May 7th Packed with Carroll Gardens Meetings

This is a pretty tight schedule in the local meeting circuit, but a lot of important stuff being covered. From Maria Pagano, CGNA President:

Acknowledging the interest and concern we have expressed, three separate meetings have been scheduled for next week by city agencies,elected officials and KEYSPAN.

The members of the CGNA Board encourage everyone to attend at least one
of the meetings. Bring a family member, a friend, a neighbor! (I don't
think pets can be accommodated).

These three meetings are all scheduled for Wednesday, May 7.

In time order:

1. Check your mail. A notice was sent out from KEYSPAN/NATIONAL GRID.
They will hold the first public meetings to "discuss the remedial
investigation
of a former manufactured gas site located at DeGraw near the Gowanus
Canal".
This is the beginning KEYSPAN's participation in the public discussion
on cleaning up the
Gowanus gas sites. There are a total of 17 sites. Meetings on Public
Place,
the Toll Bros site, etc to follow.
Meeting site: PS 32 (317 Hoyt St at Union)
Times: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM and 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
[ED. NOTE: more on this at Gowanus Lounge]
2. Borough President Marty Markowitz will hold a public meeting to
discuss the pending text amendment proposed by the Department of City
Planning. This text amendment will correct the inappropriate "wide
street" designation currently applied to the Place blocks; they will be
designated as narrow streets, as they were originally defined by law
when
they were created, and will match the bulk permitted on the other
residential blocks of Carroll Gardens.
Meeting site: Borough Hall, Community Room
Joralemon St entrance
Time: 5:30 PM
[ED. NOTE: more on this at Gowanus Lounge]

3. Plan for the Future Forum: The Gowanus
Sponsored by City Councilmember Bill DeBlasio,
CB6, Gowanus Dredgers, Gowanus Canal Development Corporation and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy Representatives of the NYS Departments of Environmental Conservation,
Education, City Planning, Buildings, NYPD, FDNY and NYC Parks and Recreation
will be on hand to answer questions.
For more info and to pre-register questions,
call Tom Gray at 718 854 9791.
Meeting site: 2nd St at the Gowanus Canal (off Bond)
There will be a tent at the site if the weather is bad.
Time: 6:30 PM-8:30 PM

Once again, we urge everyone to attend at least one of these meetings!

Back to my voice: be sure to check out the new and improved Gowanus Lounge at www.gowanuslounge.com. Bob's work has contributed immeasurably to the flow of information in our neighborhood. Looks great, too!

Public Place Layout

Brownstoner has all the details in a very comprehensive rundown of the winning bid.

All things considered, and especially given some of the alternatives I saw, this looks pretty good.

Image courtesy of Brownstoner. Check out their post.

Public Place Renderings at Curbed

Check them out at Curbed.

I had to leave a bit early for another meeting. Both renderings have significantly larger bulk than the neighborhood is used to, and the reps from the City basically conceded that no study has been done on local infrastructure needs to go along with the development proposals.

Also, a large turnout of union workers attended the meeting. Apparently, one of the developers has a spotty history of using non-union labor.

CB6 Tonight: What's Going On At Public Place?

As announced by District Manager Craig Hammerman at the last CGNA meeting, CB6 is hosting an informational meeting tonight to get out the word on the Public Place development proposals.

This is a big project by any measure. It's important to have a large presence of interested residents out there to maximize community input.

Tonight, 6:30PM
PS 32 Auditorium
317 Hoyt Street
(between Union & President)

Brooklyn CB6 Calendar

Toll Brothers Gowanus Plan

Gowanus Lounge (and Curbed) has renderings from Toll Brothers scoping plans for their 3 acre parcel on the Gowanus. On the plus side, their would be some open space on the waterfront. The bad news would be 6 story buildings on Bond and a 12 story building on the canal.

I imagine a LOT of people will be unhappy about this. Click the GL link for pictures.

Remember, the zoning for this area is in flux . . . this is very different from the situation at 360 Smith. Here, the community actually has a lot more opportunity for influencing the outcome.

Gowanus Canal Forum, December 6th

Mark your calendars - free Thursday nights in holiday season are not easy to come by.

Via the Gowanus Lounge, the meeting will take place Thursday, December 6th.

The meeting will take place from 6PM-8PM at the Belorusian Chruch at Atlantic Avenue and Bond Street.

A lot of questions need to be answered about the impacts of development on pollution in the Canal, and on the impacts of flooding.

Think about what happens to the Gowanus floodplain during a major hurricane or nor'easter. Now, what would happen if it were a dense residential enclave? What impact can we expect to see on the Canal due to global warming? And what is the city going to do about our (NYC's) continuous violation of federal water quality standards?

Gowanus Canal Cleanup Plans

I missed last night's CB6 Environmental Committee meeting, trapped at work . . . but Gowanus Lounge and Brownstoner were on the job, natch.

As GL sums it up, "the problems are as bad as you think and they are going to take a long, long time to address, even if things go well."

More:

The DEP plans to spend up to $125 million--with money coming from city
water and sewer fees--on cleaning up the Gowanus mess. Solutions include the
planned modernization of the flushing tunnel that draws water from New York
Harbor into the canal with "a much more robust, reliable pumping system" and
an upgrade of the sewage pump that directs sewage away from the canal and
toward the Red Hook treatment plant from the current 20 million gallons a
day to 30 million gallons daily. There might also be a "floatables vessel"
that would go around after bad storms and skim "floatables" from the surface
and there could be dredging of 750 feet of the end of the canal past the
Union Street Bridge to remove "sediment" left in the canal when raw sewage
flows into it. Underground retention tanks to hold storm runoff until it can
be handled have been dismissed as costing too much and requiring too much
land. (There was an early proposal to use the toxic parcel known as Public
Place for holding tanks, but the land is now supposed to become a mid-rise,
mixed use project with hundreds of units of housing.)

And the Gowanus has one heck of a wikipedia page. An accessible historical primer for you.

Gowanus Public Place/Mixed Use at 5th and Smith

So long, cement plant, hello affordable housing. (Affordable housing always seems to find it's way to toxic waste sites and flood plains, somehow.) Here's the press release from NYC:

Located at the southeast corner of 5th and Smith Streets and bounded to the east by the Gowanus Canal. The development’s affordable component will consist of at least 400 rental and/or cooperative units located above the community and commercial spaces of which a significant portion will be set aside for senior citizen housing. Twenty percent of the total residential units must be affordable to households of four earning up to $56,700 or up to $39,700 for a single household. A further thirty percent of the residential units must be affordable to households of four earning up to $92,170 or up to $64,480 for a single household. And one hundred percent of the senior housing must be affordable to seniors making no more than $34,020 for a couple or $29,760 for a single senior.

The development must include a community facility component that will add to and enhance the current inventory of community and cultural uses and spaces available in the neighborhood. Preference will be given to projects that include a boathouse, youth/teen center, community space, or artist studios and/or galleries.

The development must also incorporate a significant amount of landscaped open space. Open space must be located adjacent to the Gowanus Canal and should be designed to allow for and encourage public use. In addition, the project is subject to HPD’s New Construction Sustainability Requirements, which mandate design practices and materials that ensure healthy indoor air quality, energy efficiency, water conservation and the use of environmentally preferable products.

Get cracking on your RFP response now!

I took a couple pictures of the existing site from the elevated tracks. I'll post one when I have a chance.

Cement Factory, or Public Space?

I had known for some time that discussions were under way for cleaning up the large, overgrown empty lot at the corner of 5th Street and Smith abutting the Gowanus Canal. When we lived on 4th Place (up until earlier this year), we passed this parcel on a regular basis.

What I was not aware of was the plans to boot the cement factory adjacent to the parcel as well. Via the Brooklyn Paper, that is part of the plan for the site.

But now, as the city moves forward with a plan to build residential towers and parkland on the 5.8-acre Public Place site, the 35-year-old company could be evicted within the year, with not a cent of reimbursement.

Gowanus Lounge also has blogged about this project on occasion, but I wasn't a regular reader back in the day (now, it's at least a daily visit).

On one hand, it will be nice to clean up that parcel and do something positive with it. On the other hand, it is a very industrialized area with working businesses. The cement factory is busy, which I can attest to having lived a block and half away for a couple of years. Where are these businesses supposed to go?

This, along with the American Stevedoring business and countless other industrial uses, are also a part of the community. Like it or not, we need cement, we need working waterfronts, and we need the jobs they provide.

If they do end up booting the cement factory however . . . how about the grain silo in Red Hook? Recently a Mr. Quadrozzi was proposing that site as a cement storage facility, the site is dormant, arguably in an even better location, and conveniently, could be leased from the city.

CORRECTION/UPDATE: The Columbia Street Grain Elevator and surrounding acreage were sold by the Port Authority in 1997 to a private entity called the Gowanus Industrial Park, Inc. The President of Gowanus Industrial Park is none other than John Quadrozzi, Jr., who also owns Quadrozzi Concrete. Quadrozzi's own proposal for re-use of the grain terminal as a cement storage facility makes a lot of sense, and he presumably would not be inclined to hand over the plum site to Ferrara Brothers.

UPDATED AGAIN:
From the Google, this Village Voice article from 1998 yields an interesting spippet:

One mob-tied company, Quadrozzi Concrete, gave $3000, starting with $1500 in November 1996, at the very moment that Marlin approved the no-bid, discounted sale of a 43-acre, authority-owned grain terminal to the firm. John Quadrozzi, who was awaiting sentencing for making payoffs to the Luchese crime family when the deal closed, was allowed to buy the site even though he was barred from doing business by another state agency, as well as the federal government. The law firm that represented Quadrozzi on the transaction, which was approved by Marlin, donated another $500.

Every time I think I'm done with this post, they keep pulling me back in.