The Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation approved plans to build apartment towers in the park with a mix of affordable and market-rate housing, after a top state official affirmed that state approval was not necessary to proceed with the project, according to Crain’s. The Empire State Development Corp. recently declared that it would refuse to approve the project—a move that many saw as Gov. Andrew Cuomo playing politics—but the ESD’s blessing turned out not to be necessary.
Developers don’t always get their way in New York: The New York Times highlights two Upper West Side projects that got the rare rejection from the Board of Standards and Appeals: a plan to covert the First Church of Christ, Scientist, into a 34-unit luxury apartment building and a proposal by Congregation Shearith Israel to build a community house and condo behind its synagogue, also a landmark. “For a few minutes, I felt like I was in the ’60s,” a lawyer representing opponents of the project told The Times of their victory. “It was cathartic.”
What if we shut down 14th Street to car traffic and made it a bus-only zone during the L train shutdown? State Senator Brad Hoylman is pushing the idea, first proposed by the Regional Plan Association, to head off the gridlock that is almost certain to follow in the shutdown’s wake, Gothamist reports.
A super at Pine Management’s 510 Amsterdam Avenue claims that he was fired after he refused to snoop in rent-regulated tenants’ apartments in order to find evidence that could be used to evict them, DNAinfo reports. “He said the requests for supers to snoop began in 2014, when brothers Daniel and Jason Rohlman took over Pine Management from their father, Thomas Rohlman.”
Supportive housing for the formerly homeless is often a tough sell to the community, but developers find that adding affordable housing and ground-floor retail adds greatly to its appeal, Crain’s reports. It’s also much easier for them to create mixed-use developments after the zoning changes approved by the city council in March.
On the other side of the economic spectrum, a mystery buyer (big surprise there) has closed on a $59.1 million floor-through at 432 Park, The Real Deal reports. It’s the priciest deal to close, but as they note “Saudi billionaire Fawaz Al Hokair is reportedly in contract to buy a penthouse for $95 million.”
Yawn. A new food hall is coming to Fort Greene, Gothamist reports, so residents of what may be Brooklyn’s most charming neighborhood can eat tarted-up fast food isolated from the delightful streets on which they live. All hail the mall.
