Adaptive Re-Use Success Story

According to North Brooklyn blogger Miss Heather, the speculation about what will happen to the abandoned precinct house on Herbert Street has ended with some good news.

According to the North Brooklyn Development Corporation, the Romanesque Revival building will be converted into affordable housing.

Representative Joseph Lentol pitched the proposal to the New York City Housing Preservation and Development Department (HPD), Councilmember Diana Reyna secured a $1,000,000 allocation from the City Council, and the Borough President’s Office allocated another $500,000 for the project.

Studio apartments will be offered from $100,000 and up.

The post from Newyorkshitty:
http://www.newyorkshitty.com/?p=5750

Farewell to Margot Gayle

Margot Gayle, a pioneer of the preservation movement in New York City who helped save SoHo from the bulldozers, died on Sunday in her home in Manhattan. She was 100 years old.

A founder of the Victorian Society in America, Gayle was also integral to the Friends of Cast-Iron Architecture, the Friends of the City’s Historic Clocks and the Committee of Neighbors to Get the Clock on the Jefferson Market Courthouse Started.

Gayle first became involved in grass-roots preservation advocacy in 1960 -- 5 years before the Landmarks Preservation Commission was created -- when she and others campaigned to rehabilitate the Jefferson Market Courthouse in Greenwich Village.

Her most significant achievement was persuading the newly-created LPC to designate the 26-block SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District.

Preservationists regard Gayle as a figure second only to Jane Jacobs in significance.

Gayle had a bachelor's from the University of Michigan and a master’s in science from Emory University. She initially came to New York to work as a scriptwriter for CBS.

She ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 1957, and worked for the New York City Planning Commission and Department of Commerce and Public Events.

Her published works include “Cast Iron Architecture in New York: A Photographic Survey,” with Edmund V. Gillon (1974); “Guide to Manhattan’s Outdoor Sculpture,” with Michele Cohen (1988); and “Cast Iron Architecture in America: The Significance of James Bogardus,” with her daughter, Carol Gayle (1998).

She celebrated her 100th birthday in May.

The article from the New York Times:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/remembering-a-pioneer-of-the-preservation-movement/index.html?scp=1&sq=margot%20gayle&st=cse

Fall at the Seaport

The South Street Seaport Museum, tucked in amid the high-end clothing chains, offers more that meets the eye: galleries, maritime crafts, shipboard events, letterpress workshops, walking tours, and children's programming such November 1st's "Pirate Hallowe'en".

It also offers tugboat rides.

Public tours aboard the historic W.O. Decker (limit 12 passengers) leave from the Seaport daily. Tickets are $20 per person before 6:00 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. (Weekend and evening tours are more expensive.)

Or sail New York Harbor aboard the schooner Pioneer. The cost is $25 per person on weekdays before 6:00 p.m.

Both the W.O. Decker and the Pioneer are available for private charter at (212) 748-8786.

The South Street Seaport Museum publishes a quarterly schedule of events called "Broadside", available from the museum at 12 Fulton Street (212) 748-8786 www.southstreetseaportmuseum.org.

You can also pick up a copy at Bowne and Co. at 211 Water Street, the historic letterpress, part of the museum, that prints the schedule.

Bowne and Co., which features a collection of old letterpress machines and a proprietor who knows and loves them all, is one of my favorite spots in downtown Manhattan.

The print trade in New York was once centered around the Seaport neighborhood. Herman Melville's masterpiece, Moby Dick, was typeset in a drab brick building that still stands on Fulton Street. The first edition of Moby Dick was printed nearby.

Green Church Bulletin

Behind the blue wall of death.

The plywood has been removed from nearly all of the windows.

The wooden framework that once held the large stained glass windows on the Ovington and 72nd Street sides has been removed from the window opening.

You can see through the building.

A hardhat walks around inside the sanctuary.

Not Happening

Hank Paulson's $700 billion emergency rescue plan for the nation's financial system failed to pass the House of Representatives today, leaving both parties and the Bush administration hanging over the canyon like Wile Coyote.

The Dow Jones industrials plunged nearly 800 points on the news, the biggest one-day drop ever.

The House will reconvene Thursday to try again.

Not enough representatives were willing to take the political risk of bailing out the erstwhile Masters of the Universe just 5 weeks before the elections.

The vote was 228-205 against the compromise that lawmakers worked out this past weekend.

Millions of voters -- who must have remembered the last time the Bush administration made such dire predictions -- flooded their representatives with protest calls and e-mails threatening to punish them at the ballot box.

The House Website nearly crashed from all the hits.

The bill the House voted on today would have let the government buy bad assets from troubled financial institutions, hopefully easing the credit crisis by letting them wipe their balance sheets clean.

Our sputtering economy needs a fix.

The sell-off started even before the vote. The run stopped at 777 points, well beyond the 684-point drop when the market opened again after 9/11.

In all, 65 Republicans and 140 Democrats voted "yes," with 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats voting "no."

So what now?

Well, first, we have the bi-partisan finger-pointing to get through.

Republicans blamed Nancy Pelosi, who characterized Bush's economic policy as "anything goes, no supervision, no discipline, no regulation", for spoiling the vote.

But Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, chided "Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decide to punish the country."

Frank said that the Republicans rejected their own president.

McCain and Obama offered sound-bites.

And we all wonder if we'll ever be able to retire.

The article from Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/financial_meltdown;_ylt=AjKzyOh2hWcpPYRFyyMrq6Ss0NUE

The House passes the Senate version of the bailout plan, from the Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/10/03/2008-10-03_house_of_representatives_passes_controve.html

There goes our $700 billion.

An Offering

Ridge Avenue, Sunday, after the rain.

Green Church Bulletin

Sunday's dumpster du jour.

Fall at Green-Wood

Fall events at Green-Wood Cemetery.

Friday, October 3, at 6:00 p.m.
Gala fundraiser for the Green-Wood Historic Fund, featuring the cast of "Angels and Accordians." Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Henry Ward Beecher: The Most Famous Man in America, will be honored. For information and tickets, call 718-768-7300.

Saturday, October 4, at 12:00 Noon & 3:30 p.m.
Angels and Accordians. Outdoor dance and music performed amid historic Green-Wood Cemetery's rolling hills and featuring sculpture and monuments. Several tombs at the Cemetery will be open to the public. Free admission. Call 718-768-7300 for reservations. Rain date is Sunday, October 5th.

Saturday, October 11, at 6:00 p.m.
Saturday Night by Moonlight. Bring a flashlight, sign a waiver of liability, and you're all set. Walk features live accordion music, a visit to the Catacombs, and moonlight (weather permitting). No reservation necessary. Admission is $20 for the public; $10 for Historic Fund members.

Saturday, October 25, at 1:00 p.m.
Walk: Hallowe'en at Green-Wood, Part I. Fascinating tales of murder, mayhem, and Spiritualism. A visit to the Wizard of Oz and the Catacombs included. Arrive early for this very popular tour. Admission is $20; $10 for Historic Fund members. No reservations necessary.

Sunday, October 26, at 1:00 p.m.
Walk: Hallowe'en at Green-Wood, Part II. Celebrate the holiday with fascinating tales of murder, mayhem, and Spiritualism. Also a very popular tour, so arrive early. Admission is $20; $10 for Historic Fund members. No reservations necessary.

Sunday, November 2, at 1:00 p.m.
Trolley Tour: Sculpture at Green-Wood Cemetery. Join Dr. Karen Lemmey, formerly of The Metropolitan Museum and The Smithsonian Institution, and Jeff Richman, Green-Wood Cemetery Historian, for a tour of Green-Wood's sculpture collection. Call 718-768-7300 for reservations; trolley space is limited. Trolley ride is $20 per person; $10 for Historic Fund members.

Sunday, December 7, at 1:00 p.m.
Talk: George Catlin's Painting of DeWitt Clinton. Join Dr. Joan Trocolli, senior scholar at the Denver Art Museum and Catlin expert for a talk about her research on this painting in the Green-Wood Historic Fund's collection, and walk to Catlin's grave after the talk. Free admission. Call 718-768-7300 for reservations.

For questions, comments, to arrange organizational or group tours, or to get on the mailing list, please e-mail jeffrichman@green-wood.com.

Updated tour schedules are available in the spring and fall on the Internet at http://www.green-wood.com/.

All tours meet at the main gates of The Green-Wood Cemetery, inside the 25th Street and Fifth Avenue entrance, Brooklyn.

By subway, take the R train to 25th Street, then walk one block up the hill. If you drive to the cemetery, you can park for free inside.

The Green-Wood Website:
http://www.green-wood.com/

Green-Wood podcast from the Bowery Boys:
http://theboweryboys.blogspot.com/2008/10/podcast-green-wood-cemetery.html

So Who Won?

The blogosphere is buzzing about who won Barack Obama's and John McCain's first presidential debate on Friday.

A CBS News instant poll of undecided voters found Obama the winner with 40% to McCain's 22%. But 38% called it a draw.

Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright called the debate a "breakthrough" for Obama "who showed himself truly ready to be president".

Albright wrote on Huffington Post that:

"He responded knowledgeably, thoughtfully and confidently to the toughest questions on the economy, Iraq, and terror. Meanwhile, Senator McCain spent so much time attacking his opponent, he neglected to show how a McCain-Palin administration would differ from Bush-Cheney. As a result, Obama answered the threshold question about his candidacy; McCain did not."

Why did McCain avoid making eye contact with Obama during the debate?

A psychotherapist writing on Talking Points Memo said McCain's behavior suggests one of two things:

"[McCain] doesn't want to make eye contact because he is prone to losing control of his emotions if he deals directly with the other person or his anger masks fear and the eye contact may increase or substantiate the fear."

The National Review said "tonight was a major win for McCain."

The New York Times check point blog looked at accuracy in realtime. For example, McCain's claim that Obama voted "to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000 a year" is wrong. Obama claimed that McCain had said that the US "can muddle through in Afghanistan" – when he actually said "may", making the meaning quite different.

Obama lost points by misquoting Henry Kissinger on Iran. Obama tried to suggest that Kissinger, a McCain adviser, advocated meeting Iran's leaders without any precondition. He didn't make clear that Kissinger was not in favor of talks at the presidential level – a fact the former secretary of state pointed out in a statement after the debate.

As with everything else these days, who won seems to depend on your point of view.

The post from the Guardian Blog:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2008/sep/27/uselections2008.barackobama

"A Man to Respect and Appreciate"

Everyone loved legendary star and 10-time Academy Award nominee Paul Newman, whose effortless grace, magnetism and piercing blue eyes personified cool.

Newman, one of Hollywood's most respected and bankable leading men for 60 years, died on Friday at age 83 at home in Westport, Connecticut after a battle with cancer, surrounded by Joanne Woodward, his wife of 50 years, family and close friends.

A gifted actor, director, professional race car driver, philanthropist, political activist and businessman, Newman was humble and private.

He trained at the Actors' Studio with Marlon Brando and James Dean and appeared in more than 50 memorable films, breaking through as boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me in 1956.

Newman played against his classically handsome looks, embracing rebels, alcoholic losers, and outsider heroes.

Films like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Hud and Cool Hand Luke made him a star in the late 1950s and '60s. But stardom didn't impress him. He shunned the shallow celebrity of Hollywood for a family-centered life far from Hollywood.

In 1969, Newman starred with Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Four years later, he and Redford partnered again in The Sting. The two best-looking actors of their generation were friends.

Later in his career, Newman appeared in The Verdict, Absence of Malice and Road to Perdition

After 10 nominations, Newman finally won a best actor award for the 1987 film The Color of Money, in which he reprised pool shark "Fast Eddie" Felson from The Hustler.

Sally Field characterized her former co-star as "perfect person".

Former co-star Gina Lollabrigida characterized Newman as "a man to respect and appreciate."

Newman married actress Joanne Woodward in 1958. They met while filming The Long Hot Summer.

Newman was a passionately involved political liberal -- he even ended up on former president Richard Nixon's "enemies list", which he regarded as an achievement.

After starring in the 1969 film Winning, Newman became a race car driver, turning pro in 1977, when he placed fifth at Daytona.

In 1982, Newman and his Westport neighbor started Newman's Own as a joke. The company has grown into a multi-million-dollar global business.

All of the company's profits, estimated at more than 200 million, are donated to charity.

In 1988, Newman founded the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, a Connecticut camp for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

Newman and Woodward have three daughters, Elinor, Melissa and Clea. Daughters Susan and Stephanie were born of his first marriage.

His 5 daughters, in a statement, called their father "a rare symbol of selfless humility" who was "grateful for his good fortune".

What I most appreciated about Paul Newman was his innate wisdom. He was one of those rare human beings who seem to have been born knowing what really matters in life. In that, he was indeed fortunate.

The ABC News Australia article:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/28/2376121.htm

Wal-Greenmarket

The Brooklyn Paper reports that a farmers market is temporarily coming to the former Key Food parking lot at 3rd Avenue and 95th Street.

Councilmember Vincent Gentile will announce the opening at a press conference Monday afternoon.

The Key Food market is moving to another Bay Ridge location and construction of a new Walgreens begins at the site in January, but the Walgreens will probably not open until next June.

Brooklyn Paper coverage here:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/39/31_39_bm_br_greenmarket.html

And here:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/39/31_39_bm_greenmarket_update.html

Farmers Market post from Vincent Gentile's blog:
http://vincentgentile.blogspot.com/2008/09/greenmarket-comes-to-bay-ridge.html

More, from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=23512

Opening day, from Vincent Gentile's blog:
http://vincentgentile.blogspot.com/2008/10/photos-from-opening-day-of-bay-ridge.html

Lollipop Building Redesign

The former Huntington Hartford Gallery of Modern Arts has reopened after a bitter preservation battle and three years of construction.

Now called The Museum of Arts and Design, the building has been redesigned by architect Brad Cloepfil.

The 1964 Edward Durell Stone building at 2 Columbus Circle was known for its ground-level white marble columns topped by darker disks.

The building became a flashpoint for preservationists when it was bought in 2002 for $17 million and alteration plans announced.

Writers Tom Wolfe and Witold Rybczynski, architect Robert A.M. Stern, artist Chuck Close and Yale scholar Vincent Scully urged the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to calendar a hearing on their request for evalution.

They wanted to be heard on the proposed redesign.

They were backed by state, federal and international groups, including the Preservation League of New York State, the World Monuments Fund and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which in 2004 listed 2 Columbus Circle as one of the country’s most-endangered buildings.

But the LPC declined to calendar the request for evaluation, and Ada Louise Huxtable, former architecture critic of The New York Times -- who called the building “the die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops”-- agreed.

While the $90-million redesign didn’t change the footprint of the buiding, Cloepfil has significantly altered its exterior. The white marble facade of the building has been replaced with a terra cotta skin of 22,000 tiles.

The Museum of Arts and Design has tripled its capacity in the move.

The museum opens to the public on Saturday, September 27.

The article from the Architectural Record:
http://archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/080924columbuscircle.asp

A "Critical Mass" roundtable for 2 Columbus Circle is hosted by Curbed:
http://curbed.com/archives/2008/11/20/curbed_roundtable_redux_critical_mass_for_2_columbus_circle.php

Green Buildings Open House

GreenhomeNYC will host its annual guided tour of green buildings throughout New York City on Saturday, October 4.

New Yorkers can tour Green buildings and hear how they work from the owners, architects, and engineers who designed, built and operate them, coming away with a new understanding of the benefits Green buildings offer.

GreenHomeNYC has offered the NYC Green Buildings Open House since 2003 as a part of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s (NESEA) Green Buildings Open House and the American Solar Energy Society’s (ASES) National Solar Tour.

Guests can visit more than 25 participating buildings in 3 bus tours, 2 bike tours, and 2 walking tours.

Visit the GreenHomeNYC site for tour descriptions and to sign up:
http://greenhomenyc.org/events/nyc-green-buildings-open-house

Brooklyn Preservation Council Meets

The next meeting of the Brooklyn Preservation Council will be on Tuesday, Oct. 14 at 6:00 p.m. in the Borough President's Conference Room on the first floor of Borough Hall.

For more information about the upcoming meeting or about the BPC and its activities, please contact Robert Furman: bobfurman1@juno.com

Tasered Man Falls to His Death

In a statement, the NYPD has acknowledged that the actions of its officers caused the death of Brooklyn resident Inman Morales.

As Morales stood naked on top of a storefront gate housing in Bedford Stuyvesant waving a long fluorescent light bulb, an officer fired a Taser gun at him, causing him to fall to his death.

Officers at the scene failed to have an inflatable bag in place to cushion Morales’ fall before they tasered him.

Not surprisingly, NYPD guidelines discourage the use of Tasers "in situations where the subject may fall from an elevated surface."

The incident raises two recurring issues: the use of Tasers -- which administer a powerful electric shock -- on people, and the NYPD's response to people who, like Morales, are emotionally disturbed.

Inman Morales is the latest in a growing list of emotionally disturbed people killed in encounters with the NYPD. Eighteen-year-old Khiel Coppin was shot to death last November when the NYPD took a hairbrush he was holding for a gun. David Kostovski, also killed by the NYPD last November, was holding a broken wine bottle. Gidone Busch was killed by the NYPD while holding a hammer on the street. And Eleanor Bumpurs was shot by NYPD officers who entered her Bronx apartment.

The NYPD's treatment of emotionally disturbed people is a significant issue: police reportedly made more than 87,000 radio runs involving emotionally disturbed people in 2007.

The article from Gotham Gazette:
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2008/09/25/death-by-taser/

The NYPD Lieutenant who ordered the taser used commits suicide, from the Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2008/10/02/2008-10-02_nypd_lt_michael_pigott_who_ordered_fatal.html

Related Daily News column:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/10/07/2008-10-07_taser_tragedies_show_troubled_minds_dese.html

Application Filed to Demolish Parsonage

The Committee source monitoring the DOB BIS database advises me that a demolition application was posted today for the brownstone rowhouse (pictured left) that anchors the row behind the Green Church on Ovington Avenue -- once the Methodist parsonage.

The question on the application whether the proposed demolition will affect the structural stability of the neighboring rowhouses was not answered.

The application on the DOB BIS database:
http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?requestid=1&passjobnumber=310205131&passdocnumber=01

Typical of the obtuse media coverage of the Green Church controversy, the time capsule gets column space, while the multiple, profound and lasting impacts of the Green Church development on Bay Ridge are ignored:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/nyregion/thecity/28time.html?ref=thecity

Want a story, NYT? Talk to the people who live on the Green Church block. Talk to the people who live on Bennett Court, which dead-ends in the churchyard. Talk to the family whose home shares a common wall with the soon-to-be demolished Methodist parsonage on Ovington Avenue. Talk to the local preservationists who were dragged through the mud in the three-year battle to save Bay Ridge's most important landmark. Talk to the approximately 1,200 people who sent letters to LPC Chair Robert Tierney asking him to calendar the church for hearing. Talk to the more than 1,100 people who signed petitions asking State Senator Martin Golden to intervene. Talk to the 139 people who signed the petition linked to this blog seeking the help of our local elected representatives. Talk to the 111 people who joined the Committee to Save the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church. Talk to those congregation members whose voices were drowned out by their leadership.

Slush II

Mayor Bloomberg revealed Wednesday that he used a secret fund to reward City Councilmembers with $20 million for their districts.

Bloomberg's slush fund was first acknowledged last spring in the wake of a City Council scandal over tax dollars directed to fictitious groups and nonprofits controlled by Councilmembers' relatives (Slush I).

New details were released yesterday regarding funds paid to Councilmembers and other pols since 2002 for distribution to their favorite projects and organizations.

Mayoral spokesperson Stu Loeser explained that the funds were used to reward people who took "tough stands" and helped Bloomberg make "politically unpopular" and sometimes "perilous" decisions.

Top grossing recipients were Brooklyn Democrats Simcha Felder, who raked in $5.7 million, and Domenic Recchia, whose take was $2.2 million. Both crossed party lines to endorse Bloomberg when he ran for re-election as a Republican in 2005.

Councilman Bill DeBlasio (D-Brooklyn) got $351,000 for going up against then-Council Speaker Gifford Miller in 2005 on Bloomberg's plan to put a garbage transfer station in Miller's Manhattan district.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz began collecting in 2005 after crossing party lines to endorse Bloomberg. Much of the $2.6 million he earned went to his nonprofit, Best of Brooklyn, Inc.

Some of the mayor's cash ended up with nonprofits later linked to Slush I, including North Brooklyn Community Council, run by Councilman Erik Martin Dilan's wife, which got $30,000 in 2005.

The article from the Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/09/24/2008-09-24_i_gave_20m_to_pals_on_council_mayor_bloo.html

Hydrofracking Debate

New York City Councilmembers fear that the gas-drilling boom in the Catskills, as a result of Governor Paterson's having greenlighted natural gas exploration in New York State, could pollute the city's reservoirs and force taxpayers to build a $20 billion water filtration system.

Councilman James Gennaro (D-Queens), a geologist, warned at a hearing on Wednesday that natural gas extraction could result in contaminated water and health risks.

Energy industry speculators have been buying up gas leases on private land in the upstate Marcellus Shale outcrop. They plan to use a horizontal, hydraulic drilling a technique, known as "hydrofracking", to recover natural gas trapped within the layers of shale.

But natural gas is not the only product of hydrofracking.  Gennaro, chair of the Council's Environmental Protection Committee, warns that the mix of water, liquids and chemicals injected into the shale under high pressure in the hydrofracking process can pose health risks to New Yorkers if it seeps into groundwater and contaminates the city's reservoirs.

New York State Environmental Commissioner Alexander (Pete) Grannis testified that no permits have been granted or are pending for hydrofracking in the Marcellus Shale and has vowed not to pemit drilling that would threat to the city's drinking water.

City environmental officials want a one-mile buffer between any hydrofracking zone and the city's watershed, but Gennaro wants more protection.

The article from the New York Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/09/10/2008-09-10_city_pols_call_drilling_plan_a_biodisast.html

More on hydrofracking from the Record:
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081015/NEWS/81015017/-1/rss01

More on the "frack attack" from the Green Capitol Insider:
http://eany.org/capinsider/10202008.html

More on Marcellus Shale from Earthworks:
http://www.earthworksaction.org/marcellusshale08.cfm

Take action through Earthworks:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/676/t/572/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=393

More on hydrofracking from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/nyregion/19drill.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

More from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=28&id=26752

More from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Patriot Trails

The state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation has recently put up signs at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park commemorating George Washington's daring midnight retreat across the East River after the British routed the Continental Army in the Battle of Brooklyn.

The site is part of the Revolutionary War Heritage Trails system, a state project begun in 2002. The Brooklyn signage was partly underwritten by Brooklyn College, CUNY and Brooklyn Heritage Inc., a local non-profit.

Other Brooklyn sites earmarked for signage are the Prison Ship Martyrs Memorial Monument in Fort Greene, the Old Stone House in Park Slope (site of a fierce battle between the British and the Continental Army) and the Fort Hamilton Overlook in Bay Ridge (where the Patriots first spotted British warships entering New York Harbor.)

The New York area was, in many ways, the epicenter of the American Revolution, and the Revolutionary War battles fought here -- and the Americans who died on the infamous prison ships in Wallabout Bay -- deserve to be better remembered.

The article from the Brooklyn Eagle:
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=23365

Not Buying It

As reported in the Nation, the wise guys of Wall Street are planning to stick us with their bad debts.

That's what Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is proposing to Congress.

The house of global finance is on fire. Institutions need to offload mountains of bad assets in order to sidestep catastrophic losses.

Government has the emergency powers to take over the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets. Should the financiers and traders who got us into this mess save themselves at our expense?

If the actions of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have failed to stop the flight of capital, is Paulson's bailout likely to bring it back?

Washington could take charge and impose a central authority to ride herd on the financial institutions. It has great leverage with the financiers now. That leverage will be forever lost if Congress gives Paulson an unconditional guarantee.

Should the taxpayers eat the rotten financial assets dragging down funds, banks and brokerages without making equal demands on them?

Paulson's plan replays the 1980s savings and loan bailout, with a twist. The failed S&Ls held valuable assets that the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) could sell. This crisis involves tricked-up financial instruments that may be worthless.

Does Wall Street deserve another chance to profit from their own bad behavior?

If the taxpayers are forced to bail out Wall Street, they should be entitled to the same: home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies should be cancelled.

Maybe the government should create an emergency agency, like in the New Deal, that lends to the consumer economy--businesses, solvent banks, buyers and sellers. Why should we trust the bankers to provide investment capital and credit?

Call your congressional representatives, even if only to share your outrage.

The article from the Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081006/greider

No deal -- yet -- from the New York Sun:
http://www.nysun.com/national/bush-mccain-obama-huddle-on-bailout-deal/86620/

More from the San Francisco Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/26/MNUI135BTU.DTL&type=politics

A compromise takes shape, from Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/28/congress-white-house-reac_n_129964.html

The House passes the Senate's bailout plan and the President signs the legislation, from the Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/10/03/2008-10-03_house_of_representatives_passes_controve.html

The backstory from McClatchy:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/52559.html

Green Church Bulletin

The Green Church, now surrounded by the blue wall of death.

And the name of the demolition company the BRUMC hired?

Cavalier.

They got that right.

More of the demolition story from the Bay Ridge Courier:
http://www.yournabe.com/articles/2008/09/28/bay_ridge/bay_ridge_courier/news/bay_ridge_courier_newsdemopermit09262008.txt

Honey Bees Dying

A phenomenon known as "Colony Collapse Disorder" threatens the world's food supply.

Critical to fruit, nut and vegetable crops, honey bees are mysteriously dying as part of the broader decline of all pollinators.

Pollinators are the animals that help plants reproduce by transferring pollen from flower to flower. Some 200,000 species of pollinators, including birds, bats and various insects are engaged in this task worldwide.

But no pollinator is more important than the honey bee, mainstay of industrial agriculture in the U.S., where migratory beekeepers earn millions each year bringing their hives to crops during blooming time.

That's why it was an agricultural disaster when 1/3 of managed honey bee colonies in the U.S died off in 2006. The cause of the die-off has come to be known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

The phenomenon occurred again in 2007 and in 2008.

CCD is a mystery. One day, a hive is healthy, and the next, all of the adult bees have disappeared -- they never return to the hive.

Speculation rages about why this is happening. Is it possible that honey bees, master navigators, cannot find their way back home, and, if so, what disease or poison could be responsible?

Or are these highly social insects, when they get sick, going off to die on their own in order to spare their colonies?

No one knows, but the research to date suggests more than one stressor.

Current suspects include a virus that weakens the bee's immune system, the invasive varroa mite, malnutrition, and exposure to pesticides.

If CCD continues, honey bees could disappear from our planet by 2035.

The problem has received scant attention from the Bush administration. In 2007, Congress allocated emergency funds to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study CCD, but the Department has so far refused to account for the money and has not released the results of any investigation.

The National Resources Defence Council (NRDC) has mounted an advocacy campaign to bring the Department to account, to which you can add your voice.

CCD is a dire problem, which we cannot ignore away.

You can address the broader problem of pollinator decline -- related to loss of habitat -- by making your yard pollinator-friendly.

Wild bee species -- many threatened with extinction -- can pick up the slack left by the dying honey bees, if allowed to live and feed.

And although Butterflies, moths, beetles, and hummingbirds don't all help with crop pollination, they assist in pollinating wild plants, and so also deserve our protection.

Here's what you can do:

Create a native flower garden in a sunny area. Choose an array of flowers that bloom at different times, so pollinators will have food from spring through fall.

Make sure to plant flowers with blooms of different colors and shapes during each season. Bees prefer blue, purple, white and yellow flowers, butterflies and hummingbirds like yellow, red and orange.

Cluster flowers of the same species together.

Provide a water supply in a shallow container or birdbath. Lay stones in the water to create perches for pollinators.

Let a corner of your yard return to the wild. Brush, grasses, wildflowers and weeds provide pollinators with much-needed food and shelter.

Some bees nest in the dirt, so leaving a small patch of sandy bare soil can provide a home for them.

If you want to go further, you can build a bee nest.

Avoid using pesticides on your lawn and garden, which are toxic to bees and other animals.

Even if you don't care about pollinators, children and pets will be safer and the water supply will be cleaner if you avoid pesticides.

Also, buy organic food when you can, to keep pesticides out of the fields where pollinators are trying to survive.

Finally, try to change the way you see insects. Insects are not our enemies -- they are part of the network that holds the natural world together, helping us to fertizile plants, till the soil and provide food for other animals.

The loss due to extinction of even one insect species could have global impact, particularly if that species is the honey bee.

St. Werburghs

Named after a 6th-century princess-turned-abbess said to have abandoned the royal life to do good works, St. Werburghs Church in Bristol, U.K. has evolved from church into climbing center.

As the city expanded in the late 19th Century, the 15th-century Gothic church, once in the center of Bristol, was removed -- stone by stone -- to a suburb named after it.

By the late 20th century, its shrinking congregation could no longer support the church.

(Sounds familiar, but what's not familiar is what happened next.)

The diocese leased the church to the Bristol Climbing Center, with the stipulation that the structural elements not be damaged, so that the building could revert to ecclesiastical use in the future.

This has led to some jarring juxtapositions, but the overall effect is described as a "wonderfully dynamic time-warp".

From outside, you would never suspect the starting sight within the church walls.

The church is a creative example of adaptive reuse — with flexible thinking by church administrators and community leaders having saved a historic building while providing a dynamic play space for the city's youth.

Adapting the church from an eccelesiastical to a more mundane purpose is seen as fulfilling the good intentions of its founder in a practical way.

The article from Architecture Week:
http://www.architectureweek.com/2006/0920/culture_1-1.html

Developing Situation

Comptroller William Thompson says that nothing is off the table when it comes to the effect of the current economy on the city's budget -- including the 7% tax break property owners have been getting for the past several years.

This year's city budget, including 25,000 lost jobs and a 12.5 % drop in personal income tax revenue, may not be enough to immunize the city from from the Wall Street plague.

The worst is yet to come, Thompson says.

The article from Gotham Gazette:
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2008/09/17/thompson-more-doom-to-come/

Bloomberg calls for $1.5 billion in budget cuts:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/bloomberg-orders-15-billion-in-cuts/

Details of Bloomberg's budget cuts, from Community Based Planning:
http://communitybasedplanning.wordpress.com/

The backstory of the current fiscal crisis from the Village Voice:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-09-23/columns/the-backstory-of-the-financial-collapse/1

"I don't think we'll get to the point of layoffs", from the Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/09/24/2008-09-24_mayor_bloomberg_city_can_cut_15b_save_jo.html

City Council reacts to the property tax issue, from Queens Crap:
http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2008/09/read-their-lips.html

Only 37 Days Left 'Til Hallowe'en

Greenpoint Hallowe'en displays, from Miss Heather:
http://www.newyorkshitty.com/?p=9368

Green Church Bulletin

The "blue wall of death" going up around the Green Church on Tuesday morning.

I grew up on comics, and some part of me still believes in superheroes -- still hopes that a superhero will come and save the church.

But that won't happen, I know -- not here.

As of Wednesday morning, the blue wall of death nearly surrounds the property, blocking the view from the street.

On Ovington, the plywood curtain stops just short of the limestone rowhouse that used to be the BRUMC parsonage.

My source reports that the church is due to be demolished first, then the parsonage.

A Great Green Church post from the WGPA blog, with thanks to my source:
http://www.wgpa.us/2008/09/green-church.html

Brooklyn Children's Museum Re-Opens

It's back, it's re-designed and it's really yellow.

The Rafael Viñoly re-design of the Brooklyn Children's Museum, which re-opened this month, is double in size and in annual capacity.

It's also New York's first LEED-certified "green" museum, with geothermal heating and cooling, sustainable bamboo floors, and motion and carbon dioxide sensors that adjust lighting and ventilation.

The expansion project began in 2003.

In its previous incarnation, the museum was submerged under an earth berm with only an antique trolley kiosk visible. It now looks out on the neighborhood through a 90-foot curtain of glass.

Founded in 1899 -- the same year that the cornerstone of the Green Chuch was laid -- it is the oldest children's museum in the country.

The museum's founders located it in Crown Heights in the hope that it would serve the thousands of new immigrant families who had lately moved to Brooklyn.

At that time, there were 90,000 children in Brooklyn who couldn't attend school because of overcrowding and family obligations. The museum was intended to provide educational opportunities for them and their families.

That is part of the reason why the museum has never moved to a more touristy area.

The museum belongs to the Cultural Institutions Group — 34 arts organizations that occupy city-owned land and are largely supported by city funding.

The city provided $46 million in capital funding for the renovation, with the museum raising an additional $28 million.

New exhibits include "World Brooklyn," an interactive exhibit about real Brooklyn businesses, and "Neighborhood Nature," about natural habitats in Brooklyn.

There is also a "mini-museum" for children up to 5 years old.

The re-designed museum includes a cafeteria with kosher menu options, a rooftop theater, a gallery for objects from the museum's collection, a greenhouse, a garden, and a terrarium for the museum's 20-foot-long albino Burmese python, Fantasia.

The article from the New York Sun:
http://www.nysun.com/arts/adding-yellow-and-green-to-the-brooklyn-childrens/80039/

Related article from the Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2008/09/22/2008-09-22_brooklyn_childrens_museum_reopens_with_a.html

Green Church Bulletin

Felled shrubbery on the lawn of the Green Church this morning.

As picked up by Curbed:
http://curbed.com/archives/2008/09/23/touched_by_the_hand_of_god_green_church_is_almost_history.php

More on the demolition from the Brooklyn Paper:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/38/31_38_bm_green_demo.html

These, They Landmarked

New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) unanamously voted to grant landmark status to the former Wheatsworth Bakery, a 1928 factory on the Lower East Side famous for making Milk-Bone dog treats.

The factory was one of five sites given landmark protection this past week, including a former bank branch on the Lower East Side, a Harlem firehouse, and recreation centers in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and Tompkinsville on Staten Island.

The article from the New York Times, including photos and descriptions of the 4 other buildings designated by the LPC:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/ex-dog-biscuit-factory-is-among-5-landmarks/

Hard Money

Things aren't looking good for real estate investors who need financing.

Nationally, 11 banks have gone belly-up so far this year, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.(FDIC) has announced that the number of banks on its "watch list" rose 30% during the second quarter of 2008.

The FDIC expects the list to grow.

The current lending environment is described as "hostile", and real estate loans are hard to find.

U.S. banks are downsizing their real estate portfolios as overdue loans and charge-offs rise, hurting their bottom line.

Bank underwriting standards for real estate have tightened by 80%.

Tight credit is having a drastic effect on investment sales.

Research firm REIS Inc. reports that investment sales may fall by 66% this year, as debt, especially commercial mortgage backed securities, dries up or is offered at prices too high and terms too strict for borrowers.

Wall Street issued zero CMBS debt during July and August.

Investors and lenders are waiting for prices to drop and testing the waters to see if properties can be sold. Buyers want firm up-front financing commitments.

A fall-off in office lease volume and lower asking rents are squeezing delinquent sellers.

Real estate originations by major banks are down due to intense capital pressure in combination with weakening real estate fundamentals nationally.

Credit standards are tighter and credit spreads wider.

Securitization and syndication markets are closed, making it harder to finance big deals as banks seek to limit per-transaction exposure.

Financing for new condo development and land acquisition has dried up. Condo developers need at least 40% equity with full lender recourse and strict covenants.

The hotel finance market is shrinking, with least 30% of lenders to the hospitality industry having turned off the faucet.

Borrowers need between 40% and 50% of equity, with full lender recourse, financing fees, one-to-two points, floating LIBOR rates, and 350-600 basis points.

Regulators want banks to underwrite loans for income-producing properties on a cash flow basis. Construction and development sponsors must demonstrate liquidity.

But rates are still low and funds are available.

As prices come down, sidelined capital will be deployed for acquisitions.

Lenders still want to finance residential rental properties in the five boroughs. Domestic and German lenders are providing letters of credit for so-called 80/20 projects, where the New York State Housing Finance Agency and the New York City Housing Development Corp. give tax-exempt financing to developers of multi-family rental projects.

According to the federal tax code, at least 20% of the units must be set aside for households with incomes at up to 50% of adjusted median income. Alternatively, 40% or more of a project's units (25% in New York City) must be "affordable" to households whose income is up to 60% of local AMI.

Forest City Ratner is a player in the 80/20 market.

Financing other asset classes, except multi-family, is still hard for borrowers.

Market fundamentals in the New York region are weak, but still relatively sound.

The downturn in financing is expected to last up to 18 months.

The article from the New York Sun:
http://www.nysun.com/real-estate/hostile-lending-environment-weighs-on-investors/85612/

Put Me In, Coach!

Mayor Bloomberg has announced on NBC's Meet the Press with Tom Brokaw that he is open to taking on a senior role in the unprecedented trillion-dollar bailout of the U.S. financial markets.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has recommended tapping Bloomberg to head a new agency charged with buying up the bad assets that are sinking the nation's top financial firms.

Bloomberg, while maintaining that he is committed to New York City, said he would do anything that the country asked him to do.

Federal lawmakers propose to create a new agency to administer the bailout, but the Bush administration prefers to run the program out of the Treasury Department rather than create a new bureaucracy.

Bloomberg flirted with a run for the presidency, was mentioned as a vice presidential contender for either Senator Obama or Senator McCain, has been named as a possible candidate for Treasury Secretary in the next administration, and is seen as a possible candidate for president of the World Bank.

Bloomberg wouldn't tell Tom Brokaw whether he would seek to overturn term limits and run for re-election as mayor.

The article from the New York Times:
http://www.nysun.com/national/bloomberg-open-to-serving-as-financial-czar-for-us/86262/

Where the Jobs Aren't

According to "New York by the Numbers, An Economic Snapshot of the Five Boros", a report published this month by the Center for an Urban Future, New York City added more than 250,000 jobs — a respectable figure in light of the dot com bust and 9/11 -- between 1997 and 2007.

The CUF report takes an economic snapshot of the city neighborhood-by-neighborhood to see where those 250,000 jobs were created, tracking the change in private sector employment for each of the more than 175 city zip codes.

Four of the 5 city zip codes that lost the most jobs were predictably in Lower Manhattan, still struggling to replace jobs lost after 9/11.

Lower Manhattan zip codes 10007, 10048, 10005 and 10038 lost a total of 78,968 jobs. If you add Lower Manhattan zip codes 10043 and 10006, the total rises to 85,740.

But zip code 10004, the bottom tip of Manhattan and parts of Battery Park City, added 17,231 jobs, a bigger gain than all but 2 other zip codes.

All of the neighborhoods producing the biggest job growth are outside of Manhattan's two central business districts. Of the 40 top zip codes for job growth, only 7 were in Manhattan and all but 2 of the 7 were in Upper Manhattan.

By comparison, Queens has 15 of the top 40 zip codes; Brooklyn, 9; the Bronx, 5; and Staten Island, 4.

Some of the fastest job growth has been in unexpected places like Pleasant Plains, Staten Island (10309), with a 92% increase, Canarsie (11239) Queens Village (11427), Cambria Heights (11411), Tottenville (10307), and Ozone Park (11416), all of which have seen an 80% increase in jobs.

The report details the top 40 and the bottom 40 zip codes for job growth citywide between 1997 and 2007, measured both in absolute numbers of jobs gained or lost and the rate of growth or decline.

Also included are charts with the top 10 and bottom 10 zip codes for job creation in each borough, a full list of how every zip code in the city fared in job creation and a map of the five boroughs shaded to indicate where most jobs were created.

And Bay Ridge? It's in the bottom 10 Brooklyn zip codes for job creation.

The report from the Center for an Urban Future:
http://www.nycfuture.org/images_pdfs/pdfs/Five_Borough_Growth.pdf

Landmarks of the Heart

If history were any measure, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) would have designated Yankee Stadium a landmark.

Like the Green Church, however, the House that Ruth Built couldn't get on the LPC's calendar.

Bronx state assemblyman Jeffrey Klein first filed a request for evaluation (RFE) on behalf of Yankee Stadium in 1998.

“You can just feel the history there,” said Klein, now a Democratic state senator.

Klein’s quest to landmark the stadium was part of a campaign to keep the Yankees in the Bronx.

He learned, as have the 16 others who have filed RFEs on behalf of the stadium since 2001, that the LPC didn't think it was worthy of landmark designation.

According to the LPC communications director Lisi de Bourbon, “[T]he renovation stripped it of all its historic features”, rendering it "ineligible".

(But all of the historic features of the Green Church were intact when an RFE was filed on its behalf in 2007 -- with the same result.)

After Klein's RFE was denied a hearing by the LPC, he tried to have Monument Park listed on the New York State Register of Historic Places, but, he says, the Pataki Administration didn’t want do to it.

The monuments and plaques in Monument Park will now be transplanted to a site at the new $1.3 billion stadium.

According to LPC's deBourbon, anyone can nominate a building at least 30 years old for landmark status -- and it can be designated over an owner’s objections.

(In the case of the Green Church, however, the owner's objections appear to have carried substantial weight.)

The fact that the owner of a landmark building must get LPC approval for alterations deters some owners from filing.

But Con Edison has raised no objections to a proposal to have its 80-year-old limestone tower on Irving Place in Manhattan designated a landmark.

The article from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/sports/baseball/21landmark.html

Why is Yankee Stadium being torn down -- from USA Today?
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/oconnor/2006-08-16-oconnor-yankee-stadium_x.htm

More from the New York Sun:
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/for-love-of-a-ballpark/86310/

More from Queens Crap:
http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-proof-that-landmarking-is-complete.html

The cost to the taxpayers of rebuilding Yankee Stadium:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/nyregion/05stadiums.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Love Wanted

Save the life of a shelter animal by adopting.

The next "Love Wanted" pet adoption event will be held on Saturday, October 4th from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Salem Church on 67th Street between 4th and 5th Avenues.

Adoptions can be processed at the event with proof of ID and upon payment of the required adoption fee.

All shelter animals are provided by the North Shore Animal League and the New York City Department of Animal Care and Control.

The event will take place rain or shine.

Unemployment Up

The State Department of Labor reports that unemployment rates for New York City and State shot up in August, driven by the economic downturn.

The city's unemployment rate rose from 5 to 5.8% in July — the biggest 1-month jump in more than 30 years — as about 5,200 private-sector jobs were lost.

The state's jobless rate rose from 5.2 to 5.8% in the same period, its biggest monthly jump since January 1991.

Many of the layoffs were in the financial sector, which is one of the city’s biggest employers.

Employment in the financial sector has fallen by 5,300 jobs in the past year, including jobs lost in the collapse of Bear Stearns in March. Many Wall Street job losses haven't shown up in the statistics yet.

Bankrupt Lehman Brothers, which employed more than 25,000 people, has sold its main trading operations to London-based Barclays Capital. How many of the 10,000 employees of those operations will keep their jobs is not yet known.

Although the Lehman Brothers sell-off and the A.I.G. bailout do not involve immediate large-scale layoffs, continued turmoil in the financial sector guarantees that Wall Street job losses will grow.

The city posted job growth in education, health care, trade and transportation, and leisure and hospitality. But Wall Street job losses will likely spill over into business travel, hotels, restaurants and entertainment.

The national unemployment rate jumped to 6.1 percent last month.

The article from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/nyregion/19unemployed.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

Permit Issued

This updated link was received this evening from the Committee source who monitors the DOB BIS database each day.

A demolition permit has now been issued for the Green Church.

The word "sad", heard so many times in the past several days, does not begin to describe the farce we have witnessed.

The application on the DOB BIS database:
http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?requestid=1&passjobnumber=310192261&passdocnumber=01

Brooklyn Paper article calls the struggle to save the church a "blame game":
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/38/31_38_bm_green_church.html

The Whales

A team of researchers that has installed sound recorders 13 miles outside the entrance to New York Harbor and off Fire Island has picked up the calls of fin, humpback and North Atlantic right whales -- the first time that whales have been heard in New York City waters.

Whales are known to migrate through this region. New data being gathered about their seasonal presence here will be used to help policymakers develop management plans to protect them.

Whales are known to sing complex love songs and to have different regional dialects. They can hear one another across hundreds, if not thousands, of miles -- but our increasingly noisy oceans may threaten their ability to communicate.

This study will determine the affects of underwater noise on the whales.

Knowing the whales' paths through New York waters will help ship traffic managers to avoid colliding with the whales.

With the data collected through the study, researchers hope to better understand how New York affects the life history of endangered whales, in order make better conservation decisions -- particularly for right whales.

In the spring, scientists began monitoring the right whales' migration from the east coast of Florida, where they calve, to their feeding grounds off New England.

Their fall migration is now being monitored.

The study will continue through February.

The article from US News:
http://www.usnews.com/articles/science/plants-animals/2008/09/16/whales-heard-near-new-york-city.html

Protecting whales from the effects of sonar:
http://www.nrdconline.org/campaign/nrdcaction_092506_a

We Own It

Fannie, Freddie, now AIG.

With the financial markets reeling, the Federal Reserve announced late Tuesday that it would loan AIG $85 billion, collateralized by a 79.9% ownership share in the world's largest insurer.

AIG will sell off assets to repay the loan.

This, only 9 days after the U.S. Treasury took over the federally-chartered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and 2 days after the Fed refused to use taxpayer money to bail out Lehman Brothers, now substantially owned by London-based Barclays Capital.

More on the AIG bailout from Newsday:
http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/thursday/news/ny-bzaig185847583sep18,0,5687690.story

The effect of the bailout, from the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-thu-wall-street-panic-sep18,0,1227156.story

More financial drama as Wells Fargo agrees to buy Wachovia, from the Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/10/03/2008-10-03_wells_fargo_agrees_to_buy_wachovia_citig.html

The Fontas Factor

According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Councilmember Vincent Gentile detailed his efforts to find alternative buyers for the Green Church at Monday's CB 10 meeting, acknowledging that an application for demolition was pending and that “Olde Good Things” architectural antiques had salvaged the building.

The Eagle reports that Gentile described his negotiations with the BRUMC as a "valiant effort", and praised Pastor Robert Emerick for his cooperation, characterizing the actions of all parties as "willing" and in "good faith".

According to the Eagle, Gentile described his first two proposals to the BRUMC as "not workable", but said that the third was still under discussion pending DOB approval of the demolition application filed on behalf of the BRUMC on Sept. 2.

The Eagle describes George Fontas, Gentile's former campaign manager -- who the New York Observer calls a "democratic operative" -- as having served as "consultant" to the BRUMC in its discussions with Gentile.

Gentile, according to the Eagle, described Fontas, listed on the James Capalino and Company Website as "community relations strategist", "principal" and "vice president for government and community relations", as having "greatly assisted" in the effort.

Capalino and Company is a lobbying firm that counts among its clients St. Vincent's Hospital.

According to NYC Lobbyist Search, Fontas and Capalino are the lobbyists of record for the BRUMC. Among their targets: Councilman Vincent Gentile, Community Board 10 and CB 10 Chair Dean Rasinya.

Fontas' and Capalino's BRUMC earnings to date: approximately $45,000.

Fontas also sits on the CB 10 zoning and preservation subcommittee.

Why does the term "influence peddling" come up? There are rules that define the limits of what lobbyists can do, and I have to assume that Capalino and Company, as attested on their Website, follows those rules.

But what concerns me is what I see as a certain lack of transparency. Fontas would clearly have had an agenda in the negotiations with his former boss -- as he might very well as a member of the CB 10 subcommittee tasked with historic preservation.

Why hasn't this been more openly acknowledged?

The article from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=23232

As picked up by Real Deal:
http://ny.therealdeal.com/articles/alternate-proposal-for-bay-ridge-church-still-on-the-table

Gentile's Post

On Tuesday, September 16 -- the date the application to demolish the Green Church was apparently granted -- Councilmember Vincent Gentile summarized his efforts to find alternatives to demolition in a post to his new blog.

Gentile said he thought it was "now time" to detail the three alternative proposals he has presented to the BRUMC.

His first alternative, developed by Con Edison, would have left the Green Church intact and the property in the hands of the congregation.

Con Ed would have built affordable senior housing around the church, which would have yielded an income of $300,000 per year – the annual figure the BRUMC said they needed to maintain the church -- in perpetuity.

The Con Ed senior housing would have been sold at below-market prices.

The Board of Trustees of the BRUMC rejected the Con Ed proposal in 2007.

Under Gentile's second proposal, Omni New York LLC offered to buy the Green Church property for $9.75 million -- the face value of the contract with Abe Betesh -- conditioned upon the developer obtaining state and/or federal financing to develop affordable senior housing.

The Omni proposal would have required the BRUMC to halt the planned demolition for 90 days while the developer pursued financing. In the interim, Omni would have deposited $250,000 in escrow as a good faith binder.

The affordable housing proposed by Omni would have been built around the Green Church, which would have been adapted and re-used as a neighborhood performing arts center.

The BRUMC would have retained a portion of the property, on which it could have built a new church with the proceeds of the sale.

Under Gentile's third proposal, Engel Burman Group, a large developer that builds assisted-living facilities and nursing homes, offered to recoup buyer Abe Betesh's investment and enter into contract with the BRUMC.

Under the Engel Burman proposal, the BRUMC would have retained ownership of the property, most of the facade of the church would have been retained, residential units would have been built around the church, and those units would have been sold to local seniors.

Once the senior housing had been sold, the BRUMC would have collected the annual proceeds of the ground lease.

Engel Burman would have built a medical facility inside the new residential complex.

It would also have constructed a new church for the congregation on Ovington Avenue -- with an estimated value of $3.5 million.

Engel Burman was still in discussion with Abe Betesh as of the date of Gentile's post.

Gentile, who described his role as that of "intermediary", said he believed that his proposed alternatives would have served the interests of all involved, and expressed disappointment with the outcome.

The post on Vincent Gentile's blog:
http://vincentgentile.blogspot.com/

St. George Upzoned

The City Planning Commission has approved a new zoning proposal for St. George that would allow developers to build residential buildings up to 20 stories and convert office space to residential use.

DCP Chair Amanda Burden, who drafted some of the design changes herself, said up-zoning would foster St. George's growth as Staten Island's "downtown", and as a civic and transit hub.

The proposed special zoning district includes the 12-block area within a 10-minute walk of the ferry terminal.

The office vacancy rate in St. George is around 13%, as construction of a new $200 million Supreme Court building begins this month.

Developers have complained that the 2005 downzoning of St. George kept them from going above 7 floors.

Burden said the proposed new district would ensure that St. George will continue to grow and be a "vital, walkable, waterfront community".

The City Council will vote on the proposal next month.

The DCP plan calls for taller, slender towers on larger sites within the district, and would implement the loft conversion law currently used in other parts of the city to convert vacant office and warehouse buildings into apartments.

Storefronts will be required on the first floor of residential buildings.

Community leaders in St. George are concerned about the proposed "pencil" and "point" towers included in the proposal, and the DCP's failure to incorporate their input into the plan.

They have asked DCP to phase in the plan by first converting empty office space along Bay Street into housing before allowing tower construction.

They also want towers to be constructed on lots that meet the size requirements at the time that the new zoning law is passed -- so developers cannot aggregate small lots into big ones.

The article from Staten Island Live:
http://www.silive.com/siadvance/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1221132610171670.xml&coll=1

Demolition Approved

I couldn't access the Internet last evening.

When I caught up this evening, I found the enclosed link to the DOB BIS database, which was forwarded to me by a Committee member who has been following the database on a daily basis.

It appears that, as of September 16, the DOB has approved the application to demolish the Green Church.

http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?requestid=1&passjobnumber=310192261&passdocnumber=01#FS

March for Gay Marriage

City lawmakers joined hundreds of New Yorkers in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge this weekend to boost awareness of gay marriage.

Marchers wore stickers bearing an equal sign and cheered lawmakers' talk of legalizing gay marriage in New York State.

Speakers included Comptroller William Thompson, Manhattan BP Scott Stringer and the city's first openly gay City Council speaker, Christine Quinn.

Earlier this year, Governor Paterson ordered that New York recognize same-sex marriages from other states. A lawsuit by State Senator Martin Golden and others followed.

Paterson won the lawsuit.

March organizers read a statement from the governor that "The right to marry should be supported and protected equally."

The State Assembly has passed a bill granting marriage rights to same-sex couples, but the Republican-controlled State Senate has stalled the bill.

Efforts to unseat the Republican majority in the Senate this year could prove decisive to legalizing gay marriage in New York.

Same-sex couples can marry in Massachusetts and California.

The article from the New York Sun:
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/lawmakers-see-progress-toward-gay-marriage/85814/

Giants Fall

Lehman Brothers is bankrupt, and the city is reeling from one of the most historic days in financial history, ending with the Dow plunging more than 500 points (the biggest drop since 2001), the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America for $50 billion in stock, and Governor Paterson throwing a $20 billion lifeline to AIG.

Mayor Bloomberg has urged New Yorkers to remain resolute in the face of what may be a widening crisis.

All those unemployed bankers are going to soften the city's real estate market, leading to falling apartment prices in 2009.

For sellers, it's a wake-up call.

The fall of Lehman Brothers will also affect the commercial real estate market, with oversupply putting downward pressure on prices as 12,000 departing Lehman employees leave 2.4 million square feet of space in their wake.

The Merrill Lynch/Bank of America merger, set against industry-wide down-sizing, will further increase the supply of commercial space.

The city's faltering financial sector could hurt bar and restaurant owners, already facing rising food and rental costs -- as more consumers stay home to save money.

In a city increasingly reliant on tourism, a European recession could hurt the tourist market, although the weak dollar promises to keep the tourist business afloat.

Developers will shy away from financing new projects in the softening housing market, leading to the proliferation of vacant lots.

Some numbers:

Percentage of state economy that relies on Wall Street: 20%;
Jobs created by each financial sector job: 4;
Points lost on the Dow Monday: 504 (compared to 508 points in the October 1987 crash);
Jobs at risk statewide due to credit crisis: 30,000;
Average income of a Lehman Brothers employee: $332,000.

The article from AM New York:
http://www.amny.com/news/local/am-bloomberg0916,0,705897.story?page=2

Barclays buys in, bulk of Lehman jobs spared, from NYC.Gov:
http://nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fnyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2008b%2Fpr360-08.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1

The future of the financial industry in New York, from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/nyregion/21aftermath.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Is He Back?

Wishful thinking by Vito's people?

Rumors that Vito Fossella may stand for re-election have been circulating in recent weeks, after voters got calls from a polling firm asking how they felt about the congressman.

Fossella has yet to comment.

His two top aides, Thomas Quaadman and Craig Donner, have quit in recent months.

Even if Fossella tried to what would be one of the biggest political comebacks in borough history, what line would he run on?

If Bob Straniere stands firm, Fossella would have no real option.

Brooklyn GOP chair Craig Eaton said it was "all rumor and speculation."

Some wondered if the poll was for Congress this year or borough president next year.

The article from Staten Island Live:
http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/vito_relaunch_would_misfire_po.html

Fossella denies the rumors, from the Brooklyn Eagle:
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=23196

Demolition Notice

According to the Home Reporter, Expedite-Dem Inc., a Staten Island-based demolition company, has notified Community Board 10 that it will tear down the Green Church.

The demolition notice, sent to the board via certified mail, was dated September 5.

No date was given for the demolition, but city law apparently requires that the applicant notify the local community board at least 5 days before a building can legally be torn down.

The city is said to have granted a full demolition permit.

The address of the church is 7002 Fourth Ave. The demolition notice sent to the community board lists the address as 378 Ovington Ave.

A community board aide said that 378 Ovington Avenue is the address of the Green Church.

District manager of Community Board 10 Josephine Beckmann told the Home Reporter that she thought the church would be demolished "any day now".

The congregation, according to Beckmann, was not required to notify the community board, nor was it required to get a permit, before removing all of the stained glass windows out of the church (or, presumably, stripping at least portions of the interior down to brick and lathe).

The article from the Home Reporter:
http://sunsetnews.com/Images/News/hr829news.pdf

Hasids vs. Hotties

South Williamsburg's Hasids are trying to ban bike lanes on Wythe and Bedford Avenues -- and delay construction of a new one on Kent Avenue -- to keep sexy women from peddling through their neighborhood.

Hasids claim that the sight of scantily-clad women on bikes "bothers a lot of people".

The one-way bike lanes are popular with North Williamsburg hipsters, who are known to wear shorts.

The temporary Kent Avenue lane would be followed by a 14-mile greenway from Newtown Creek in Greenpoint to Sunset Park.

Hasids are not supposed to look at members of the opposite sex who aren't "fully dressed".

Hasids who attended a recent community board meeting said that if the neighborhood has to accept being part of the greenway, the bike lanes on Bedford and Wythe avenues should be eliminated.

They complained that the bike lanes cause parking problems and traffic congestion and endanger children.

Last month, local Hasids complained about a billboard on the BQE promoting the teen drama "90210" that featured characters in swimsuits.

A "Sex in the City" billboard caused a similar uproar a few years ago.

The article from the New York Post:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09122008/news/regionalnews/hasid_lust_cause_128750.htm

Hasids threaten to block traffic in bike lane protest, from the Brooklyn Paper:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/47/31_47_bm_wb_meeting.html

Condos vs. Classrooms

The recent development boom threatens to swamp New York City's schools.

Swarms of new students threaten to undermine the quality of the very schools that attracted young families to neighborhoods in the first place.

Complicating the situation is that the high land values that good public schools help create make it harder for the city to buy land to build new ones.

Developers see expensive real estate as appropriate for only the most profitable projects, which doesn't leave much for city schools.

State Sen. Liz Krueger, whose Upper East Side district includes some of the city's most hard-hit areas, grimly joked that "Given the value of real estate in New York City, why should we have any schools, firehouses or police stations at all?

Some of city's most overcrowded schools are in Manhattan's priciest neighborhoods: 6 out of 8 elementary schools on Manhattan's West Side are over-capacity and have had to sacrifice teachers' lounges and art classrooms.

PS 116 in Murray Hill recently hit 113% capacity as it was surrounded by new construction. Students now eat lunch in shifts, starting at 10:30 a.m. and pre-kindergarten classes and classes for the gifted have been dropped.

In a recent report, Comptroller William Thompson identified 9 neighborhoods where the DOE's current 5-year new school construction plan will fall short of population growth. The list includes red-hot DUMBO and Downtown Brooklyn, as well as burgeoning immigrant neighborhood Sunset Park.

According to the report, some 3,000 new apartments are planned around one school in DUMBO -- PS 287 -- with no DOE plan for new school construction in the area.

The report found that there are 2,300 new homes currently slated for the Upper East Side -- but just one school construction project that would add seating capacity. The average elementary school in that neighborhood is operating at 129% of capacity.

City administrators and elected officials have had to be creative about finding ways to convince builders to help address school overcrowding. Their strategies tend to fall into one of two categories.

If the city owns the land, the cost of new school construction comes out of DOE's Educational Construction Fund (ECF), which gets developers to pay the costs of building on public land in exchange for long-term leases.

One of two ECF projects currently underway is the East Side Middle School (MS 114) at 91st Street and First Avenue, next to Azure, a 34-story luxury high-rise.

Project developers DeMatteis Organization and The Mattone Group will pay the entire $45 million cost of building the school.

On May 30, the Azure site came to public attention when a crane collapsed there, killing two people and damaging nearby apartments.

Technically, developers are bound by the same regulations and procedures as the city would be when building a school, but there's no guarantee that private developers won't cut corners on public buildings.

The East Side Middle school will apparently proceed in spite of the accident, although work is suspended at the site.

The other project, at 57th street and 2nd avenue, is bigger and more complicated. Developer World Wide Holdings, Inc. will replace the High School for Art and Design, rebuild PS 59 to increase seating capacity from 400 to 730, and add another school to an interim 63rd Street site.

The second alternative, school development on private land, is more contentious. Requests for re-zoning, the city's ULURP process and the City Council all provide a way in, but re-zoning is not a given.

In the current cases of controversial developers Sheldon Solow and Bruce Ratner, Solow has proposed converting the former Con Ed site on the East River from 34th to 41st Streets into residential and commercial towers.

Solow's Environmental Impact Statement estimates that the project would add 417 new students to the overcrowded local schools, pushing one school to a projected 164% of capacity by 2014.

Solow originally said the city could bus those students to other schools. His firm was eventually persuaded by the city to include a 630-seat school in its plan, barely covering the new students his project will add to the system.

Bruce Ratner agreed to build a school at his Beekman Plaza development in Lower Manhattan, but recently threatened to stop construction unless the city gave him a 421-a tax abatement valid for 20 years.

The ECF believes that public-private partnerships can cure overcrowded schools, but not all elected representatives are sold.

Gale Brewer, City Council member from the Upper West Side, wants new overcrowding measures. The city currently looks at an entire community school district, including all schools and neighborhoods in the district, in determining overcrowding. Crowded schools and neighborhoods within the district can be overlooked as a result.

Brewer blames this method for what she sees as a missed opportunity to build a school in the Riverside South project, where developer Extell handed the city a site, but the DOE, using this method, found no need for a new school.

The department says it will consider taking Brewer's advice next year.

Some elected representatives have suggested that zoning laws be changed to force developers to focus on essential amenities such as schools, rather than things like public plazas, and city council legislation now being discussed could tie new developments directly to new school construction.

But that begs the question of who should build new schools. Should developers, who are not elected and don't necessarily act in the public interest, be charged with new school construction?

Elected officials seem to agree that the city must insure that children moving into new developments have seats in the local schools, but how the city will insure that those seats exist remains to be seen.

The article on Gotham Gazette:
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/fea/20080902/202/2634

Private schools are also feeling the effects of the "Baby Boom", from the New York Sun:
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/one-school-feels-effects-of-ny-baby-boom/85830/

Will re-zoning make it better, or worse, from the New York Sun.
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/rezoning-talk-upsets-upper-west-side-parents/86406/

More on school overcrowding from Queens Crap via the New York Times:
http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2008/10/shocking-revelation-schools-are.html

The Gotham Gazette article, as re-blogged on No Land Grab:
http://www.nolandgrab.org/archives/2008/09/the_three_cs_co.html

Summer's End

I have always admired the pink roses that grow on the front lawn of the Green Church.

This will probably be the last time they bloom.

Sixteen Months

The Bloomberg administration, with 16 months left in office, is straining to bring its major economic development projects online as private developers scramble to secure needed approvals within the same timeframe.

Real estate development has been the centerpiece of the Bloomberg administration's agenda, and is seen as Bloomberg's legacy.

No current mayoral candidate appears to be as development-friendly as Bloomberg.

While a change in term-limits might take the pressure off, there are an unprecedented number of major projects scheduled for re-zoning approval. Developers who wait until 2010 could encounter a new mayor and 30 or more new City Council members.

Among the private development projects in the city pipeline are the West Side rail yards project, the South Street Seaport project and Riverside South on the Upper West Side.

Most of the members of the City Planning Commission are appointed by the Mayor, who strongly influences its policies. The mayor's office is therefore critical to the fate of large developments, which require re-zoning approval.

Local developers have learned by now how to please the powerful Amanda Burden, Bloomberg's City Planning chair, who is known as a detail-oriented stickler for quality architecture and urban design. A new DCP chair, with a new list of tweaks and changes, could delay their projects.

The $15 billion West Side rail yards, planned for a 26-acre site just south of the Javits Center, is the most notable big private project awaiting approval. Developer Related Companies needs to re-zone the western half of the site to build about 3,200 apartments.

Both the Bloomberg administration and Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who represents the district, have agreed to an outline for the Related plan -- but that could change with a new administration.

Extell, developer of the Riverside South project, needs city approval to build up to 2,500 apartments on the Upper West Side. Local council member Gail Brewer has not signed off, but the mayor has signaled his approval for the controversial underground Costco included in the plan.

Developer General Growth Properties seeks approval by the end of 2009 for its planned re-do of South Street Seaport. The Chicago-based developer wants to put a hotel, apartment tower and re-mixed retail on the East River, a plan the community currently opposes.

In the West Village, St. Vincent’s is seeking approval for a new hospital across the street from its current complex. The St. Vincent's plan, which must be approved by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, Planning Commission and the City Council, is strongly opposed by preservationists, who object to a 450-unit housing development on the current hospital site.

In Brooklyn, Community Preservation Corporation seeks to push the proposed Domino Sugar Factory residential development into the city’s seven-month rezoning process by the end of the year. Plans call for 2,200 new apartments on the East River in Williamsburg, 30% of which would be below market rate.

These large private developments come on top of the Bloomberg administration's major re-zoning and development initiatives, including Coney Island and Willets Point, both of which are controversial.

In the next 16 months, the city could host a zoning battle-royal as the public hearing process surrounding the 7-month re-zoning approval process for all of these mega-projects plays out.

The article from the Observer:
http://www.observer.com/2008/real-estate/sixteen-months-and-counting

Avella Bill

Queens City Councilmember Tony Avella is drafting legislation that would prevent the City Council from overturning the term limits law.

Avella's bill would require that any changes to term limits be enacted through a voter referendum.

He hopes to counter an introduction by Bronx Council Member Oliver Koppell that would extend term limits from two to three terms.

The Avella bill could become pivotal to an organized defense against any effort by the council to overturn or extend term limits.

Avella calls the council's attempt to overturn term limits "disgraceful", and says his bill is intended as a rallying cry for those who support term limits.

He opposes changing the current term limit laws by any means and has pledged not to serve a third term, even if a change in the law allowed him to do so.

Mayor Bloomberg, who once said he would veto City Council legislation ending term limits, now plans to sign legislation extending term limits from two to to three terms.

Bloomberg and some 35 council members will be forced out of office by term limits in 2009 unless the current term limits law, which has survived two referendums, is changed.

Bloomberg has announced his intention to run for a third term, with the help of the City Council.

The article from the New York Sun:
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/lawmaker-moves-to-block-changes-to-term-limits/85739/

More on term limits from Queens Crap:
http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2008/09/mike-supports-term-limit-extension-if.html

Term limits history from Gotham Gazette:
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/20050314/200/1348

Legal challenges linked to term limits, from the New York Sun:
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/legal-challenges-likely-in-term-limits-fight/84538/

More on Bloomberg's decision to run again, from Gotham Gazette:
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/

Some not-so-nice comments on Bloomberg's last-minute attempt to overturn term limits from Lost City:
http://lostnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/2008/09/our-disgusting-mayor.html

Post-Stripped

It appears that the Methodist parsonage on Ovington Avenue, slated to be demolished along with the Green Church under Abe Betesh's development plan, is also being salvaged.

This evening, the front door to the brownstone, which anchors the row on the south side of Ovington, was open, and there were workmen going into the house.

The photo above left shows the front window on ground level, which has been opened during work on the interior.

This is interesting. The vent hole in the covering over the rose window (which is paper, not plywood, as I originally assumed) has been carefully closed.

I think I spoke too soon when I said yesterday that everything that could be stripped out of the church has now been carted away: I forgot about the front doors.

In the photo at left, you can see that one of two sets of doors at the main entrance the church on Fourth Avenue has now been removed.

More from Brownstoner:
http://www.brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2008/09/green_chuch_ser.php

Stripped

As of Thursday evening, it appears that every stained glass window has been removed from the church -- and that every other thing of value that could be stripped from the church has been carted away.

While it is still possible that what remains of the church will somehow be spared or that economic circumstances will conspire to prevent complete demolition, our fight to preserve the Green Church -- as an intact historic building -- is over.

Although we didn't know it then, the fight for the Green Church was over on the last day of March, 2007 --before the Committee was organized -- when the trustees of the church quietly signed the $9.75 million contract of sale with Abe Betesh that they have since refused to re-negotiate. (Typical of the secrecy that has surrounded the sale of the church, the buyer's name was not disclosed until November, 2007, when papers were initially filed in Kings County Supreme Court seeking judicial approval of the sale.)

So why did the Committee fight to save the church, to the great consternation of some?

From where I stood, I would say that the Committee fought because its members, whatever their personal differences (and there were many), believed in good conscience that every possible avenue of recourse should be explored before the church was abandoned to what was seen, in the most reductive terms, as a bad decision by its not-for-profit corporate owner.

At least until Robert Tierney told Vincent Gentile in June, 2007 that the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission would not calendar the request for evaluation the Committee had filed on behalf of the church, there was the possibility that the LPC might force the parties to re-negotiate the terms of the sale by landmarking the church.

And at least until January, 2008, when Massey-Knakal house lawyers Donovan and Gianuzzi got an ex parte order from Kings County Supreme Court Judge Larry Martin granting permission to sell the church, there was the possibility that the Committee, through its pro bono attorney, might be permitted to intervene in the proceedings and/or challenge the order on appeal.

But the time and place of the Supreme Court hearing were not disclosed. The Committee learned that the hearing had taken place only after Judge Martin's order was entered and the record became publicly available.

It seems that the UMC (along with handful of other "favored denominations") has received a dispensation from the state legislature allowing it to waive all notice -- even to the state attorney general -- when it liquidates its assets.

And at least until August, 2008, when Vincent Gentile told the Committee that his protracted efforts to broker an alternative sale to a buyer who would spare the church had, in so many words, failed, there was the possibility that the contract with Abe Betesh could still be re-structured and demolition avoided.

At the same time, there was the possibility that one or more of our local elected representatives would respond to the "anticipatory demolition" issue raised by the Committee.

Under the terms of the contract, the closing is conditioned upon the BRUMC anticipatorily demolishing the church -- with the buyer's money. The Green Church is listed in the State and National Registers of Historic Places, and therefore falls under the protection of the National Historic Preservation Act, which prohibits anticipatory demolition.

But there was no response from our elected representatives to this issue.

The church trustees (no doubt with the support of other stakeholders in the proceeds --the realtor, the realtor's attorneys, the lobbyists, and the architect who designed the new "condo church") have thwarted every effort by the Committee to avert demolition.

Based upon my reading of the extensive local media coverage of the controvery, including the numerous statements made by Reverend Robert Emerick on behalf of the congregation, I think that the church is seen by its owner as having no intrinsic value, as an "albatross", an obstacle to closing.

As a result of my experience as a Committee member, I think that whether historic preservation succeeds in any given New York City neighborhood depends upon the existence of a critical mass of knowledgeable, committed property owners who are sufficiently organized and can command sufficient resources to counter the development lobby, which, I have learned, is far superior to most community groups in its ability to pre-emptively sculpt public opinion, tame opposition arguments and anesthetize the local politicians.

It's no accident that historic preservation is seen almost exclusively as the preserve of New York's social and economic elite.

I can only hope that efforts like ours -- including our perceived failures -- will at least have provided property owners in Bay Ridge who want to do historic preservation with better information about this complex process and better access to the fundamentals. (Many of the links on this blog reflect my own learning curve.)

I will continue blogging about historic preservation -- and other issues that matter to me -- and to chronicle the destruction of the Green Church. I believe that it is important never to turn away from what we see, no matter how painful.

The effort to save the church -- short of our prayers -- having ended, I have removed the contact information for the Committee from this blog.

More on the salvage operation at the church from the Brooklyn Eagle:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/35/31_35_bm_green_church.html

Time Capsule

Did the Methodist Episcopal congregation that built the Green Church in 1899 bury a time capsule within the walls?

The article from the Brooklyn Paper:

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/36/31_36_bm_green_church.html

More on the time capsule controversy from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/nyregion/thecity/28time.html?_r=1&ref=thecity&oref=slogin

Seventh Anniversary of 9/11

The Memorial Ceremony and Remembrance at the WTC site will begin at 8:40 AM and end at 12:30 PM

The FDNY Memorial Service will be held from 8:00 AM until 1:00 PM at Memorial Park, 110th Street in Manhattan.

The September 11 Tribute in Light will be displayed from 7 PM on the 11th until dawn on the 12th.

We will always remember.

More about tomorrow's events from NYC.Gov:
http://nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.bd175b51da17d74f472ae1852f8089a0/

9/11 events in Brooklyn, from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=23057

Will the Tribute in Light become permanent?
http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2008/09/plan-to-make-tribute-in-light-permanent.html

Green Church Bulletin

By the time I got back from work today, the boarded-up rose window had been rigged with a venting tube.

The white box truck in the church parking lot is bigger than the one I've seen there lately.










The large stained glass window on the Ovington side has been removed.











The rear door on the Ovington side has been removed and replaced with a vented plywood panel.
















The now-unobstructed view of the front entrance to the church on Fourth Avenue, from which the scaffolding has been removed.

Related article from the Brooklyn Paper:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/36/31_36_bm_green_church.html

Green Church Bulletin

Photos taken Tuesday morning on the way to the subway, showing:

1) the front entrance to the church, taken from Fourth Avenue. (Note the plywood nailed up in the hole where the rose window was removed, and the removal of the scaffolding that had stood there for years);

2) the clock face on the Fourth Avenue side of the tower, from which the hands have been removed. (As I was taking the photo, I could hear someone inside the tower dismantling the clockworks.)

3) a trio of windows on the second storey just behind the clocktower on the Ovington side, from which the stained glass has been removed.

Brooklyn Preservation Council Meets

The Brooklyn Preservation Council will meet on Tuesday, September 16, at 6 PM, at Brooklyn Borough Hall, First Floor Community Room.

On Tuesday's agenda will be the Columbus Park commemoration scheme, the comprehensive proposed Brooklyn landmark list, the Carroll Gardens landmark survey, the Brooklyn Underground Railroad federal network to freedom multiple related properties, and the Green Church.

For further information about the Council and its activities, contact:

Robert Furman
P.O. Box 23365
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11202
bobfurman1@juno.com

Obituary

Astroland, the Coney Island "people's playground", passed away on Sunday, September 7 -- at age 45.

The operators couldn't negotiate a new lease with developer Joe Sitt (Thor Equities).

The rides are rumored to be on their way to Honduras -- or is it Dubai?

Dick Zigun and Reverend Billy administered last rites.

More of the story from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/nyregion/08astroland.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=astroland%20closes&st=cse&oref=slogin

Bloomberg administration expresses anger with Sitt over the failure of lease negotiations from the New York Post:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09192008/news/regionalnews/city_rides_bizman_over_coney_closure_129814.htm

Sitt expresses anger with the Bloomberg administration, from the Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2008/09/23/2008-09-23_charges_fly_in_feud_over_coney_island_pl-1.html

Green Church Bulletin

Photos taken on Monday morning, September 8th.

The first photo shows a set of windows on the ground floor Ovington side from which the stained glass has been removed and replaced with plywood.

The second shows a narrow window at the peak of the eaves on the front face of the church on Fourth Avenue, from which the stained glass has been removed.

The third shows the large stained glass window on the 72nd Street side of the church that workmen are in the process of removing.

The fourth shows the elderly man who always sweeps the sidewalk whenever the white box truck is in the church parking lot -- keeping a watchful eye on the street.

It was too dark to take photos when I got home from work this evening, but workmen in hardhats were nailing plywood scrap over the gaping hole where the rose window was taken out.
The scaffolding that used to stand in front of the entrance to the church on Fourth Avenue was completely dismantled and removed today.

The white box truck was still in the parking lot at dusk -- loading...loading...loading....

One-hundred-and-nine years of Brooklyn life, of Methodist history, of American culture, offered for sale in numbered lots.

What am I bid?

Green Church Bulletin

These photos were taken after I returned from vacation, and show that the demolition of the Green Church has begun with the removal of its stained glass windows.

Photos show:

• large stained glass window on the 72nd Street side is being removed;
• stained glass windows on Ovington side, ground level have been removed;
• modern stained glass window (one of three) has been removed from the second storey rear (facing the parking lot);
• band of stained glass windows has been removed from the bell tower, ground level;
• band of stained glass windows has been removed from the bell tower, second storey.

A related Helen Klein article:
http://www.yournabe.com/articles/2008/09/05/brooklyn/brooklynlosinggree09052008.txt

Application Filed, "On Hold"

An expediter for a demolition company has filed an application with the DOB for a permit to completely demolish the Green Church.

According to one of our members who has been monitoring the DOB BIS Database, the status of the job is "On Hold":

http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?requestid=2&passjobnumber=310192261&passdocnumber=01#FS