20 MARCH 9 - MARCH 15, 2018 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP
Support mounts for landmarking Angel Guardian
Brooklyn Chamber prez to step down
BY MEAGHAN MCGOLDRICK
MMCGOLDRICK@BROOKLYNREPORTER.
COM
Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce
President and CEO
Andrew Hoan will step down
from his position in May, the business
group announced on Monday,
March 5.
The move, the Chamber said, is
based on Hoan's plans to relocate
outside of the New York City region.
"Andrew has been an incredible
leader for the Chamber – strengthening
programs, growing membership,
overseeing an amazing
Centennial celebration – and most
importantly has left the Chamber
even stronger," the group said in a
statement. "The Chamber remains a
vibrant, fiscally strong organization
with an outstanding management
and staff."
Hoan took the helm from the
Chamber's longtime head Carlo
Scissura at the end of 2016. He was
previously the group's vice president
and chief of staff.
The Brooklyn Chamber, founded
in 1918, is the largest and fastest
growing Chamber of Commerce
in all of New York.
"We greatly appreciate Andrew’s
leadership and all that he has done
and, on a personal level, will miss his
enthusiasm," the group's statement
concluded. "We wish him and his
family nothing but success in the
future."
The search for the prez's replacement
will begin immediately.
BY MEAGHAN MCGOLDRICK
MMCGOLDRICK@BROOKLYNREPORTER.COM
As predicted, a local panel has
voted in unanimous support
of a motion it hopes might
save, at the very least, the skeleton of
the storied Angel Guardian Home in
Dyker Heights.
After supporters of the longstanding
complex rallied outside its still-to-beshuttered
Narrows Senior Center on
February 2, Community Board 10 on
Monday, February 26 voted to support
a motion made by the panel’s Zoning
and Land Use Committee to request
that the New York City Landmarks
Preservation Commission (LPC) expedite
the calendaring of an application
to designate the Angel Guardian Home
an individual landmark.
“This would be the first and only
landmark of its kind in Dyker Heights,”
said Zoning and Land Use Committee
Chair Brian Kaszuba, adding that the
application – submitted by the “Guardians
of the Guardian,” a group of neighbors
that have been fighting to save the
site since news of its impending sale
first broke – has the full support of the
Historic Districts Council (HDC).
“The Angel Guardian Home is an extensive
complex that stretches a full city
block that was built in 1899,” Kaszuba
explained. “All four original buildings
on the site are completely intact since
the date of construction due to the very
high quality of materials such as red
brick, limestone and copper.”
HDC and CB10 both believe the complex
meets the standards for landmark
status.
The Angel Guardian Home – a
14,000-square-foot Dyker Heights
institution at 6301 12th Avenue that,
since the early 1900s, has taken in
countless orphans, becoming a formal
adoption agency in the 1970s – was
reportedly sold at the end of last year
to a still unnamed buyer.
This move, despite pleas from local
residents and community stakeholders
to consider senior housing, a
school or some other combination of
the two that would benefit the neighborhood
at the massive, block-long site,
hints at trouble, supporters say.
“Should Landmarks grant such
designation, the owners would not
be able to make any changes without
Landmarks’ permission,” Kaszuba
said, noting also that, while the buyers’
intentions are still unclear (as is, he
said, if there even is a buyer as there
are still no records of a sale), without
landmark designation, “as of right,
they could tear down the structure
and build row houses on both blocks.”
Expediting the calendaring of the
application to at least set a date for review
would “stop the clock,” Kaszuba
said, on any construction at the hands
of the new owners pending LPC’s final
decision.
Still, he stressed, the committee
hopes LPC will consider the request
based solely on the site’s deep-rooted
history.
To put added pressure on LPC, on
March 1, a bevy of local elected officials
— Councilmembers Justin Brannan and
Carlos Menchaca, State Senators Marty
Golden and Simcha Felder, Assemblymember
Peter Abbate and Public
Advocate Letitia James — also sent a
letter of their own requesting a hasty
review of the application addressed to
LPC Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan.
Letters requesting help have also
reportedly been sent to the Vatican.
According to Kaszuba, all hope is
certainly not lost.
“In the past year alone, LPC did
designate two other locations despite
already being sold or in the process of
being sold,” he said, “so there is no reason
to believe that the Angel Guardian
Home does not have a chance.” This
week, a third was added, as Sunset
Park's Dr. Maurice T. Lewis house was
landmarked on Tuesday, March 6.
According to LPC, the Angel Guardian
Home is already on its radar.
“When LPC received a request, not
an application, to evaluate the Angel
Guardian Home earlier this year, we
assessed the site and determined that
the main building may merit consideration
as a potential landmark, but
further study was needed,” said a
spokesperson, referring to the Request
for Evaluation (RFE) submitted by the
Guardians on January 3. “Since then,
LPC has received more letters regarding
this property and the agency is
commencing the additional research.”
Upon evaluation of the site, LPC determined
that further study is needed
to fully understand the development
history and integrity of the building.
Frank Grassi, a life-long Dyker
Heights resident and active member
of the Guardians, was one of many to
speak to its saving at the CB 10 meeting.
“Every time another building falls,
another shopkeeper closes, another
bowling alley or movie theater is replaced,
a part of our community’s past
is also chipped away at and lost forever,”
he said, adding that, “The brick, the
mortar, the limestone and the copper
– the loving workmanship which went
into building the Angel Guardian
Home – is the story of our community
and the immigrant families who build,
honored and sacrificed for it.”
Fellow “Guardian” Carl Esposito,
who lives across the street, said that
losing Angel Guardian Home would
be “like Ebbets Field is going again. It’s
just a part of Brooklyn that you’re not
gonna see anymore.”
BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP/file photo
The Angel Guardian Home.
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