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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 16 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 12 • March 22–28, 2019
‘We don’t have a plan right now’
DOT will have to start beleaguered BQE-repair process from scratch, civic leader claims
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
It appears they’ve hit a roadblock.
City transit leaders are back to
square one with their
looming project to repair
the Brooklyn-
Queens Expressway’s
crumbling triple cantilever
, according to the
head of a local community
board, who told
members of his panel
that officials claimed
to lack a path forward
for the job after months of debate
over the current options on
the table.
“What was clearly said is, ‘We
don’t have a plan right now, we
clearly don’t have a plan right now.
And so what we’re trying to do is
figure out what is the right plan,’ ”
Community Board 2 Chairman
Lenny Singletary said of Department
of Transportation leaders at
a March 13 meeting.
Singletary relayed the status report
following a closed-door gathering
Transportation Department
brass hosted at their Manhattan
headquarters with him and other
leaders of community boards 2
and 6 on March 11, where the
agency’s Commissioner Polly
Trottenberg, its Brooklyn Borough
Commissioner Keith
Bray, and nearly a dozen
employees discussed the
project for almost two hours with
the chosen group of attendees,
who included reps for local, state,
and federal pols.
The CB2 civic guru described
the session as a “positive,
collaborative conversation,”
in which the
transit leaders admitted
they moved away
from the agency’s two
initial plans proposed
last fall — which would
either turn the Brooklyn
Heights Promenade
into a six-lane speedway
carrying cars and trucks for
no less than six years in order to
shore up the triple cantilever; or
repair the three-tiered expressway
lane-by-lane, a longer job that
could cause traffic jams on some
local streets for up to 12 miles —
after residents demanded the city
explore other options.
“What DOT shared with us is
that they learned a lot of information
from the first large meeting
that took place. And from that
meeting, they decided to, kind of,
go back to the drawing board and
they started from scratch,” Singletary
said.
A Transportation Department
spokeswoman confirmed
the agency is weighing multiple
proposals and will continue to seek
public comment as it determines
a final plan.
“We are undertaking a thor-
ough review process that will look
at a range of options for this critical
transportation corridor, accompanied
by substantial community
and expert engagement,”
said Alana Morales.
Options on the table include
the city’s so-called “innovative”
approach to turn the Promenade
into a highway; its so-called “traditional”
approach to repair the
triple cantilever lane-by-lane; a
third plan proposed by civic leaders
with the Brooklyn Heights Association
and local architect Marc
Wouters , which calls for sending
expressway traffic on a temporary,
two-tiered roadway built on top
of berms along the Furman Street
border of Brooklyn Bridge Park
instead of along the Promenade;
and a fourth plan New York City
Comptroller Scott Stringer submitted
days after the private meeting
with Transportation Department
and local leaders.
Stringer’s plan also proposes
repairing the 1.5-mile, threetiered
stretch of expressway between
Atlantic Avenue and Sands
Street lane by lane, eliminating
the need to create any temporary
highway, but only allowing trucks
on the roadway during the reconstruction.
And after the cantilever’s middle
and lower levels are repaired,
the scheme calls for reopening only
the lower level to truck traffic
heading in both directions, and
turning the middle level into an
elevated, two-mile park that would
run along the length of the triple
cantilever and onto a newly built
“deck” above the portion of expressway
between Atlantic and
Hamilton avenues.
Any proposals that transit honchos
ultimately deem viable will
be examined as part of the federal
environmental review of the
scheme required before construction,
a study that Transportation
Department bigwigs intend to kick
off later this year, and could last
as long as two years, according to
a new website about the expressway
repairs.
And agency leaders told Singletary
and the other attendees of
the recent secret meeting that they
will be more transparent with the
planning process going forward,
but are still deciding on the best
ways to relay information to locals,
he said.
“They’re working through a
more transparent and somewhat
clearer presentation to make to
the community. Next step would
be finding out the right vehicle to
communicate that to the community
and that is a combination of
several things, maybe it’s multiple
meetings, maybe one larger meeting,
they still haven’t figured that
out yet,” Singletary said.
CB6 leaders could not be
reached for comment by press
time.
BUT HEY, THIS IS PRETTY: Comptroller Scott Stringer recently proposed a lane-by-lane
expressway-repair scheme that would only reopen the triple cantilever’s lower level to
truck traffic when complete, and transform the middle level into a public park.
FIXING
the BQE
dlandstudio
Owner in hot water
Will be charged for work at fi re-ravaged warehouse
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
They’re not off the Hook!
The city is poised to take the owner
of an old Red Hook warehouse that mysteriously
caught fire last year to court
for continuing to perform illegal construction
at the site, where a stop-work
order is still active.
The Department of Buildings attorney
in charge of Brooklyn is slated to
slap the 1886-built S.W. Bowne Grain
Storehouse’s owner — developer the
Chetrit Group — with a criminal violation
for illegally toiling at the Smith
Street structure, after agency officials
banned work there following the fire,
according to the local councilman.
“As of yesterday afternoon, the Department
of Buildings says that their
borough attorney is commencing a process
to issue a criminal-court summons
based on repeated violations,” Carlos
Menchaca (D–Red Hook) said while
reading from an apparent statement
the agency sent him.
The timeline for the department’s enforcement
is not clear at this point, added
Menchaca, who spoke at a March 13
press conference hosted by local preservationists
with the Gowanus Landmarking
Coalition, whose members
want the city to landmark the vacant
warehouse, and questioned the Chetrit
Group’s role in the fire after it tore
Red Hook Councilman Carlos Menchaca joined local preservationists
at a March 13 rally, where they demanded that developer the Chetrit
Group halt its plans to demolish the vacant S.W. Bowne Grain Storehouse,
which a fire ravaged last year.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
through the building on the Gowanus–
Red Hook border .
A Buildings Department spokesman
couldn’t confirm that agency officials
will issue a criminal summons to Chetrit
Group brass, but did not deny that
they could take that step if the warehouse
owner continues to disregard
agency orders.
“As of today, DOB has not issued a
criminal court summons for the owner
of 595 Smith St.,” said Andrew Rudansky.
“If the property owner continues
to disregard DOB orders, we may take
enhanced enforcement actions, including
possibly issuing a criminal-court
summons.”
The Buildings Department issued the
stop-work order days after the June 2018
fire, which Fire Marshals are still investigating,
and suspect some arsonist
deliberately set, according to Fire Department
spokesman Jim Long.
The city issued a full-vacate order at
the building between Creamer and Bay
streets in 2014. And years later, the Chetrit
Group — which is behind the yearsin
the-making restoration of Brooklyn
Heights’s Bossert Hotel and other borough
projects — filed preliminary paperwork
to demolish the warehouse in
September 2017, roughly a year before
the blaze, but the agency rejected that
application because it was incomplete, a
rep previously told this newspaper.
The owner-developer finally received
a full-demolition permit on Feb. 7, according
to Rudansky, who added that
the firm can not perform any work at
the site until agency inspectors rule
to rescind the stop-work order issued
last year.
But contractors proceeded to toil at
the property, forcing the Buildings Department
on March 5 to slap its owner
with a new violation in addition to the
penalty it received after the fire that resulted
in the stop-work order, which together
total some $12,000 in fines, according
to agency records.
And on March 9, the Buildings Department
received a complaint that
contractors were erecting scaffolding
outside the building — a sign that the
Chetrit Group intends to proceed with
illegally demolishing it, according to
Gowanus Landmarks Coalition members
— prompting it to issue a violation
for that work. Two days later, the
agency issued yet another violation to
the developer on March 11, for failure
to properly secure the area, after city
inspectors found a large hole in the construction
fencing surrounding it while
Industry City rezoning fi ght heats up
By Julianne McShane
Brooklyn Paper
Sunset Park’s councilman will
vote down Industry City bigwigs’
requested rezoning of the commercial
site if the complex’s owners
do not delay the scheme’s public
review process by six months,
he said.
Councilman Carlos Menchaca
— who holds an outsize influence
on the rezoning because the waterfront
campus sits in his district
— said Industry City bigwigs still
need to prove the proposed upzoning
would actually benefit the community,
before their request can
begin its lengthy journey through
the city’s Uniform Land Use Review
Procedure.
“I’m not sure that a rezoning
is at all necessary right now, and
that the burden of proof is not on
us as a community — the burden
of proof is on the private developer
to make the case for this rezoning,”
Menchaca said at a March
13 meeting of local Community
Board 7.
The pol delivered his ultimatum
days after Industry City leaders
agreed to delay the rezoning , and
weeks after they first submitted
the request to the Department of
City Planning in February.
That decision to delay came after
Menchaca and CB7 Chairman
Cesar Zuniga fired off a missive
to Industry City Chief Executive
Officer Andrew Kimball, urging
him to hold off on initiating the
public review for the billion-dollar
plan, which if approved would
over the next decade add more than
25 football fields’ worth of space
— including a pair of hotels with
more than 400 rooms — to the 30
acres the site already occupies between
30th–36th streets and Second
and Third avenues.
The local leaders’ letter alleged
that the board is not yet ready to
officially weigh in on the scheme
— which, per the Ulurp process,
requires the panel to hold a public
meeting about the proposal, vote
on it, and then submit a purely
advisory written recommendation
to the City Planning Commission
within 60 days of the agency’s
certification of the rezoning
application — because its members
are in the midst of addressing
“concerns about displacement
and gentrification,” matters that
would prevent them from voting
on the rezoning within the required
time frame.
Two days after Menchaca and
Zuniga sent their letter to Kimball
on March 6, Rep. Nydia Velazquez
(D–Sunset Park), Rep. Jerrold Nadler
(D–Red Hook), and state Sen.
Zellnor Myrie (D–Crown Heights),
sent their own missive to Department
of City Planning Director
Marisa Lago on March 8, which
echoed the demands of the councilman
and CB7 leader. And later
that day, Kimball and his fellow
executives agreed to postpone
the process, but did not say for
how long.
Menchaca and CB7 leaders will
use the six-month delay the pol demanded
to hold five town halls on
the proposal, during which they
intend to:
• Review the findings from last
summer’s series of board-sponsored
town halls on waterfront
development.
• Share the results of in-progress
“community-based needs assessments”
being conducted by aca-
File photo by Sara Hylton
Industry City Chief Executive Officer Andrew Kimball must
explain how rezoning the complex would mitigate issues
such as displacement, local leaders demanded.
demics from NYU Langone Hospital
Brooklyn, Wagner College,
and Hunter College, who are respectively
studying health indicators,
affordable housing, and education
and employment indicators
in the community.
She got the beat!
Deinya Phenix and the Batala New York drummers performed at
the “Carnaval, Kanaval, Carnival” event hosted by Bedford-Stuyvesant’s
Cumbe Center for African and Diaspora Dance on March 2.
Photo by Caroline Ourso
See HOOK on page 4
See INDUSTRY on page 11
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