By Matt Chaban 8/20/12 10:35am

Silicon Alley U

Brooklyn's DIY tech campus. (Steiner Studios/NYT)

Techies on a Hill: City’s Third Tech Campus, at Old Brooklyn Navy Yards Hospital, Unveiled

Back in the Spring, The Observer traveled to Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where Doug Steiner is working on building the biggest movie studio outside of Hollywood. Part of that plan is building a new media-tech campus, including a new grad school for Brooklyn College’s film program that is already under construction in old radio building at the foot of Washington Avenue.

The marquee feature is a 20 acre satellite for Carnegie Mellon University, to be located on the site of a former naval hospital. On Friday, The Times revealed both a rendering of the project and the fact that the city and Steiner Studios were close to a deal for redeveloping the property. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11:52am

Machers

Ms. Dunham, on location in Brooklyn. (HBO)

Lena Dunham Goes Ghost Hunting at Steiner Studios and Gretchen Mol Just Loves Being Close to Home

At the ribbon cutting for Steiner Studios earlier this month, The Observer caught up with Voice of the City Lena Dunham, who had just moved production for the second season of her feverish hit Girls to the studio in Brooklyn. Gretchen Mol of Boardwalk Empire was up on stage, looking radiant beside the mayor and Doug Steiner, but Ms. Dunham hid in the back of the sound stage.

It was actually her first day at the studios, she said, but her experience helps underscore why the city needs more and bigger studios if it is going to continue to grow its film and television industry. (Also, there wasn’t room in our profile of Doug Steiner for Ms. Dunham, but we figure giving her her own post should drive some good Google hits to Observer.com, what with the ultra-buzz humming around Girls at the moment.)

“I’m very excited to be here,” Ms. Dunham told The Observer of her arrival at Steiner Studios. “I love the Navy Yards, it’s such a cool, historic place.” Somehow we could not help but think of that scene from Tiny Furniture where she has sex with the chef inside a giant pipe somewhere in nearby Dumbo. Read More

By Matt Chaban 4/18/12 8:40am

Machers

Studio city. (Courtesy Steiner Studios)

Hollywood Along the Hudson: Can Doug Steiner Turn the City’s Largest Film Studios Into an Urban Real Estate Empire?

“People said we were crazy to build in Brooklyn, no one would ever come to Brooklyn,” Doug Steiner said from the rooftop terrace of his biggest development in the borough. The Jersey-born builder was wearing his usual polo shirt and jeans, comfortable in the unseasonably warm weather in late February, the sun glinting off his clean-shaven head. “In those days, there were wild dogs running in the streets,” Mr. Steiner added for effect.

“But look at these views,” he continued, pointing out across Wallabout Bay and the span of the East River beyond. “You’ve got the gritty industrial underbelly of the city in the foreground, the financial capital of the world in the background.” One World Trade Center and the Empire State Building bookended the panorama.

It was 1999 when Doug Steiner brought the family development business to Brooklyn. As he and so many other fortune seekers have since proved, the decision was anything but crazy. But it was not condos or artists lofts that Mr. Steiner was selling. He was in pictures.

Two weeks ago, with the mayor standing just in front of him at the podium, Mr. Steiner opened five new sound stages at his eponymous Steiner Studios inside the sprawling Brooklyn Navy Yards, bringing the total to 15. That is halfway to the ultimate goal of 32 and, at 50 acres, the largest American film production facilities outside of Hollywood—behind Warner Brothers and Paramount, and rivaling the Walt Disney and CBS backlots. Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 7/15/08 6:14pm

Public Showdown Over Admirals Row Scheduled for July 22

July 22 will mark the latest public showdown over the fate of the Navy Yard’s Admirals Row — the string of old mansions along Brooklyn’s Flushing Avenue that has pitted preservationists who extol the homes’ dilapidated grandeur against the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation and residents of the Farragut Houses, who support a plan to Read More