of those eligible for its affordable housing?

If anything, the 421-a skullduggery is the icing on an already nasty cake.

Celebrate Issue Project Room’s Last Show on the Gowanus Tonight

We’d be remiss if we didn’t not that tonight is the Issue Project Room’s last night in its current space on the Gowanus. (No reason to totally mourn, though, as it starts up next week at the Old American Can Factory at Third Avenue and Third Street.). Tonight’s show, from the IPR’s website:

SHARE celebrates ISSUE Project Room’s final night in their current location – the unique silo on the banks of the Gowanus Canal. To celebrate IPR’s time in the silo and their move to a new space, SHARE will run a multimedia open-jam, inviting everyone and anyone to join, including those who have performed at, visited, or simply love IPR. It will utilize Stephan Moore’s 16-Channel Hemispherical Speaker System and IPR’s cylinder structure for visual projections both inside and outside the space. Please come to play, hang out, or participate in many toasts!

The evening starts at 8PM. The IPR’s silo is located on the Gowanus at the Carroll Street Bridge. The formal address is 400 Carroll Street.

Brooklyn Nibbles: Random Roundup

1) In Park Slope, Elementi is now open on Seventh Avenue, occupying the old site of Snooky’s the old neighborhood hangout. Let the Seventh Avenue Battle of the Italian Restaurants begin.

2) Speaking of, uh, Italian restaurants, The Food of the Future reports the, er, fascinating rumor that a new 12-story building will house an Olive Garden. The massive building is rising at 500 Fourth Avenue between 12th Street and 13th Street. Who knows, maybe Red Lobster and Applebee’s will be moving in too.

3) Meanwhile, over on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, FOF also reports that 360 is closed, possibly for good.

4) In case you missed it, both Curbed and Brownstoner reported earlier this week that a McDonald’s may be opening on Smith Street in the storefront currently occupied by the Army & Navy store. If so, one more piece of old Smith Street will be falling, this time in an especially sad, corporate way. As one Curbed reader put it, “It fucking sucks.”

Brooklyn Greenmarket Locations

We thought we’d post the Brooklyn part of the New York City greenmarkets map above, as well as an image of the market locations below. Overall, there are 44 market locations in the city, with 16 of the markets, including the one at Grand Army Plaza on Saturdays, operating year round. The markets are said to have 250,000 customers a week during “peak season.” 164 farmers, give or take, participate in the greenmarkets. You can find more greenmarket information here.

Brooklinks: Saturday Very Visual Edition

[Photo courtesy of Frank Lynch/flickr]

Visual:

• Gerritsen Beach Flickr Set (above) [Frank Lynch/flickr]
• Independence Day [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• Burg from the Williamsburg Bridge [malarchie/flickr]
• Interactive Borough Hall 2,3 [BK 11201]
• Fourth Avenue Near Degraw [seriously excited!]
• Ninth Street Bridge Operator [Big Sky Brooklyn]
• The Corner Look, Greenpoint [Park Slope Street Photography]
• Desktop Day Double Feature [Brit in Brooklyn]

Exceptionally Visual in a Figurative Civil Liberties Sense:

• City Wants to Limit Public Photography & Filming [Gothamist]

Either Visual or Not Visual:

• 358 Grove, Bushwick Gentrification and 421-a [AYR]
• As It Turns Out, 1000s Went to the Mermiad Parade on Bikes [Streets Blog]
• New Bike Racks at the Bed-Stuy Y [Bed-Stuy Blog]
• Exxon Restarts Oil Pumping System Along Newtown Creek [AP/amNY]
• Two Restaurant Owners Busted for Trying to Bribe Health Inspectors [NYP]
• Fight Among Brooklyn Democrats Intensifies [City Room]
• The South Slope [The Food of the Future]
• Brooklyn, Your Floating Pool Awaits [NYT]
• Hepcat Buys iPhone [OTBKB]
• Weekly Dumbo Linkage [Dumbo NYC]
• Rounding Up the Flatbush Ave./Downtown Brooklyn Boom [Duffield St. Underground]
• New Noise Code Silences Parked Mister Softee Trucks, Starting Tomorrow [NYP]

Carroll Gardens Greenmarket Coming July 8

We first started seeing emails about a possible greenmarket in Carroll Gardens more than year ago. Well, the Carroll Gardens Greenmarket will finally be opening on July 8 and will run every Sunday from 8 AM-4 PM. It will be open through November and take place on Carroll Street between Smith and Court. The market, which is being established by the Council on the Environment of New York City will offer up everything from vegetables to house plants. Eight farmers will be participating, two of them from the New Farmer Development Program, which encourages people to get into farming.