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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2020 10 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 43, No. 1 • January 3–9, 2020
2020
By Jessica Parks, Ben
Verde, Aidan Graham, and
Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
Here are the hot topics that will
be gracing the pages of your Brooklyn
Paper in the coming year.
Industry City rezoning
Industry City’s controversial rezoning
— which would pave the
way for a 12-year, $1 billion expansion
of the Sunset Park manufacturing
complex — will be decided
next year by Councilman Carlos
Menchaca, whose vote as the local
legislator will make or break
the measure. Menchaca tried to circumvent
the city’s land use review
process by demanding that Industry
City executives and Mayor de
Blasio acquiesce to certain dictates
— such as reducing the scope of the
rezoning, and providing a number
of public amenities to the community,
such as a new high school —
before the rezoning application was
submitted, or else vowing to vote
against the proposal. However, that
didn’t stop Industry City CEO Andrew
Kimball from submitting a
rezoning application in December
that ignored many of the councilman’s
demands, and the next few
months will show whether Menchaca
meant it when he threatened to vote
against the expansion scheme, or if
he was bluffing.
960 Franklin Ave. rezoning
A rezoning application that would
pave the way for construction of
a massive mixed-use complex in
Crown Heights has put the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden under threat,
with experts claiming the 39-story
development would cast shadows
over the horticultural museum for
up to six hours per day. The hours
of additional gloom would pose a
serious threat to the garden’s leafy
attractions, with one professional
green thumb claiming as many as
half the plants currently on exhibit
there could wither and die if the complex
gets built. As a result, Majority
Leader Laurie Cumbo, whose
district encompasses 960 Franklin
Ave., will have to decide next year
whether the 789 affordable units
that would be included among the
development’s planned 1,578 units
warrant the possible destruction of
one of Brooklyn’s most cherished
wonders.
Borough Presidents race
Eric Adams is term-limited as
Brooklyn’s Borough President —
which means a wide open field of
up-and-comers vying to fill the vacancy
at Borough Hall. The elections
will occur in November of
2021, but several candidates have
already kicked off their candidacies
— including City Council members
Antonio Reynoso, Robert Cornegy,
and Rafael Espinal. Other rumored
candidates include Council Majority
Leader Laurie Cumbo (D—
Crown Heights) and Mayor Bill
de Blasio’s wife Chirlane McCray.
The campaign for the largely-ceremonial
position figures to be especially
heated this election, as 11
of Kings County’s 15 City Council
members are term-limited from
their current posts — and seeking
other public offices.
House of D closing
The city has already begun the
process of transferring inmates out
of the Brooklyn House of Detention,
with plans to fully close the jail complex
before the end of January. The
building’s roughly 400 occupants
will be moved to other borough facilities
—unless they have specific
needs that can only be met at Rikers
— and the 535 Department of
Corrections staff will be reassigned.
The move will allow the city to expand
and renovate the Downtown
Brooklyn holding facility, as it pursues
a $8.7 billion strategy to close
Rikers Island and move to a borough
based jail system.
Prospect Park Rose
Garden
After years of disuse, one of Pros-
Photo by Zoe Freilich
Atlantic Avenue’s House of
Detention is facing major
changes as the city prepares
to close Riker’s Island.
pect’s Parks hidden treasures, the
Rose Garden, has a dramatic facelift
in the works. Located in the northeast
corner of the park near Flatbush
Avenue, the garden was once
a gem of Brooklyn’s Backyard, a
“botanic garden before there was a
botanic garden” as one greenspace
guru described it, but as the lawn
fell into a period of decline it became
a shell of its former self. Today,
the once glorious garden is a
literal hole in the ground, filled in
with cement and surrounded by noncurated
growth — but not for long.
Park honchos revealed their plans
to restore the garden in 2017, and
2020 should be the year we finally
learn the details of the long-timecoming
scheme.
Gowanus rezoning
With a review of the high-profile
Gowanus rezoning just around
the corner, residents of the affected
neighborhood are pushing for specifics
in what has so far been an
opaque community input process.
The first public meeting held on the
rezoning in early February devolved
into a shouting match over city officials
lack of a clear presentation, and
things haven’t gotten much clearer
since then. Gowanasaurs have since
demanded the rezoning take their
concerns into account, which include
cleaning the neighborhoods
fetid canal and providing affordable
housing in the increasingly gentrified
neighborhood.
2020 Census
The nation’s decennial headcount
is just around the corner, when Uncle
Sam will ask every man, woman,
and child — including prisoners,
the homeless, and illegal immigrants
— to offer up personal information
used to tally the population
and divy up more than $700
billion in federal resources. Some
fear that the hugely important count
has been jeopardized by the Trump
Administration, which added a citizenship
question on the survey expected
to frighten immigrants away
from participating. The Supreme
Court struck down Trump’s citizenship
question in June, but even
that may not be enough to lure immigrants
into participating. And,
while Brooklyn stands to benefit
from high participation rates in the
form of new congressional seats and
more federal funding, the borough is
also in the running to overtake Chicago
as the third largest city in the
country! Lets go Brooklyn!
Marijuana legalization
The push to create a legal weed
market in New York State built up a
lot of momentum in 2019 thanks to
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who in January
outlined a plan to open pot
stores across the state by 2024, which
would generate an estimated $300
million in annual tax revenue. However,
the effort to include Cuomo’s
legalization in the 2020 budget fizzled
out over the spring, with legislators
failing to reach consensus
over how the drug would be taxed
and where that money would be
spent. Safety concerns raised by
local law-enforcement didn’t help,
See 2020 on page 4
SEASON OF HATE tention at the scene, cops said.
Anti-Semitic attacks plague boro during Hanukkah
By Ben Verde, Kevin duggan,
and Mark Hallum
Brooklyn Paper
The city is in a state of high alert
follow a rash of violent attacks against
Jews during Hanukkah in Brooklyn
and upstate.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday
he will increase the Police Department’s
presence in Orthodox Jewish
enclaves around the five boroughs and
create local watch groups to monitor
areas and protect residents from more
hate-fueled attacks.
“Fearing the next act of terror will not
become the new normal for our Jewish
neighbors. In New York City, diversity
is our strength and we respect the traditions
of all who call New York City
home. Intolerance will never take hold
here,” de Blasio said in a statement.
The Department will divert more resources
and patrols to precincts in Borough
Park, Midwood, Crown Heights,
Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Williamsburg,
in addition to positioning cops at houses
of worship during local events and installing
new light towers and security
cameras in these areas.
Hizzoner’s local watch groups —
dubbed Neighborhood Safety Coalitions
and overseen by his Office for the Prevention
of Hate Crimes — will monitor
Williamsburg, Crown Heights, and Borough
Park, and work with local community
leaders, schools, and religious
institutions to combat hate.
These multi-ethnic coalitions are modeled
after the mayor’s efforts to reduce
gun violence in East Flatbush, Williamsburg
and Bushwick.
De Blasio’s announcement follows a
string of anti-Semitic attacks in Brook-
On Dec. 26 an assailant yelled “you
f—— Jew, your time is coming” at a
34-year-old woman, who was walking
with her three-year-old son on Avenue
U near W. Fifth Street — before hitting
the mother with her bag, police sources
told the New York Post.
Authorities arrested a 42-year-old man
for the latest attack, charging him with
assault as a hate crime, weapons possession,
harassment, and acting in a manner
injurious to a child, cops said.
On Saturday night, a man stormed a
rabbi’s home in Monsey, NY, and stabbed
five Hasidic Jews with a machete as they
celebrated Hanukkah.
The attacks come at the tail end of a
year that saw a sharp rise in hate crimes
— as New Yorkers reported 311 incidents
through September of 2019, compared
to 250 during the same period of
2018, with 52-percent of those targeting
Jewish people, according to the Police
Department statistics.
Governor Andrew Cuomo announced
Sunday he would direct state police to
increase patrols in Jewish neighborhoods
across the state, labelling the upstate
rampage an act of terror.
“Hostility based on religion, race,
creed, immigration status is an American
cancer that is spreading throughout
the body politic,” Cuomo said in a
statement.
But a cadre of Brooklyn politicians
representing Orthodox Jewish areas
of the borough said Cuomo’s efforts
were not enough and demanded more
state and federal resources, including
the New York National Guard to patrol
Jewish neighborhoods and a special
prosecutor specifically to investigate
and prosecute anti-Semitic crimes
currently under the jurisdiction of local
district attorneys.
“Simply stated, it is no longer safe to
be identifiably Orthodox in the State of
New York. We cannot shop, walk down
a street, send our children to school, or
even worship in peace,” said the letter
penned by state Sen. Simcha Felder,
Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein,
and Councilmen Chaim Deutsch and
Kalman Yeger.
Photo by Todd Maisel
Commissioner Dermot Shea discusses the arrest of the man accused
of a machete rampage in Monsey, NY that targeted members of an
ultra-Orthodox Jewish congregation.
lyn in recent weeks, particularly during
the Jewish Festival of Lights, on top of
a bloody stabbing upstate on Saturday
and a shooting of a kosher grocery store
in New Jersey on Dec. 11.
The Hanukkah hate spree began in
Williamsburg on Dec. 23, when a pair
of teenage bruisers attacked two children
from behind, punching one of them
in the stomach in the lobby of a public
housing complex on Wilson Street near
Bedford Avenue at around 8:40 pm, according
to police.
The next day in Crown Heights, a
group of harassers hurled a bottle and
a string of curse words at a 25-year-old
Jewish man on Kingston Avenue near
President Street at around 1:40 am, according
to a police, who added that the
victim was unharmed.
Less than four hours later, some
punks punched a 56-year-old Jewish
man from behind on Union Street between
Utica and Rochester avenues in
Crown Heights. The victim was not seriously
harmed, and refused medical at-
Stories to watch in
Bill prompted by a heartbreaking
Park Slope crash becomes law
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
A new state law prompted by a deadly
2018 crash in Park Slope has become
law after being signed by Gov. Cuomo,
legislators announced Thursday.
The rule will allow the state to suspend
the licenses of drivers who have
lost consciousness behind the wheel until
they receive medical clearance from
a doctor that they are fit to drive.
“This legislation will ensure drivers
who are medically unfit to drive will
not be on our roads,” said Assemblyman
Robert Carroll (D—Park Slope)
who introduced the bill.
The law comes after 44-year-old
Staten Island driver Dorothy Burns
plunged through a red light at Ninth
Street and Fifth Avenue, slaying two
children and injuring three others, including
Tony-award winning actress
Ruthie Ann Miles, who was pregnant
at the time, and later miscarried as a result
of her injuries.
Prosecutors alleged that Bruns suffered
a seizure at the time of the crash,
and that her doctor had warned her not to
drive as a result of several medical conditions,
including multiple sclerosis.
Had Carroll’s law been in place back
in 2018, Burns may have had her license
suspended before the fatal Park Slope
crash, due to a previous medical episode
she suffered behind the wheel, which
caused her to drive into a parked car six
weeks before the Ninth street crash.
“With traffic deaths on the rise again,
we have to do everything we can to stop
the heartbreak and horror of traffic violence,”
said Senator Andrew Gounardes
(D—Bay Ridge), who sponsored the bill
in the senate.
Specifically, the new rule will require
the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles
commissioner to revoke a person’s
license if they receive a report from the
police indicating that the driver suffered
a medical episode behind the wheel. Receiving
a report will only cause an inquiry
to be opened, they will be allowed
to drive until the DMV finds conclusive
evidence and closes their inquiry.
Drivers will have the chance to request
a hearing but will be barred from driving
until the ruling is overturned.
The bill is a small victory for safe
Photo by Natallie Rocha
streets advocates that came on the same
day as a crushing blowback when Gov.
Cuomo vetoed the hotly anticipated ebikes
bill that would have legalized
electric bikes and scooters in parts of
New York City. The governor derided
the bill as “fatally flawed” for leaving
out safety measures he had included in
the 2019 budget.
Driving change
A memorial to two Park Slope children on the first anniversary of their
deaths at the hands of an impaired motorist.
New Slope studio just a bit of a stretch
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
As I lay strapped to a soft leather
bench, fully clothed, but feeling somehow
very vulnerable, I ask myself, what is this
place? And what am I doing here?
The slim reporter’s notebook lying
nearby suggests that I am here on assignment,
while the illustrations of flayed human
musculature hanging off the wall imply
that this place is Park Slope’s strange
new health salon, Stretched Out. I’m not
sure exactly what Stretched Out — a
so-called “stretching studio” — is, but
I gather it’s something like a massage parlor
crossed with a medieval dungeon.
“This is going to be unpleasant,”
Brian Betzu, my handler for this session,
warns me.
Before I can respond, Betzu digs his
elbow deep into the meaty parts of my
hip, and buries it there for what feels
like one of the longer minutes of my life.
Amid the torment, I recall four years of
college, unpaid internships, and working
nights as a cashier at Trader Joe’s to
subsidize days spent freelancing. I think
to myself, for this?!
But before the agony can fully manifest
as a bonafide quarter-life crisis, Betzu
removes his elbow and the pain in my leg
is replaced by a profound wave of relief.
I can’t tell if it’s simply the absence of
intense pain, or if my track pants-wearing
handler knocked something loose,
but I can honestly say that, in that moment,
my leg felt pretty good. Then he
started on my other limbs, and the agony
continued.
Stretched Out is John Brancato’s second
stretching studio — it follows his Bay
Ridge location on 88th Street — where
therapists practice Isolated Stretching, a
form of physical therapy designed to improve
flexibility and motion, enhance circulation
and blood flow, and prevent pain
by increasing the elasticity of the muscle
joints, according to Brancato.
Isolated stretching is frequently employed
by athletes to increase their range
of motion and protect against injury, but
doubles as an effective counter to the
chronic pain that results from the type
of sedentary lifestyle led by yours truly,
according to Brancato.
Whether any amount of stretching can
undo long hours spent hunched over a keyboard
is beyond the scope of this humble
article, but I can report that my torture at
the hands of Betzu left me feeling more
flexible heading out than I felt coming
in. That said, I can think of a few more
pleasant ways to spend a half-hour.
Get your stretch on at Stretched
Out 917 Eighth Ave., www.stretchedoutbrooklyn.
com $125 for one hour.
Brian Betzu helps our reporter rattle the dust off his aching bones.
Photo by Caroline Ourso
/www.stretche-doutbrooklyn.com
/www.stretche-doutbrooklyn.com
/www.stretche-doutbrooklyn.com
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