360 Smith Updates

Well. I leave town for a few days and things get interesting around here!

Via Gowanus Lounge, Councilman Bill DeBlasio is leading a rally against the Scarano project (and it seems, against Scarano in general) Wednesday June 6, 12:30 at the proposed building site.

Via the CGNA mailing list, here's a NYT article on Scarano from April 2006.

And here's a snippet from another email on the CGNA listserve:

> hi
>
> received some information last night from the
> developer
>
> -mta has approved plan
> -the building will not look at all like the
> drawing on the website, but the actual rendering is
> not yet finalized & not available for viewing yet
>
> -the 2 place portion is set back to line up with
> the neighboring houses and most of the subway plaza
> is open--the bldg does not come out as far as the
> parking lot "line" as the orig drawing suggests
>
> - it is still quite tall (the highest point is at
> 70') but the height is graduated rising as the
> structure goes toward and around smith st
>
> -the finish on the 2 place side will look more
> like a brownstone--the tallest portion's finish,
> which will be where the 2 pl and smith st sides
> meet (around the area of the present
> newsstand) ,is still undetermined
>
> -the developer seems open to reasonable
> suggestions

Moving in the right direction, at least. More to come on this. But seriously, in a neighborhood where brownstones are fetching $2MM and more, there is simply no justification for building out of scale.