Entrepreneur Peter Shapiro, owner of Brooklyn Bowl and former owner of Wetlands in Tribeca, wants to turn a Gowanus warehouse a rock and roll preschool and bar.

Mr. Shapiro, a father of two, plans to call the space The Rock and Roll Playhouse and have it play host kiddies in the day and parents by night.

The day program would include classes to help young children learn about music and its history, offering classes such as "Beatles for Babies" and "Drawing Rock and Roll," according to the project's website.

At night, the location would be used for low-key music events as well as a bar (because who wouldn't need a drink after a day of teaching three-year-olds).

While Peter Shapiro denies that his kid-friendly location will become his next night club venture, some Gowanus residents are still unsold. “It’s really a loud nightclub in the middle of a residential block,” Gowanus resident Ari Shapiro told the NY Daily News. 

Ari Shapiro, unrelated to Peter Shapiro, is a founding member of We are Gowanus, a group created to oppose the project. The group wants Playhouse to stay alcohol free. Some of the members believe the kid-friendly aspect is simply to disguise the creation of another night club.

Whatever happens, one thing's for sure: the Playhouse will be serving everyone 21 (months) and up.

Gowanus's odd, appealing Coignet building.

The Coignet building—a classical structure executed in concrete at 360 Third Avenue in Gowanus—has had a strange allure since the day it was completed in 1873. An elegant mansion in the midst of an industrial zone, it served as both an office building and an advertisement for the material being manufactured in the factory complex behind it, deftly melding disparate elements in a fashion that passerby have long found beguiling.

But the building has languished, empty and deteriorating, for decades. Located on the edge of a vast lot that will soon be occupied by a Whole Foods, it is the lone remnant of the industrial landscape it once anchored. Now, there is a possibility that it may finally be restored and occupied, presiding not just over the neighborhood's past, but playing a role in its future as well. The building's owner—Richard Kowalski—has put the mansion on the market with Massey Knakal (a development first spotted by the blog Pardon Me for Asking).

Mr. Kowalski sold the lot to Whole Foods in 2005, but held onto the landmarked building, extracting a promise from Whole Foods to restore the building's exterior (the interior also needs to be gut renovated). It was a strange compromise. Without it, the structure would more than likely have continued to deteriorate (and Whole Foods has since replaced the roof), but the buffer of approximately five feet on the two non-corner sides mean that the building will be dwarfed by the supermarket. It is also unclear why Whole Foods, given that the company is responsible for expensive exterior work, didn't buy the building along with the rest of the lot.

The owner is looking to lease or sell the building, but prefers to secure a long-term lease, according to Massey Knakal broker James Singleton, who has the listing with SVP of sales Kenneth Freeman. The lot is zoned light industrial and provides 2,000-square feet above ground as well as a 1,000-square-foot cellar (while cellars are not usually counted in a building's square footage, Mr. Singleton said that this one has windows and nine-and-a-half foot ceilings and is thus usable space). The tenant and/or owner would be responsible for making all necessary repairs to the building's interior.

There is no list price, just a request for proposals, and Mr. Singleton suggested that the owner will only sell for a persuasive offer—i.e., more than $3 million. As for leasing, he told The Observer that an offer of $30 a square foot, which included the cellar space, was rejected by the owner. In other words, the owner wants to get more than $7,500 a month for the building.

Mr. Singleton said that he and Mr. Freeman have been fielding calls from interested parties since the listing went live. Located in a the middle of a thoroughfare undergoing a somewhat reluctant renaissance, the neighborhood that was best known as a Superfund site for many years is now attracting twee boutiques, specialty bars and foodies who flock to slurp down oysters at Littleneck Clam Shack.

The Coignet building is made of  Beton Coignet, a type of concrete patented in France during the 1850s. It originally housed the offices of the New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company. Building components could be prefabricated using molds, making it much cheaper than carved stone (not unlike Forest City Ratner's modular towers at Atlantic Yards.) While its exterior was mucked up years ago with faux brickwork, the building maintains a massive, poured-in-place concrete foundation as well as reinforced concrete floors. The property also includes a 750 sq. ft. dock space on the Gowanus Canal next to the 3rd Avenue bridge.

After the stone company left, the building housed the Brooklyn Improvement Company. But even when in use, the building always maintained a romantically forlorn air. As architecture critic Lewis Mumford wrote in 1952:  "In the midst of this emptiness, the Brooklyn Improvement Company, whatever that may be, occupies a classic stucco mansion, standing at the corner of Third Street and Third Avenue in ironic solitude – or should we say hopeful anticipation."

Hopeful anticipation is a good way to describe the building's current mood. If anyone is willing to pay a price that can please Mr. Kowalski, then 360 Third Avenue will once again have an occupant. In any event, it will soon have a neighbor—Whole Foods is poised to open this fall.

kvelsey@observer.com

One of the library's treasures.

The Transom’s path to Proteus Gowanus, where we were headed to investigate an unusual holiday fair, took us straight over the canal. The sight of the mint-green water—looking even more ominous than usual on a rainy Sunday—inspired a case of rabbit-run-over-your-grave shivers, which turned out to be precisely the right state of mind for a first encounter with the Morbid Anatomy Library. Part art exhibit, part research library “surveying the interstices of art and medicine, death and culture,” Morbid Anatomy is also a privately held cabinet of wonders, open (by appointment, usually) to the curious public.

We stepped into a tiny room in a converted box factory on Union Street and found the place filled to the brim with offbeat objects: anatomical models and shells, taxidermy creatures and religious tchotchkes, dolls and daguerreotypes. Old medical cabinets had been repurposed as display cases. The whole room was bathed in the warm light of old-fashioned lamps, rather than the standard-issue fluorescent bulbs that illuminated the rest of the building.

Against one wall was a towering bookshelf with sections like “corporeality/gender and medicine” and, more to the point, “death.” A skeleton lay in a handsome glass case along another wall. (A red-headed toddler with his mother surveyed the remains and noted calmly, “In our hand we have lots of bones.”) Sitting on a table in the middle of the room was a stuffed chick in a bell jar, wearing a jaunty little hat. Between the taxidermy and the overall aura of mystery, it was a bit like stumbling into a little patch of the eccentric Chelsea theater experience Sleep No More. Tim Burton would have fallen in love.

Proprietress Joanna Ebenstein has occupied the space for five years. For the last four, she’s also overseen an adjoining space dubbed the Observatory, where she and six other artists host events and exhibitions. This weekend, it hosted a macabre holiday fair.

“We know so many interesting artists, artisans and collectors, and we thought to create an alternative fair for the kind of things that we would like to buy,” Ms. Ebenstein told the Transom. In person, with her oval eyeglasses and cute blonde bob, she looks like nothing so much as a fresh-faced grad student taking a break from the stacks for a bit of human contact.

Scattered around the room were six vendors, including Ms. Ebenstein, with her glossy prints of Enlightenment-era anatomical models.

Make way for ducklings.

Looking around, we saw vintage postcards, animal skulls and earrings decorated with the face of Edgar Allen Poe.

A table was covered in patches you’d use to decorate a messenger bag. One of these was covered in a long scrawl of Latin, including what looked like “Lycanthrope,” with little bits of fur peeking out. The man behind the table told the Transom his work (under the name Mark Splatter) tends to revolve around “anatomy, and the occult.” He has an Etsy store but doesn’t stock it much, as he prefers to sell at markets.

“I like dealing with people,” he explained.

At another table, we found several small taxidermy birds. Noticing our interest in a creature priced at $110, the vendor admitted she’d be willing to take $80. The antlers of white-tailed bucks were going for $20.

As for the name, Mr. Ebenstein explained that “morbid anatomy” is a term drawn from medicine, meaning pathology. “I wanted to pick something that was kind of a double entendre,” she explained. “But also, I’ve been called morbid my entire life for being into this stuff, and I actually don’t think it’s morbid to talk about or look at images of death.

“I think it’s really morbid that we’re not supposed to talk about it.”

Gowanus Canal floodwaters at the dead end on Second Street earlier this evening. (Photo: Hunter Walker)

Many of the blocks along the shores of the toxic Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn are designated as part of the mandatory Hurricane Sandy evacuation Zone A. Though the city gave orders for residents of this area to leave their homes starting at 7 p.m., we spotted quite a few people out on the streets when we walked into the zone earlier this evening, including curious gawkers, emergency workers and neighbors who are becoming increasingly fearful that the notoriously polluted canal could overflow. 

The Observer entered Zone A at Carroll and Bond Streets shortly after 8 p.m. Though the businesses and homes occupying the old brick industrial buildings on that block were all shuttered, we spotted several people walking onto the Carroll Street Bridge to take a look at the state of the canal.

"It is so crazy high!" one little boy looking at the water said to his mother.

Indeed, it was high tide, and with the early force of the storm surge, the waters of the legendarily contaminated canal were just about a foot or two below the walls of its west bank and flowing unusually quickly.

Behezad Amiri, who said his home is about a half block east of the bridge past Nevins Street, the border between Zone A and Zone B, was watching the waters too. He said he had also come out to see the canal during the height of Hurricane Irene last year and pointed to where the water stopped during that storm.

"Hurricane Irene, see where it is right now? It's blocking the sewer," Mr. Amiri said gesturing toward the canal's high water mark. "It was maybe about a foot up from there at the worst point of Irene, so this is already a little--this looks pretty high comparably."

Though Mr. Amiri said he was worried to see the canal at such a high point before the storm and any heavy rains had arrived, but he told us he planned to "hang out at home" because his house was a block uphill from the evacuation zone. Walking with Mr. Amiri up Carroll Street, we were surprised to see a large crowd eating and watching the World Series in Monte's, a local Italian restaurant that opened more than a century ago and supposedly served as a hangout for the Rat Pack. On Third Avenue, one block from the border of the evacuation zone, there were also good-sized crowds at a members-only social club where men played pool inside and at the clam shack-slash-bar Littleneck.

When we came back to Littleneck about an hour later, the were only a few people seated at the bar.

"It kind of cleared out now," said the owner of the clam shack, Aaron Lefkove. "We're still open technically for another 45 minutes, but I guess since there's no more customers, we're going to clean up and go home."

Despite his plans for an early close and the threat of the storm, Mr. Lefkove said the restaurant had its standard number of diners.

"This is like a typical Sunday night, actually," he told us, before adding, "It's odd that everybody went home at 9 o'clock. Like clockwork, everybody got out of here."

As we spoke, a couple who said they lived across the street came in and asked whether Mr. Lefkove still had any of the lobster cakes they'd apparently heard raves about. He told them they were in luck: he had one order left. We asked him whether he planned to open the restaurant tomorrow and he replied that it was "to be determined." Mr. Lefkove went on to explain he was hesitant to close his doors despite the dire warnings from city officials because he sees City Hall's strong response to the storm to an attempt avoid the heavy criticism Mayor Michael Bloomberg faced after the blizzard that blasted the five boroughs in 2010.

"After the blizzard, where it was a complete shitstorm and the Bloomberg administration came under so much fire, any time there's any sort of inclement weather, the threat of it, they just batten down the hatches pre-emptively," said Mr. Lefkove. "I could be eating my words this time Tuesday, but, you know, I'm hoping for the best."

About a quarter of a mile away, back in Zone A on Second Street, which dead ends right at the edge of the canal, the situation did not look good. A police car was parked at the end of the block keeping people away, because the waters were overflowing and creeping about 15 feet up the block. Though this was the only area where we saw flooding, it was also the only area in the evacuation zone where we found residents still in their homes in spite of the order to vacate.

A man named Fred wearing an Obama button and glasses answered the door of a sandbagged building at the end of the block. He said he was there helping his friend, Eddie, secure the house for the storm.

"I'm not evacuating, period," Eddie said explaining that he had a large number of cats. "I can't go anywhere. Where am I going to go?"

We asked whether he was aware the city is permitting pets to stay with their owners in storm shelters. Eddie responded that he simply had too many animals to take care of.

"Eight total," said Eddie. "I'm a foster rescuer, neighborhood cats, so I also have kittens and I'm just going to bring them into a hallway upstairs."

The two men said they could stay with friends further uphill from the canal if things got too bad. They also knew some people nearby who would be willing to take "a few" of the cats.

"We're concerned, of course, we're not being frivolous, but it's difficult when you have cats to worry about," Fred said. "We're just going to kind of play it by ear."

Eddie told us they expected to be up all night getting the house ready for flooding.

"I don't care about the furniture, I just want to protect the animals and my paintings. That's what really matters."

After "20 years" living on the block, Eddie said he had seen the water flood this much before, "but never like this without the rain."

"This is scary," said Eddie. "It's going to come up here, I already know it. I feel it."

Like the rest of the area's residents, Fred and Eddie will have to see whether the storm's coming range and the predicted combined attack of the full surge and high tide tomorrow yield even further flooding. When we parted ways with the pair, we said we would come by to check on them as the storm progressed and looked forward to seeing them again.

"Maybe with a bathing suit!" Eddie quipped.

Shuffleboard promises to bring utter chaos to Gowanus. (misterbisson, flickr)

It may be a favored sport of retirees (it's right up there with bridge and watching Wheel of Fortune), but Gowanus residents are worried that plans to build a bar with regulation-size shuffleboard courts will bring rowdy, inebriated crowds to their neighborhood, The Brooklyn Paper reports.

The Florida-inspired bar, dubbed Royal Palms, would feature live music and more than 8,000-square feet devoted to the senior citizen pastime. But neighbors fear that the bar will bring the bad behavior and the drunken hordes that have become a staple of the shuffleboard scene from Boca Raton to Key West.

“This is a nice quiet neighborhood [but] you’re gonna bring a lot of drunk people around here,” neighbor Joe Padilla told The Brooklyn Paper. “When business starts blowing up, it’s gonna get real dirty.”

Owner Ashley Albert has assured neighbors that her business won't draw masses of belligerent, elderly booze-hounds, and yet, along with the court, she plans to add other features that are irresistible to the over-65 contingent (and Williamsburg hipsters): lounge music, bingo and episodes of "The Love Boat."

But the neighbors know what's up. First it's shuffleboard courts, then it's water aerobics, oldies cover bands and early bird specials at all the restaurants.

kvelsey@observer.com

Housing court rules! (rubenerd, flickr)

So many New Yorkers have lofty dreams when it comes to real estate, but who would have imagined  that a Brooklyn loft-dweller would net nine years of free rent?

We didn't even know that was possible without moving back into one's childhood bedroom! But, as The New York Times reports, one lucky woman has won her fight against eviction and the right to nine years of free rent in a move the grandest of New York rental coups—landing a rent-controlled apartment—look kind of lame.

And all she had to risk was her health and safety living in a firetrap!

Artist Margaret Maugenest has lived in her Gowanus loft at 280 Nevins Street since 1984, a few years after the 1982 loft law was passed that allowed building owners to rent units to tenants if they brought their buildings up to fire and safety codes.

Ms. Maugenest's landlord, however, never brought the building up to code, so Ms. Maugenest started withholding her rent of approximately $600 in 2003.

“In the absence of compliance, the law’s command is quite clear,” said the decision, written by Judge Robert S. Smith, according to The Times.

The decision should scare the bejesus out of the owners of other non-compliant lofts, which number about 300, that have not managed to receive residential certificates of occupancy 30 years after the law was passed.

The moral of this particular story seems to be that if you're renting out a space that's not legal, you may not be able to collect rent on it. (Tenants in sub-par living conditions take note).

And Ms. Maugenest, unlike her landlord, was always careful to follow the letter of the law, and stowed the rent money away all those years in an escrow account, building up a nice bundle of cash that's now hers free and clear.

May we suggest a down payment on an apartment that meets fire and safety codes?

kvelsey@observer.com

Eat it! (Whole Foods)

Love it or hate it, Whole Foods is coming to Brooklyn. Can the co-op survive?

Earlier today, the Board of Standards and Appeals gave its unanimous support to the 52,000-square foot grocery on the banks of the Gowanus Canal, between 3rd Avenue and 3rd Street in Brooklyn. The vote was 5-0 in favor, according to Brownstoner, which brings to an end an eight year saga, stymied for years by a toxic site and a Superfund fight.

Because the grocer wanted to build a bigger development than current zoning allows, it had to seek approvals from the board. Local artists and activists hoped the board would block the plan, but its members were unswayed by their over development fears. A counter proposal, for an artisanal food production facility—how Brooklyn!—was never considered, and the group behind the plan, the Gowanus Institute, condemned the board's decision.

Gowanus Institute maintains that WFM did not meet the five, legally-required findings for a variance to be granted. It is clear that if built, the retail development will indeed forever alter the essential manufacturing character of the Gowanus neighborhood. Additionally, WFM did not establish that an as-of-right manufacturing alternative could not be built. 

If BSA could so easily determine that manufacturing is not viable at the WFM site, then the standard for a variance must be so low that the developer of any site could carry out similar plans by pursuing the same process--one that not only completely undermines zoning law, but more importantly eliminates the opportunity for the public to participate in decisions about development in their communities.

According to The Times, the project got the thumbs up from the local Councilwoman, though, Sara Gonzalez. “This project will bring development and commerce to a large, otherwise unused and stagnant lot in the area,” she said in a statement. “Most importantly, Whole Foods will bring a much-needed shopping option to local residents and hundreds of well-paying jobs to my constituents.”

Artless? (Whole Foods)

The seven-year roller coaster ride that has been Whole Foods' Brooklyn saga may be taking another nose dive. The blissful ride started in 2005, long before Brian Williams had ever heard of Brooklyn. It slowed to a snail's pace in 2007 and then completely halted in 2008 in the midst of the grotesque Gowanus Canal's Superfunding. New York State was nice enough to clean up the property and set Whole Foods back on track in 2010.

The whole ordeal has left us twisted and nauseous from the bureaucratic and communal ups, downs, and loop-de-loops. (Or maybe the toxins are making us nauseous.) Regardless, Whole Foods might be one rubber stamp away from approval, but the Gowanus locals are not succumbing without one last fight.

The Gowanus crowd fears Whole Foods will poison the neighborhood's artistic, DIY heart, Crain's reports:

Some residents and small businesses would like to keep the vacant lot, nestled between Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, zoned for small- and medium-scale manufacturing—a dwindling asset they want to protect. A recent report by the Gowanus Institute claims the site could be developed to create three times the 300 retail jobs Whole Foods promises. Armed with this data, the think tank has urged locals to oppose the plan by attending public forums and writing letters to the city's Board of Standards and Appeals, which must rule on the variance.

Several hundred locals have signed an online petition claiming that Whole Foods would "substantially alter the essential manufacturing character of the Gowanus."

As if any other developer would want to build on a Superfund site. Whatever, Gowanus. You can keep your Park Slope Food Coop.

mewing@observer.com

After more than five years of owning the brownfield, discovering different biohazards and revising construction plans, the Austin, Texas-based company announced last week that construction will begin in 2011, as soon as the city approves its plans. A scaled-back 52,000-square-foot version of the store will open late in 2012 (the company originally broke ground in 2006). The canal, which has approximately 10 feet of black sediment the consistency of mayonnaise festering at the bottom, likely won't be clean for another 10 years.

It was only a matter of time before big-box brown rice capitalism landed in Brooklyn, which in the last four years has welcomed Fairway, Ikea and Trader Joe's. Whole Foods has opened six stores in New York since 2001, all in Manhattan. But proximity to Park Slope, the epicenter of purpose-driven, pseudo-suburban family life in Brooklyn, opens a whole new can of worms. Residents have so far staved off high-end retail, other than the odd boutique, despite being a branch office of Manhattan economically. One cannot even find a Gap in its increasingly lily-white environs.

This is Park Slope Food Coop territory, after all.

"I have concerns about the politics of the Whole Foods founder," said Mary Crowley on Saturday morning, walking through the Grand Army Plaza farmers' market with her husband. John Mackey, the company's co-founder and CEO, is a self-taught businessman who believes in small government, and he once compared working with unions to living with herpes--"It stops a lot of people from loving you." In August of last year, he wrote an editorial for The Wall Street Journal arguing that the government should not interfere in the health-care business. "He's very conservative," Ms. Crowley continued. "And we have good stores here already, so I don't know if we need another one."

Ms. Crowley's husband, John Denatale, walked over with their tall, long-haired dog. "I think people in the Slope get over things quickly," he said, their dog pushing his snout between his legs.

"I think they'll be upset. I disagree," said Ms. Crowley.

There was a strong wind blowing down Eastern Parkway. "People in Park Slope don't like change," explained Mark Germann, a young attorney standing over his son in a stroller while his wife, Beth Aala, a filmmaker, looked at yogurt drinks in the Ronnybrook Farm Dairy stall.

"Chains or change?" she asked, coming over to secure an extra blanket over their son.

"Change," he said.

"Maybe both," she added.

Whole Foods is more of an ideological challenge to the Park Slope Food Coop, the headquarters of arch-Park Slope living, than it is a threat to business. The cooperative, which is 15,000 members strong, was, foot by foot, more than three times as profitable as a Whole Foods in 2010, according to Fortune. Member attrition increased with the arrival of Fairway in Red Hook in 2006, but long checkout lines continue.

"I'm not a member of the co-op," Mr. Germann continued. "It's a little bit like a right-wing regime. They force you to do things, right? ... It's not a democracy; it's a totalitarian regime." He talked about friends getting "blacklisted" for missing shifts.

How will the Whole Foods stack up to the venerable Park Slope Food Coop? The Observer did some comparison shopping! >>

The arrival of Whole Foods is also a benchmark of the gentrification that newer Park Slope residents have wrought: It's now creeping across Fourth Avenue into Gowanus. Two women waiting in line for organic meat on the other side of the farmers' market, both with babies bundled against the cold strapped to their chests, said they would definitely not be going to the new Whole Foods. It was too expensive and too far out of the way. They don't own cars, and besides, they were members of the co-op. They declined to give their names. "Are you a member of the co-op?" one of the mothers asked, glinting at The Observer with a taut smile. "Just wondering."

"Oh, you're talking about Brooklyn! When you said Third Avenue and Third Street, I thought Manhattan," said writer Gary Shteyngart, who rented an apartment on Seventh Avenue and First Street, in the traditional heart of Park Slope retail, in the mid-1990s. "Third Avenue and Third Street, holy crap. Wow," he said. He had just returned from Santa Fe, where he was promoting his latest novel, Super Sad True Love Story, and was talking over the phone on Monday afternoon from his apartment in Manhattan. He said he moved back to the city to be closer to his shrink.

Mr. Shteyngart moved to Park Slope when he was working on his first book, and he expected it to be "edgy." There was a Connecticut Muffin on Seventh Avenue then. "Well, you know, there's an Ikea in Red Hook. Nothing is sacred anymore," he said, adding that in 25 years, no part of Brooklyn will remain untouched. "This elite group of people must be served one way or another," Mr. Shteyngart continued. "These kids need to be fed! Two-point-four kids per person there, so they need organic foods."

Mr. Shteyngart was proud to report that he never joined the co-op, "and I went to Oberlin, where working in a co-op was the cool thing to do."

Mr. Mackey of Whole Foods told Reason magazine this year that the most important variable in selecting a new site for stores is the number of college-educated people living within a 16-minute drive. Hello, Park Slope!

Novelist Amy Sohn, a co-op member and Brown alumna who grew up in Brooklyn Heights, compared Gowanus to downtown Providence before it was cleaned up. "It was dirty video stores," she said, "and now they have this whole festival of candles on the waterfront. I feel like Gowanus is heading in that direction. It's a little bit frightening. I love the gritty feel." She now lives in Park Slope, and her latest book, Prospect Park West, satirizes the neighborhood.

She said she would not shop at Whole Foods but hoped some of the riffraff at the co-op--the type of people who don't have their hearts in the movement, the type who wind up on the blacklist--might.

"They probably come from another part of the country where Whole Foods is very fetishized, and they have been waiting," Ms. Sohn said. "They want to replicate their sort of Mall of America experience in New York City, so they love that you can have a Whole Foods in Brooklyn."

On the other end of the spectrum was a "crazy fringe" of Park Slopers who may object to the presence of the store, she said. "They're just not going to like that it's this massive chain experience, even with progressive values. They're not going to buy into that."

"I guess I put myself in the 'sure, but I won't shop there' category,'" Ms. Sohn said when we asked if she would allow Whole Foods to build on the site if it was entirely up to her. "I mean, they're creating 350 jobs. There's gonna be the greenhouse. It's very ecologically conscious. There's gonna be stations for electric cars.

"They're the devil," she said. "They've made it too good to turn down."

There will also be bike parking and a waterfront esplanade, in the model of Ikea and Fairway in Red Hook. According to a letter sent by Mark Mobley, an executive who oversees construction for Whole Foods, the rooftop garden "will grow fresh, organic produce right on-site!" Michael Sinatra, a spokesman for the company, added that produce grown on the roof will be sold in the store. "The stores that are built in Connecticut use reclaimed wood from torn-down farms in Connecticut," Mr. Sinatra said, "and hopefully this one will feature brick from old torn-down Brooklyn buildings."

No bricks, however, will come from the landmarked Coignet Stone Company, constructed in 1873, on the corner of the Whole Foods lot. The structure will sit just behind the new store.

"I don't know. I just don't want them to tear it down. Do you? Maybe they should. What do you think?" asked artist Dustin Yellin on Sunday afternoon, after a flight back from Art Basel, talking about the Stone Company building. "They should donate it to artists to have a small museum there! I want to build a museum."

He was eating dark chocolate and sitting cross-legged in his office, off the studio, living space and gallery he opened in Red Hook. There were photographs tacked to the wall above his desk, including reproductions of Pieter Bruegel winter-scene paintings, studies for a 24-by-36-foot glass piece he is working on. Mr. Yellin and his close friend, Charlotte Kidd, bought the building on an isolated street in 2007 after his work became too heavy for the floors in his Manhattan studio. Now he finds himself down the street from Fairway, and neighbors with the new cruise ship dock and Christie's new warehouse in the New York Dock Company building. It's a short walk to Ikea.

Mr. Yellin described Whole Foods as a "weird art installation, a postmodern clusterfuck of like 55 kinds of the same kind of granola and 55 kinds of the same kind of chocolate." He doesn't like grocery shopping very much.

"If it's not going to be a museum, and it's not going to be a park--'cause those are two things that I think enhance communities--then I say to myself, 'Well, a Whole Foods isn't terrible because a strip mall would suck. And Whole Foods isn't terrible, because don't they have good stuff?' I could definitely shop there to cook dinner for my friends. It's not Wal-Mart."

Outside the co-op on Monday morning, the attitude was live-and-let-live. Doug Ashford, who teaches sculpture at Cooper Union and has belonged to the co-op since 1983, was waiting with his groceries for a ride home. He reached into his cart and tore off a piece of olive bread.

"The practices that are involved with the co-op have more to do with overall lifestyle choices that we all make," he said. "The only problem is that if that creates an economic shift in the neighborhood, where people get replaced. But we've been through so many waves of gentrification--I've been here since the '70s--that I'm not that worried about that, either."

"I doubt I'll shop there. It's too expensive. All of their products have way too much sugar," said Hilda Cohen, another co-op member, as she bungee-corded a cardboard box of groceries to the back of her bicycle. She comes over from Fort Greene to shop.

Ms. Cohen had heard all about Whole Foods' green roof and said she thought the company was doing a good job listening to the neighborhood's concerns. "They're wanting to do the right thing. And for how many times Atlantic Yards doesn't want to do the right thing ..." she said. "So, you know, it feels like they're trying."

Erin Jones, who commutes from Chinatown to the American Can Factory across the street from the Whole Foods site, was conflicted about the new store. She likes the view from her office the way it is. "I like the signage, the big open lot. That's something that I enjoy on my walk to work," she said over the phone on Monday afternoon.

Ms. Jones and her coworkers at Lite Brite Neon make custom neon signage in rented studio space. They keep bees on the roof, but they haven't been able to harvest any honey yet. The office normally orders in lunch together, or everyone brings from home, because there just isn't that much nearby in Gowanus. She wondered whether their bees would like the Whole Foods roof garden better than what's there now. "There's sort of an outlaw nature to it," she said. "It's a great open expanse. I feel like it's sort of a Texas of Brooklyn."

How will the Whole Foods stack up to the venerable Park Slope Food Co-op? The Observer did some comparison shopping! >>

zturner@observer.com / @zekeft

Earlier this year, Gothamist began snooping around a wall on Third Avenue that many people believed to be part of Washington Park, the borough's first ballpark and the Dodgers' original home. The wall is now part of a Con Edison facility,
and the utility had plans to demo the building. Uproar ensued, the Landmarks Preservation Commission got involved, and while no specific protections have been conveyed, Con Ed has promised to preserve the historic parts of the structure.

Yesterday, a Gothamist reader was passing by and noticed demo work going on and feared the worst, as did Gothamist. Fortunately, Con Ed promises they are not taking down any part of the Washington Park wall. But we fear what would have happened were it not for those eyes on the street, to say nothing of the eyes on the web.

The Times wrote about the closure of Washington Park--it was replaced by the far more famous Ebbetts Field, which was replaced by housing projects in the 1960s when the Dodgers went West--in 1912: "The Giants concluded a season's pastiming by saying good-bye and good luck to the Dodgers in a 1 to 0 game at Washington Park yesterday. Then they closed up the park forevermore. Pass the kerchief, pitase, and catch the tears." They sure don't write 'em like they used to.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo