This Week in Brooklyn: Back to the Future
By Michael Gsovski
The past takes centerstage in Brooklyn this week as many previously “obsolete” practices have come back into use by enterprising New Yorkers.
The past takes centerstage in Brooklyn this week as many previously “obsolete” practices have come back into use by enterprising New Yorkers.
This week in Brooklyn, residents in the north get over their condo shame, Red Hook might get some more industry, Bill de Blasio rides the news wave, and the Knitting Factory is set to open on Metropolitan Avenue.
The Empire State Development Corporation recently held a public hearing on the Atlantic Yards project in a New York City College of Technology auditorium on Jay Street Downtown. Both supporters and opponents of the program made strong showings, although the pro-Yards contingent — a varied collection of Union workers along with members of ACORN or BUILD — vastly outnumbered opponents of the plan, including many members of Develop, Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. After six long years of public hearings and court fights, both camps had plenty to say about each other: supporters of the project tarring opponents as effete elites and opponents claiming supporters were either paid for their participation or naïve. Hear from both sides after the jump.
This week in Brooklyn, Clinton Hill residents charge cops with brutality, a crisis over where to put the East Brooklyn Community High School and home prices tumble while Whole Foods swears they will open someday.
City Comptroller, and Brooklynite, Bill Thompson kicked off his five-borough mayoral campaign swing on the steps of Borough Hall and his supporters were intent on emphasizing the comptroller’s average New Yorker credentials at the expense of his incumbent opponent, Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
In Brooklyn this week, Marty Markowitz gets a challenger, Atlantic Yards delayed again, the recession hits Greenpoint and the Williamsburg mansion portrayed in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is up for sale, like so many other buildings in the area.
Bicycle fatality urges a redesign of 5th Avenue, while the Coney Island’s rezoning plan induces a bit of chaos in the City Council. Things with Atlantic Yards remain the same, but the borough’s restraining orders skyrocket, overtaking the Bronx.
