The Great Wallabout Chopstick Storage Collapse Mystery

Right up front: any tip we receive that talks about a storage facility collapsing due to the weight of 20,000 pounds of chopsticks is guaranteed to get our total attention. A big self-storage facility near the BQE in Wallabout that a number of evicted 475 Kent residents were using apparently suffered a partial structural collapse recently. Here is the email the came to our inbox about the StorageMart, which is on Wallabout Street near the Kent Avenue entrance to the BQE:

A lot of us who were evicted from 475 Kent stored belongings there and two weeks ago some part of the StorageMart apparently flooded and partially collapsed – the rumor is that it happened because there were 20,000 pounds of chopsticks stored in one of the units.

My former roommate has been trying for two weeks to get his stuff out but he has been told that the city has shut part of the complex down because of “flooding”. If you walk around the building – you can’t see what happened – it must be in the interior that the damage happened…There are a lot of other storage places down Flushing and I talked to some of them and they all have heard about it but don’t want to talk about it.

Followers of the 475 Kent saga will recall that one of the major issues in the building was the illegal matzo bakery in the basement. And, now, they may have been victimized by ten tons of chopsticks? We already know that nothing will come along today that will amuse us more than the Great Wallabout StorageMart Chopstick Mystery.

An Important Meeting for Admiral’s Row

The historic buildings in the Brooklyn Navy Yard known as Admiral’s Row will have an important hearing next week when a hearing is held about transferring six acres of property from Federal control to the city. The city is planning to demolish the buildings to make way for a supermarket and parking lot while preservations are trying to save them. The meeting will take place Tuesday, December 11th from 7 to 9 pm at PS 307, located at 209 York Street (2 blocks north and 1 block west of the Navy Yard). An Army Corp of Engineers consultant will present a formal report on the condition of the buildings. Advocates have claimed they can be preserved and city officials say they are too deteriorated. The Historic Wallabout Association has produced talking points that back the transfer of the property and the construction of a supermarket on the site, but that urges “the adaptive re-use and restoration in whole, or in part, of the historic Admirals Row to allow for benefits to the local community including food, and job placement and training.” It also says that “Federal agencies should restrict the transfer with a requirement that the City appoint a task force of local stakeholders to arrive at a community plan that meets these objectives and is economically viable.” In the meantime, Brooklyn’s Other Museum of Brooklyn continues to wage a campaign to preserve the Admiral’s Row houses. Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. President Andrew Kimball says there is “no option” but tearing down the historic, but deteriorated structures.

GL Analysis:
Anyone that has seen the Admiral’s Row buildings or spent time looking at them understands they are not in good condition. Yet, it does not require a leap of imagination to realize they would be invaluable assets to future generations if they were restored. They are part of Brooklyn history and losing them will simply add to the long and sad list of losses that Brooklyn has experienced during the current development boom. It would be hard, in fact, to come with a story for one’s grandchild that would highlight our disregard for history more strongly than ripping down more of Brooklyn’s history for the sake of building a supermarket parking lot.

If it happens, some of those children will grow up and mock the early 21st century public officials that allowed it the same way we shake our heads in disgust today at the mindset that allowed the destruction of Penn Station in the 1960s. No, the Admiral’s Row buildings are not Penn Station, but the mentality that allowed the cultural vandalism that destroyed it is the same one plaguing Brooklyn today. The Bulldozer and Wrecking Ball School of Brooklyn Urban Planning will look just as short-sighted and ugly a couple of generations from now.

A Look at the Old Brooklyn Navy Yard

We got an email yesterday from Frank Trezza, the author of Brooklyn Steel-Blood Tenacity, directing us to his website. He wrote that “I worked in the Yard from 1973 until 1980 for Seatrain Shipbuilding. We Built 4 Super Tankers, 1 Ice Breaker Barge, 8 Ocean Going Barges and started 2 Ro-Ro’s.” We’re fascinated by the all the years when the Navy Yard was a very active ship building facility and by all of the surviving structures there. (Apparently, many other people are as well, given the huge number of requests for the tour offered during Open House New York.) We were inside the Yard earlier this year when PortSide New York’s Mary Whalen was having work done there, but weren’t able to have a look around. We digress, however, Mr. Trezza’s website is full of fascinating photos. Meanwhile, he says of the book:

This book will take the reader into the world of shipbuilding where the working class of Brooklyn built VLCC’s Oil Tankers [Super Tankers], Ro-Ro’s barges and an Ice Breaker Barge inside the Old Brooklyn Navy Yard against all odds. This in itself might be interesting, but the real story is in: the daily struggle of the workers working in hellish conditions, just trying to make a living, with more than a few giving their lives in some horrible ways building these ships. As my Boss first told me when he hired me “if you can work here you can work any where!” He was not joking! The triangle of passionate dislike between the workers, management, the union [the government in the center of the triangle] are also detailed!

You can check out the site by clicking here.

Wallabout is Ready to Happen

Every time we pass through Wallabout, the neighborhood down by the Brooklyn Navy Yard, we wonder when developers are going to start renovating some of the old buildings or putting up new ones. Last week, of course, the city announced a new mostly affordable housing development on the old Navy Brig site. The new Real Deal has an interesting article by Gabby Warshawer about Wallabout that suggest that it could be the next Dumbo. It even quotes Jed Walentas drawing some parallels between the two neighborhoods. Ms. Warshawer writes:

…the district near Brooklyn’s Navy Yard is poised to steal some of the luster of its well-heeled neighbor to the west.

Wallabout — which encompasses a mile-long stretch north of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill between Flushing and Park avenues near the Navy Yard — is the borough’s latest enclave set to undergo a gritty-to-glam story of urban revival. Several small- to medium-sized trendy retailers have set up shop in the neighborhood within the past few years, bringing increased foot traffic to a stretch of blocks still dominated by warehouses.

The story covers a lot of ground and is absolutely worth a read.

[Photo courtesy Lesterhead/flickr]