That Pavilion condo story – may just be a rumor. Curbed has something about it today.

Interesting things in store for the Gowanus area. Like the roll up bridge (pictured left) that is in London. This from Brooklyn Papers.com

The Gowanus canal would be transformed from a fetid, sewage-ridden
corpse of water — and the neighborhood around it bloom with a mixture
of parks, housing and light industry — under a just-released plan by a
coalition of local groups.

“It’s exciting for anyone who lives near the canal to finally see
something happen,” said Michael Ingui, chairman of the Gowanus Canal
Community Development Corporation, which has been spearheading the
effort.

The Gowanus Canal Comprehensive Community Plan calls for the revival
of the malodorous canal — which is the final resting place of tens of
thousands of gallons of raw sewage during big rainstorms.

“That’s the biggest problem,” said Thomas Chardavoyne, the executive director of the GCCDC.

Read more at Brooklyn Papers

A mural called Recycled Bouquet is gracing the Carroll Street wall of Key Food on Seventh Avenue. It’s really an amazing thing. Created by second graders at te nearby Berkeley Carroll School they worked with artist  Fred Bendheim and their teacher, Judi Barrett.

Eggo, Cheerios, Oreos, Special K, Corn Chex, Apple Jacks, Honey Toasted Oat Cereal, Honey Crunch, Honey
Bunches of Oats), raisin and lots more.

.

Continue reading MURAL FOR KEY FOOD →

Great News from the Brooklyn Record. The NYC Landmarks commission has decided to landmark that incredible building on Third and Third.

Let’s have a party. Finally some good news in this age of knocking things down so that condos may rise. See below news about the Pavilion.

Says the Brooklyn Record:

The building was one of the first
concrete structures in the nation. Built between 1872 and 1873, it was
designed by William Field and Son to serve as the main office of the
Coignet Stone Company and was meant to highlight Coignet (artificial)
stone, which was really a type of concrete invented by Francois Coignet
in the mid-19th century.

Here’s some info from answers.com about One Liberty Properties, the new owner of our beloved Prospect ParkPavilion. Not that we love the owners/managers of the Pavilion who have allowed many of the theaters in the theater to go to pot with broken seats and general disrepair (now we know why). We just love to be able to see movies nearby.

One Liberty Properties, Inc.
(NYSE:OLP)

Sector: Services

Industry: Real Estate Operations

Website: http://www.1liberty.com

One Liberty Properties, Inc. (One Liberty Properties) is a
self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust (REIT).
The Company acquires, owns and manages a geographically diversified
portfolio of retail, industrial, office, movie theater, health and
fitness, and other properties in the United States, of which, a
substantial portion are under long-term leases. Substantially all of
One Liberty Properties’ leases are net leases. As of January 31, 2005,
the Company owned 46 properties, participated in six joint ventures
that owned a total of 14 properties and held a 50% tenancy in common
interest in one property. These properties are located in 23 states and
have an aggregate space of approximately 5.4 million square feet,
including all space for properties in which One Liberty Properties has
joint venture participation, its tenancy in common interest, and five
properties that the Company acquired in one transaction in January
2005.

BRIEF: For the nine months ended 30 September 2005, One Liberty
Properties, Inc.’s revenues increased 33% to $20.9M. Net income from
continuing operations totaled $16.9M, up from $5.6M. Revenues reflect
higher rental income from newly acquired properties. Net income
benefited from lower real estate expenses and gain on sale of air
rights. One Liberty Properties, Inc., acquires, owns, manages and
leases improved commercial real estate properties.

 

Today I heard from someone in the know about the Pavilion condos project. It seems that the contract was signed on June  12th. The deal is done. Does anyone have access to the plans?

I find the whole thing sickening. So that a few may pay millions for park view condos, many will suffer the loss of what was an old style movie palace and a key destination to many in this community.

The Pavilion has definitely added to the quality of life in the Park Slope/Windsor/Kensington area.  I am wondering (perhaps too optimistically) if One Liberty Properties is planning to keep a movie theater of some kind  on the first floor of the condo building.

I am so sick of this. I guess that site was worth too much to someone to just be a movie theater. Just a movie theater.  The following is the depressing email I got this morning.

A contract was signed with One Liberty Properties on June 12 so I’m not sure what there is to do now.  Thanks for putting it out there — people are starting to react now that the word is out.

Here’s a story from the BBC.com from 2003 about Gehry’s Hove project. It is being fought by conservatives who say that the land should not be built on.  A story today in The Guardian said that the battle is on-going.  The tall buildings look a lot like the Brooklyn bride. They look quite nice on the water like that.

World-famous architect Frank Gehry, who has created eye-catching landmarks in Bilbao, Seattle and Las Vegas, has set his sights on Sussex.

This is what tourists would see from the end of the Palace Pier

He may have designed the iconoclastic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the equally daring Experience Music Project in Seattle, but his English debut is by no means certain.

Gehry’s vision of a new development for the seafront at genteel Hove will first have to overcome a rival bid and then the opposition of the local Conservative group, which is against any housing on the site.

About 400 local residents have also signed a petition.

Brighton and Hove Council is expected to make a decision next month on which is its preferred option, but the proposal will still need to go through the normal planning application process.

The council came up with the idea of a competition when they decided it was high time they redeveloped the 70-year-old King Alfred Leisure Centre in Hove.

The idea was for the council to donate the land and a private developer would stump up the money and subsidise the development by building abound 400 flats with unrivalled sea views.

Most of the flats would be for the luxury end of the market but 40% would be earmarked for key workers like nurses and teachers, or people on the housing waiting list.

Several of the world’s top architects submitted bids for the project and the shortlist was whittled down to two, with Lord Rogers (formerly Richard Rogers) the latest to be rejected.

Now it is a straight fight.

In the red corner is Gehry’s bizarre vision – a collection of four tower blocks of varying height clustered around a swimming pool complex and "winter garden".

Each tower has giant glass panels, like wings, and each looks as if it has been melted with a giant blowtorch.

In the blue corner is the design put forward by Wilkinson Eyre, who are best known for their remarkable Millennium Bridge in Gateshead.

Their Hove proposal is far more low-key but no less bold – four interconnected buildings resting on the beach almost like jagged bits of glass.

–BBC.com (2003)

Today was the last day of school (stay tuned for my Smartmom column this Friday on this topic).

OSFO was very sad when she found out that she won’t be in the same class as her best friend Emmy.

She looked terribly disappointed after school. The two are still planning to walk to school together unassisted by parents next fall.  (We parents will be hovering in the background most likely).

I tried to convince OSFO that she would still see a lot of Emmy and that she’d make new friends in the class next year.

As I write this I see that I didn’t really let her have her feelings. I kept trying to fix it, comfort her, or make her see it my way. I should have just listened and sympathized.

It was on her mind until early evening. She was happy to hear that two of her friends will be in the class with her. But she still worried. What if they’re not? What if it’s a mistake?  Are they really in the new class with me?

When your children worry you just want to make it better like putting a Bandaid on a boo boo. Kiss it and make the pain go away. But that’s not always possible. She needs to feel this stress, this worry, this pain. It won’t go away (poof) just because I want it to.

I hope she feels better tomorrow. But if she doesn’t it’s okay. She feels strongly about the kids she was friends with this year. She doesn’t want to leave them. And she has to. I will let her mourn this loss and then move on.

She’ll be fine in the long run but this is a big deal right now.

I have been hearing whispers of this on Seventh Avenue. Does anyone know more about the Pavilion being turned into condos?

Someone sent me this email last week. I couldn’t agree with her more about the neighborhood needing a movie theater.

Have you heard that plans are being considered to sell the Pavilion,  the only movie theater in Park Slope, to a developer who would turn it into a condo building with a large underground parking garage? 

We need a movie theater in this neighborhood — a place for teenagers to walk to locally, for families, and for local businesses to keep people in the neighborhood on nights out instead of heading to Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, or Manhattan.

I’m not sure what needs to be done to keep it a theater. I heard that in Bayridge something similiar happened and the local realtors helped find a buyer who would  continue to keep it as a movie theater.  I can’t believe that in Park Slope there is not someone who wants to run a movie theater and/or restaurant since there is space inside for a restaurant (the former "Living Room" restaurant has been closed and is now just a large concession stand for the theater).

Teen Spirit, OSFO and I went to the 6:45 show of Superman Returns. It’s a great movie – all two and a half hours of it. I took a brief doze in the first hour (because I was exhausted from last night).  Other than that, it held my attention throughout.

The only trouble was, the movie theater was full of so many noisy kids. A kid behind us talked throughout the movie, "I’m scared dad, I’m scared." or "Is Superman going to die?" He also cried noisily at one point and kicked my seat.

But that wasn’t all. Many in the theater brought babies and children too young for the movie who talked or cried throughout. There was also a lot of hissing and loud verbal reactions to what was going on on the screen. It didn’t enhance the viewing experience at all.

The whole thing was very distracting and detracted from the viewing experience.

Curious and cool thing: Marlon Brando is credited with being in the
film. I think it was his voice. But still. When was it recorded? Turns out it was from audio outtakes from another Superman movie that he was in. And, Eva Marie Saint is in the movie, too. She and Brando were both in "On the Waterfront" many, many years ago.

I found the film, one of the most expensive ever made, to unexpectedly beautiful, even exquisite in places. And oddly spiritual. Suffice it to say, it’s pretty silly overall. But it’s fun and a great way to stay cool for two and a half hours.

Directed by the the director of "The Usual Suspects" it is full some great bits, characters, scenic artistry, and special effects that are very smooth and interesting looking, especially the Fortress of Solitude. The city of Metropolis is a great blend of Manhattan and an imagined city.

But Kevin Spacey takes the cake. He makes a fantastic villian and I loved the film the most when he was on the screen.

Good summer fun in air conditioned splendor. Superman Returns.  The following films are on my wish list:

The Devil Wears Prada
Prairie Home Companion
I’m Your Man, the doc about Leonard Cohen.

The Guardian Unlimited ran on story on Jonathan Lethem’s letter to Frank Gehry. I didn’t know Gehry was "embroiled in a long-running battle" on the Hove seafront in the south of England.

Frank Gehry is fighting a war on both sides of the Atlantic. The Pritzker prize-winning septuagenarian architect is already embroiled in a long-running battle to build a pair of tower blocks on Hove seafront, described by Gehry as "Victorian women in wind-blown dresses". Now it seems that he has some even more formidable opponents than the genteel residents of Brighton and Hove: angry Brooklynites.

The latest images of Gehry’s Brooklyn project, a $3.5bn forest of skyscrapers, were unveiled to the press last month. The New York-based novelist Jonathan Lethem, in an open letter to Gehry published in online magazine Slate, described the development as "a nightmare for Brooklyn" that would cause "irreparable damage" to the quality of life in the district. "To my unschooled eye," wrote the man whose 2005 novel The Fortress of Solitude was in many ways a paean to Brooklyn, "these buildings have emerged pre-botched by compromise, swollen with expediency and profit-seeking".

Dope on the Slope made a podcast of the First Annual Brooklyn Blogfest. It’s a great way to get a sense of what the event was like.

After much maladroit mixing, I finally managed to cobble together a brief podcast featuring some "interviews" with a small sample of the presenters at last Thursday’s Brooklyn Blogfest.  Like nearly everything else I’m interested in, I jumped into this with both feet and absolutely no idea what I was doing. I conducted entire interviews without hitting the record button, distorted the levels,  and had a devil of a time with my plosives (apparently it’s hereditary). Still, I think some of the spirit of the event manages to seep through my incompetence.

My apologies to anyone I didn’t get around to interviewing, and to anyone whose most brilliant observations didn’t make it into the mix.

A sensible person would give up after such a dismal debut performance. But I can’t quit while I’m behind.

Look for an upcoming show devoted to photoblogging, and, as special treat, a new series of classic poetry and literature readings featuring the incomparable Daisy Parker.  I’m going to call it "Trope on the Slope."

Here’s a link to download the podcast:

Brooklyn Blogfest 2006

From NY1:
Doctors are treating two construction workers who were pulled to safety
after being trapped under construction debris in Park Slope.

There’s no word yet on their conditions or specifics on their injuries.

The workers were buried under rubble at a construction site on 11th Street and 3rd Avenue at around 11 a.m.

Dozens of firefighters responded to the scene, freeing the workers,
securing them to stretchers and hauling them to waiting ambulances.

Con Edison was also on the scene with an industrial vacuum that was
reportedly used to suck dirt out of the trench to help free the
workers.

There’s no word on exactly what the men were doing at the site nor what caused the collapse.