6 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 March 13–19, 2020
Against a brick wall
City wants to replace historic facade with new blocks
Photo by Meg Capone
Stay smart about Coronavirus
doorknobs, lightswitches and
even your cell phone. If surfaces
are dirty, clean them
with soap and water.
Be courteous and
cautious
Stay home if you’re feeling
unwell and, when you cough
or sneeze, cover your mouth
with a tissue or your bent elbow.
It’s not an ideal solution,
but it’s the best we’ve got.
Avoid large crowds if you can,
and give others their space. If
you’re sick, wear a facemask.
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York Times.
New York City public
school administrators currently
have no plans for wideranging
closures, according
to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who
conceded that any individual
school with confirmed
diagnosis would temporarily
close.
“We would only consider
closing any particular school
for very specific reasons and
for as brief a period of time as
possible,” Hizzoner said at a
Brooklyn press conference.
Part of the concern, de
Blasio said, is weighing the
need for proactive safety measures
with the needs of parents
that rely on schools to care
for their children during the
workday.
“There’s a lot of parents
that don’t have a place for
their child if the schools are
closed. There’s just a lot of
human reality,” he said. “So
there’s a balance that has to
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
As part of a plan to save
time and money during construction
of a water-filtration
facility on the historic Gowanus
Station site, city officials
recommended using
faux-aged bricks to recreate
the 106-year-old building’s facade
— rather than painstakingly
restoring the wall’s original
blocks piece-by-piece.
Both federal and state authorities
wanted to save part of
the building’s exterior walls,
and use the original bricks in
a new headhouse on the site,
but a city-commissioned report
claimed that new bricks
with an “aged appearance”
would do the trick — and save
more than a million dollars
and several months during
construction.
A local group of preservationists,
however, blasted that
plan as “lazy,” and accused
the city of cutting corners to
save costs in a March 4 letter
to the federal Environmental
Protection Agency, which is
overseeing the new facility’s
construction.
“It’s the laziest engineering
and the laziest excuse that
I’ve ever heard,” said Katia
Kelly. “They must think the
community’s stupid.”
Kelly and her fellow watchdogs
of the Gowanus Canal
Community Advisory
Group archaeology committee
penned the letter to
the EPA’s Gowanus Superfund
project manager Christos
Tsiamis, claiming that retaining
the original walls of the
locally-iconic building would
“preserve key aspects of this
historic edifice and maintain
a rooted sense of place in our
rapidly changing neighborhood.”
The new water-filtration
site, which comes as part of
the EPA’s Superfund cleanup
The city wants to rebuild the corner of the Gowanus
Station building using faux-aged bricks.
project, will house the larger
of two massive tanks designed
to prevent sewage from flooding
into noxious canal.
But maintaining the architecture’s
original bricks during
that construction would
cost taxpayers $1.4 million
to store the blocks, and result
in months long delays,
according to the city-commissioned
study.
And even if they did attempt
to salvage the building’s
original facade, only about
half of the bricks are in good
enough shape to survive the
potential construction, which
would last almost eight years,
the study claims. The rest either
have so much water damage
they might not survive, or
are discolored that they would
fail to match the other parts
of the rebuilt walls.
If the blocks are to be stored
in a privately-owned warehouse,
the city would need
about 1,500-square-feet of
space for 16,900 salvageable
bricks, which would cost the
public $600,000 during construction
of the water-filtration
facility.
And futile attempts to store
all of the building’s 32,000
blocks, which the federal
and state government originally
demanded, would
cost even more — requiring
3,000-square-feet of space at
a cost of $1.4 million, the report
claims.
So, rather than try to maintain
the original bricks, the
city suggested exclusively using
the mock-aged variety in
their report.
“With little alternative to
supplementing original brick
materials with ‘aged’ brick
material, recreating the facades
wholly with ‘aged’ brick
material would provide a more
successful aesthetic recreation
of the facades without a conspicuous
patchwork of materials,
with no negative impact
to the project schedule,
and no added cost for labor
and material storage,” the report
reads.
However, those justifications
were not enough for
Kelly and her fellow preservationists,
who claimed that
city bureaucrats were hypocritical,
given their storied
track record of adding time
and costs to the project repeatedly
during the Superfund’s
turbulent 10-year history.
“It just sounds hollow,” she
said. “They’re trying at every
step to slow things down
themselves.”
The gadfly noted that the
city lobbied to move the filtration
facility from public
land at the Double D Pool and
Thomas Greene Playground to
its current site, which the government
had to seize through
costly and time-consuming
eminent domain.
The move likely added
around four years onto the
project’s schedule, according
to Kelly and ballooned
property acquisition costs to
$190 million, the Brooklyn
Eagle reported.
The city also stalled progress
on the tanks by pushing
for a tunnel to be built beneath
the canal, a proposal
EPA engineers spent a year
studying before tossing it in
September.
For this reason, the Gowanus
Canal Community Advisory
Group has insisted on an
independent firm to study the
building, according to the archaeology
committee’s chairwoman,
Linda Mariano.
“We called for an independent
engineer to look at the
building,” Mariano said.
A spokesman for federal
EPA did not return a request
for comment on DEP’s recommendations
by press time.
By Meaghan
McGoldrick
Brooklyn Paper
As the number of confirmed
Coronavirus cases
across the country continue
to climb, it’s important to stay
vigilant (and sane) amid the
COVID-19 chaos. While most
people who become infected
experience mild illness and
recover, Coronavirus can be
more severe for some elder
or autoimmune-compromised
New Yorkers.
Mayor Bill de Blasio recommends
working from home
and avoiding crowded subways.
The Trump administration
is saying not to open
windows or share food. Some
of those things are easier to do
than others. Here’s some of the
simplest ways you can protect
yourself and others from the
spread of COVID-19.
Wash your hands
This is a no-brainer. The
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention recommends
you scrub your hands with
soap and water for at least
20 seconds — or, the length
of the choruses to songs like
“Love on Top” by Beyonce or
“Karma Chameleon” by Culture
Club.
If you’re an employer, you
can even have your favorite
20-second chorus paired with
the National Health Service’s
hand-washing instructions and
printed on a poster.
If all else fails, there’s always
“Happy Birthday.” And,
if soap and water isn’t available,
you can use an alcoholbased
hand sanitizer. But don’t
depend on it. And don’t sell it
on eBay, either.
Don’t touch your face
Health officials have been
saying this since the novel
Coronavirus first showed
signs of spreading. It’s another
“common sense” approach
that — for most people
— has simply made them
aware of how many times a
day they touch their face. It’s
hard, we know. But cutting
down on touching your eyes,
nose and mouth, especially,
will help stop the spread of
COVID-19. Even self-proclaimed
germaphobe Donald
Trump has vowed to try
and stop.
Clean and disinfect
It’s important to clean and
disinfect frequently touched
surfaces daily. This includes
(but is not limited to) tables,
be struck.”
In the meantime, schools
will be adding additional
staff and resources to ensure
early detection of symptoms
and proper hygiene.
“Nurses are being added
this week to every public
school building,” de Blasio
said. “Every bathroom has
to have soap and towels in
abundance. Sinks have to be
working and school personnel
will be held responsible
for that being kept consistent.
Officials of the DOE will be
spot checking schools on a
regular basis.”
Continued from page 1
If you are not sick, definitely
don’t hog the facemasks.
If you develop Coronavirus
symptoms (difficulty breathing
or shortness of breath, a
dry cough and high fever),
seek medical attention immediately.
Be kind and seek
support
We’re all in this together, so
be kind to those around you,
and seek out the city’s mental
health counseling services
if the outbreak has got them
feeling anxious or depressed.
With that in mind…
Turn off the chaos
While it’s good to stay informed,
we recommend taking
a break from the 24-hour
news cycle if you’re feeling
overwhelmed. Stay off of
social media for a while and
read a book instead. Remember
that taking care of yourself
goes beyond physical
care. At the end of the day,
there’s still some good news
out there, too.
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