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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2020 12 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 43, No. 7 • February 14–20, 2020
WHEELED AWAY
MTA questions need for so many buses Downtown
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Transit gurus at the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority are considering
removing buses from Downton
Brooklyn routes as part of a revamp of
the borough’s bus system, according to
a new report.
The neighborhood suffers heavy congestion
and the more than a dozen bus
lines running through America’s Downtown
may be doing more transit harm
than good, according to a borough-wide
bus report. The Authority will examine
over the coming year whether to cut
some of the lines from the neighborhood
in favor of other parts of Kings
County.
“This network redesign will examine
the pros and cons of providing so
much bus service to Downtown Brooklyn,”
the reads the Brooklyn Bus Network
Redesign’s Existing Conditions
Report. “Alternatives will be explored
that will balance providing access to the
borough’s central business district with
the need to increase reliability throughout
the borough.”
Downtown Brooklyn is the largest
business district outside of Manhattan
and has 14 bus lines snaking through
its busy streets. The area is served by
almost all subway lines — except for
the JMZ and L lines, and the Franklin
Avenue shuttle — and the Long Island
Rail Road.
And while many straphangers still
need to ride there to work, school, or
the courts, jobs have spread out to other
parts of the borough during the last de-
The giant mural stand behind Domino Park in Willamsburg.
Bigger in Brooklyn
Giant mural of New Yorkers comes to W’burg park
By Amalia Arms
for Brooklyn Paper
Talk about the big city!
An enormous mural depicting New
York City residents is now on display
in Domino Park in Williamsburg. The
artwork, titled “The Chronicles of New
York City,” is part of a series of works
by famed French artist JR, whose “JR:
Chronicles” exhibition is currently on
display at the Brooklyn Museum.
The massive mural, 21 feet tall and
32 feet wide, is plastered to the side of a
tower of shipping containers. It features
a photo of the Williamsburg bridge and
images of more than 1,000 New Yorkers
from all five boroughs, whom JR
photographed and digitally edited into
a single crowded street scene.
JR’s exhibition debuted at the Brooklyn
Museum on Oct. 3, 2019, and since
then, cropped versions of “The Chronicles
of New York City” have been installed
on the outside wall of the Kings
Theatre in Flatbush and at the Brooklyn
Academy of Global Finance in Bedford
Stuyvesant, but the Domino Park
mural is the first to feature the image
in its entirety.
The Museum has plans for a fourth
mural installation Downtown, said a
spokeswoman, but no date or location
has been announced yet.
“The Chronicles of New York City”
at Domino Park (River Street at S.
Third Street in Williamsburg, www.
dominopark.com). On display until
May 3, daily, 6 am–1 am. Free.
A new MTA report questioned whether transit-rich Downtown Brooklyn
See BUS on page 4
District leader candidates look to challenge status quo
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Occupying an unpaid, obscure,
and poorly understood position
within the Brooklyn Democratic
Party, the borough’s 42 Democratic
district leaders represent the lowest
rung of the Kings County political
spectrum, exercising limited
powers, which are often employed
at the direction of more prominent
party officials.
While individually weak, influential
party bosses have proven
masters at using the borough’s
district leaders as a tool to exert
considerable control over Kings
County politics, and the practice
of promoting candidates as
a form of patronage, coupled with
the expense of campaigning for the
volunteer position, have allowed
holders of Brooklyn’s most humble
elected office to go years, if not
Fence plummets into Carroll
Gardens construction site
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
They’re fenced in!
City building inspectors shut
down construction of a Carroll
Gardens fitness center in the wake
of a construction fence collapse,
citing “unsafe conditions.”
The collapse — which was first
spotted on Feb. 6 by local blogger
Katia Kelly — sent plywood
debris plummeting into a large
pit at Smith and Douglass streets,
where Brooklyn Heights-based developer
Louis Greco of Second
Development Services has been
planning to build a Crunch gym
since late 2016, Patch reported at
the time.
Officials slapped contractors
with a violation for failing to safeguard
workers during an inspection
on Jan. 17, which came in response
to complaints that a “pretty
large structure” had fallen into the
construction site.
The builders can resume construction
once they prove to the
Department of Buildings that it is
Photo by Sherri Daniels
safe to do so, according to agency
spokesman Andrew Rudansky.
The fence’s collapse represents
the latest in a long list of blunders
to delay the Smith Street development,
which has racked up nearly
$9,000 in construction code violations,
including 10 infractions that
remain open, according to Buildings
Department records.
The fines started rolling in
shortly after workers began excavating
the site, leading inspectors
to issue violations for failing
to notify the city before starting
construction, and for damaging a
neighboring property at 57 Douglass
St., forcing residents to vacate.
The builder’s reputation for
mishaps has grown so notorious,
Kelly expressed concern that continued
work could end up damaging
the G and F subway lines
located below.
“At this point, perhaps we
should all be concerned about
the site’s proximity to the F/G
subway line, which runs parallel
Photo by Caroline Ourso
cade, with employment growing more
than 60 percent in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
Flatbush, Borough Park, and Bensonhurst
from 2010-2017, according to the
report.
The agency further identified the junction
of Flatbush and Nostrand avenues
near Brooklyn College as well as the
Kings Highway B and Q train stop in
Midwood, where buses shuffle straphangers
to parts of the borough’s eastern,
and southern fringes with fewer or
no subway lines as areas of focus.
The report examines the borough’s
entire bus network as part the system’s
first large-scale redesign in decades.
Many of the lines remain largely unchanged
since they took over from old
trolley lines in the 1920s, according to
the agency.
Some 650,000 straphangers use the
bus on an average weekday, navigating
the borough’s 72 routes, which includes
59 local, seven limited, three select bus
service, and nine express buses.
Only nine percent of Brooklynites
use the bus as their primary means of
transportation, compared to 53 percent
of rail riders, and 72 percent of bus riders
transfer either to another bus or the
subway during their commute.
needs so many bus lines.
File photo by Kevin Duggan
decades unchallenged, according
to one political strategist.
“Most district leaders are involved
in some sort of patronage
position in one way or another, either
Photo by Andrew Sloat
through an assembly member
or a judge,” said Jessica Thurston,
the vice president of political affairs
for New Kings Democrats,
a progressive political organization.
“It’s often too intimidating
and expensive to run against an
incumbent. It can cost anywhere
from $15,000-$100,000 to run and
lose a campaign in north Brooklyn.”
This year, however, there’s a
shakeup in the works. Five young,
upstart challengers are mounting
campaigns for district leader seats
Courtesy of Shaquana Boykin
across the borough, promising to
energize Kings County Democrats,
and use the obscure partisan position
as a tool to rally locals and
drive change.
Their candidacies follow a recent
vote by Brooklyn’s 42 district
leaders — who together comprise
the party’s executive committee
— to enact a slew of controversial
new rules at the behest of former
party boss Frank Seddio, including
eliminating one of the party’s
two annual meetings, and restricting
rank-and-file party members
from introducing resolutions that
address “any aspect of the internal
governance” of the party.
According to one maverick
district leader, Seddio was able
to control his former executive
committee thanks to a system
that promotes members who follow
orders, effectively centralizing
power in the hands of the party’s
leadership.
“They came up in a system
where someone was in charge and
Kristina Naplatarski is taking
on Linda Minucci in the 50th
Assembly District.
Jesse Pierce is running for
the District Leader post in
the 52nd District.
Julio Peña has set his sight
on the male seat for the 51st
Assembly District.
Samy Nemir-Olivares is taking
on Tommy Torres in the
53rd Assembly District.
Photo by Ramon Pebenito
Shaquana Boykin wants to
unseat Olanike Alabi in the
57th Assembly District.
The construction site has been a headache for nearby residents
to the site,” Kelly wrote on her
blog. “If the construction team
is so inept, who is to say that the
subway tunnel will not be compromised?”
Second Development Services
did not return a request for comment.
A construction fence has surrounded
the lot for about 12 years
since a row of single-story buildings,
including popular Argentine
restaurant Sur, were demolished,
according to Kelly.
Greco bought the property for
$6.3 million in 2015 and told Commercial
Observer that he planned
to build a 15,000 square foot threefloor
retail building on the site.
And despite the ruckus that
workers have raised since construction
started, locals remain
amazed by the project’s glacial
pace, and can’t believe that contractors
have done little more than
dig a hole.
“It looks like a bomb hit that
place,” said a former neighbor, who
gave his name as Mex. “They’re
driving in here late at night, banging
away and s–t hasn’t been done.
There’s only a ditch in there!”
for years.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Falling short
Photo by Rob Thomas
See DISTRICT on page 10
MTA catches some ZZs
Finally installs corrected ‘Verrazzano’ signs
By Rose Adams
Brooklyn Paper
Transit authorities hung new
signs on Wednesday that corrected
the spelling of the Verrazzano
Narrows Bridge for the
first time in 54 years, delighting
elected officials who fought for
the spelling correction.
“This is a victory for Italian-
Americans and also the taxpayers
because that extra Z won’t
cost us a dime,” said local Councilman
Justin Brannan (D-Bensonhurst).
Built in 1964, the Verrazano-
Narrows was named for Giovanni
da Verrazzano, the first European
explorer who entered New York
harbor in 1524, but the name was
only spelled with one “z” because
of an error in the bridge’s construction
contract.
Italian-American residents began
pushing to correct the spelling
in 2016, when Dyker Heights
activist Robert Nash circulated
a petition calling on the name
change that racked up more than
650 signatures.
The movement soon gained the
MTA workers began installing new signs for the Verrazzano
Narrows Bridge that match the bridge’s namesake.
Photo by MTA Bridges and Tunnels
support of local pols, who spearheaded
a statewide push for the
name change. In 2016, former
State Senator Marty Golden (RBay
Ridge) sponsored a bill to
add the “z” to the official name,
which passed unanimously in
June of 2018. Governor Andrew
Cuomo approved the bill in October
of that year, claiming that
the change was an important win
for Italian-Americans.
“We are correcting this decades
old misspelling out of
respect to the legacy of the explorer
and to New York’s heritage,”
Cuomo said in a statement.
The MTA long held off on
changing the bridge’s name, arguing
that it could cost millions to replace
misspelled signs, maps, and
brochures. However, the 2018 legislation
mandating that the MTA
would only install new signs when
the old ones needed replacement,
reducing the project’s cost.
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