Robert Guskind Memorial Gathering: Saturday, April 4

From Phil DePaolo by way of CORD:
A memorial gathering to honor the memory of Robert Guskind will be held from 2 pm to 5 pm Saturday, April 4 at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 4th Avenue between Union and President Streets in Park Slope. Senator Daniel Squadron and Assemblymember Joan Millman have sponsored a resolution to honor the life and work of Gowanus Lounge founder Bob Guskind.

I am pleased to announce that Resolution 1131 passed in both houses on Tuesday. The video shows Squadron speaking on the resolution. Among the quotes: “He took this new form of communication and really took it to a new level. He was able to take community concerns, describe them, and distill them, and distribute them in ways that never could’ve happened without him. We’re going to miss him sorely.”



Please RSVP if you can, since that helps with planning for refreshments. (There is an opportunity to sign up to speak.)

Please try to arrive around 2 pm. There will be an opportunity to get seats and get refreshments before the program starts. Also, the program will not last until 5 pm, so there will be an opportunity for those attending to talk informally.

If you’d like to make donations in Bob’s memory, four charities have been designated.

Thanks to the many people volunteering their time and donating goods and services. Thanks to Juventino Avila at Get Fresh Table and Market in Park Slope and Rafael Soler of the Red Hook Vendors for generously donating food. Thanks to Eric Richmond of the Brooklyn Lyceum for generously donating the space.

Gary here. Bob was an inspiration to me and many others, and he did a tremendous service to Brooklyn. His legacy deserved to be officially recognized - this was a classy move by Squadron and Millman.

New F Train Cars; MTA Testing 11 Car Trains

Second Avenue Sagas posts on the new subway cars on the F line:

Last week, New York City Transit rolled out some new rolling stock along the F line. Riders from Jamaica to Coney Island-Stillwell Ave. will now enjoy the clean, sterile comfort of the new R160s and the crisp announcements that come along with it.

I've ridden a couple of these new trains, and they are a vast improvement over the old ones.

Meanwhile, the Daily News reports that the MTA has tested an 11 car train configuration on the F line.

"We obviously neither have the capital nor operating funding to implement anything like this in the foreseeable future," NYC Transit President Howard Roberts said.
"We are just looking at feasibility for planning purposes," Roberts added.

My initial sense is that upgrading the signaling would be a better solution than undergoing construction to extend platforms at multiple stations as would be necessary to run an 11-car configuration. But I'm open to the possibilities if the numbers work out.

Brooklyn Greenway: Columbia Street Cleanup Saturday

Come out this Saturday for a fun way to give back to the community by cleaning up Columbia Street:

Saturday, April 4, 10:00-11:30am
Columbia Greenway Clean-Up
Lend a hand at BGI’s monthly cleanup along the new Columbia Street section of the greenway. These cleanups are held in cooperation with the Columbia Waterfront Neighborhood Association, in order to keep the newest section of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway free of trash and other debris.

Tools, trash bags, work gloves provided, but please make sure to dress warmly!
Meet at BGI’s office, 145 Columbia Street between Kane and Degraw
(Ring BGI’s doorbell on left-hand side of residential entrance)
RSVP to Brian: bmccormick(at)brooklyngreenway.org


BGI is doing great work opening up the waterfront and inland communities to pedestrians and cyclists . . . putting a stretch of green through Brooklyn that makes safe public park space more accessible to all of Brooklyn. Join Mia and I on Saturday as we pitch in to help. This is my favorite type of community service.

Photo of Columbia Street stretch of the Greenway from Brownstoner.

Brooklyn Gets A Calatrava!?

And in Carroll Gardens no less.

While the Claret Group has been notoriously tightlipped about it's plans for the Collection on Court between Union and Sackett, word has leaked that the developer has decided to go all in on the property. Apparently banking that star power will pull in buyers even in this recessionary market, Claret has hired starchitect Santiago Calatrava to build a scale replica of the spire project that is currently under construction in Chicago. The new design will also come with a new moniker: InSpired by Court.

Calatrava himself has reportedly likened the project to the scaled down Statue of Liberty on the Seine River in Paris.

Happy April 1st!

Breakfast-of-Candidates (39th Edition): Gary Reilly

Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn is running a series of profiles of candidates for local office, including yours truly. We had a good long chat about my background, the issues facing the district, and how I came to be a candidate for City Council. An excerpt:

Thousands of F-train commuters signed Gary's petition. Later he testified before the MTA Board and at City Council and State Assembly hearings on transportation issues.

As an advocate for public transportation, Gary found his issue and his voice. This powerful experience also cemented his belief that public transportation is an equalizer and an important engine of democracy. "It creates mobility which equals opportunity," Gary told me. It also ties in with environmental sustainability, another issue close to Gary's heart.

"Transportation policy dovetails with development policy, land use, how we view our streets, how we share our space and making the city safe for pedestrians and cyclists," he said. The F-Train petition experience also convinced Gary that he would one day run for office. But he didn't think it would happen quite so soon. It was when he realized that Bill deBlasio was at term limit that he decided to jump in. But not before asking his wife how she felt about it. "Let's do it," she said. And that was that.

I highly recommend reading the entire series as they are posted. I've also read her profile of Bob Zuckerman, and it is a refreshing to get a look at the candidates in their own words. I know I am eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Reinventing America's Cities

Times architectural critic Nicolai Ouroussoff has a good piece up on the importance of planning and a strong government role in modern day urban renaissance.

The problem in America is not a lack of ideas. It is a tendency to equate any large-scale government construction project, no matter how thoughtful, with the most brutal urban renewal tactics of the 1950s. One result has been that pioneering projects that skillfully blend basic infrastructure with broader urban needs like housing and park space are usually killed in their infancy. Another is that we now have an archaic and grotesquely wasteful federal system in which upkeep for roads, subways, housing, public parkland and our water supply are all handled separately.

With money now available to invest again in such basic needs, I’d like to look at four cities representing a range of urban challenges and some of the plans available to address them. Though none of the plans are ideal as they stand today (and some of them represent only the germ of an idea), evaluated and addressed together as part of a coordinated effort, they could begin to form a blueprint for making our cities more efficient, sustainable and livable.

The parts on the Bronx and Buffalo make for particularly good reading. The Pratt plan for eliminating the Sheridan Expressway and reopening the South Bronx waterfront is a stroke of genius. And when it comes to Buffalo, a high speed rail connector that ties Buffalo to NYC and other cities in the region (both in the US and Canada) would be a major boon.



Image above of Northeast High Speed Rail Network taken from The Transport Politic.

Vapor Intrusion Law: Food for Thought on Gowanus Residential Development

The Chair of CB6 was thoughtful enough to share this article from the New York Law Journal with the Community Board.

This is something to think long and hard about when contemplating the Gowanus rezoning and the appropriateness of concentrated residential development on these contaminated sites. An excerpt:

Vapor intrusion is a potentially harmful condition in which volatile chemicals in soil and groundwater emit fumes that enter buildings; such chemicals are often present at old industrial properties, or where a former industrial property has been redeveloped for commercial or residential use.

In the past, many state environmental regulators, including the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), had not included vapor intrusion as a consideration when granting closure for cleanup of contaminated properties because the general thought was that chemicals could stay in the ground under a building, as the foundation was a barrier preventing contact with those chemicals.

More recent evidence has shown this is not always the case, as some chemicals can penetrate foundations at levels that raise health and safety concerns for the occupants. However, NYSDEC and other state regulatory agencies granted hundreds of site closures without always accounting for the possibility of vapor intrusion exposures.

Over the past several years, NYSDEC and the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) have been investigating the vapor intrusion issue, including reopening "closed" remediation cases and setting new standards for human exposure. Other states (e.g., California, New Jersey) are taking similar steps with respect to vapor intrusion.

Thus the concept of the new law clearly is a good one. However, NYSDEC, which is largely responsible for enforcement of the Tenant Notification Law, has to date offered no formal interpretive guidance on the applicability of the law or how it will be enforced. As discussed further below, there are numerous vague and undefined terms and ambiguous provisions in the statute that have created confusion and challenges for the regulated community members and their advisors.

The whole article is worth reading for those that don't mind getting into the weeds of a legal discussion.