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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 12 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 28 • July 12–18, 2019
The fireworks colored the night sky red over Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photo by Caroline Ourso
Brooklyn’s big bang!
Borough celebrates Fourth of July fi reworks spectacular
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Brooklyn had a blast!
Patriots traveled far and wide to
take in the nation’s largest fireworks
display in Kings County, which one
Big Apple resident admitted had
the best views in the city.
“I wanted to see the fireworks
up close and personal,” said Alex
Blue, who watched the pyrotechnic
Man sues cop, city for Bed-Stuy beatdown
Ricardo Mendoza alleges that police used excessive force.
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Experts: BQE proposals’ approval unlikely
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display from Brooklyn Bridge
Park’s Pier 1 with his friends.
The 43rd Annual Macy’s Fourth
of July Fireworks erupted from
the Brooklyn Bridge and nearby
barges in a half-hour pyrotechnic
bonanza beginning at 9:20
p.m., stunning thousands of onlookers
around Brooklyn Heights
and Dumbo.
All-in-all, the department store
launched a whopping 70,000 shells
from the 136-year-old span and
barges, proclaiming it the largest
Independence Day fireworks
show in the nation.
The Macy’s show has delighted
Brooklynites for generations, and
Blue, who has been a fan of the
July 4 fireworks show since the
80s, said this latest display didn’t
disappoint.
“I like to celebrate the United
States’ birthday,” he said. “I was
born and raised here, and I like
to represent.”
For those who didn’t want to
shoulder their way through hundreds
of thousands of July 4 revelers,
Coney Island offered a more
modest beach-front pyrotechnics
display, which proved the perfect
capstone to a day of fun in the sun,
according to one Bay Ridgite.
“Macy’s is more of a hassle with
small kids and the crowds, with
Coney Island, you can have a beach
day, sit on your blanket and watch
the fireworks,” said Paul Blackwell,
who drove down to the People’s
Playground with his wife Julie
and boys Ellis, 5, and August,
2, both of whom had a great time
building sandcastles during the day
and taking in the spectacular celebration
after the sun set.
“Ellis and August love the
beach, so the fireworks were
just like a bonus on top of that,”
Blackwell said. “They were mesmerized,
they were staring at the
sky gobsmacked and didn’t want
it to end.”
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Two of the most controversial
schemes to repair the Brooklyn-
Queens Expressway will likely
be tossed, according to the head
of an expert panel overseeing the
project.
A 16-person
panel
Mayor Bill de
Blasio convened
to study
the repairs of
the roadway’s
crumbling triple
cant ilever
told local stakeholders and
elected officials in June that the
Department of Transportation’s
plans had little chance, and that
the agency should explore other
proposals.
“There may be a need for a temporary
alternative route during
what could be a six to ten-year
construction period, but the alternatives
proposed by the city Department
of Transportation present
very serious issues with very
little chance of being approved;
other alternatives should be explored,”
the presentation reads .
Local residents and several
pols came out against the agency’s
proposals from last September
to either rebuild the stretch of
roadway between Atlantic Avenue
and Sands Street bit by bit,
or construct a six-lane highway
on top of the beloved Brooklyn
Heights Promenade during the
reconstruction, which could last
up to a decade, according to the
department.
De Blasio announced the formation
of his BQE panel in April ,
and the experts have spent the
last few months gathering input
The city’s plans to rebuild the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway
may be scrapped, according to an expert panel.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
from city agencies and community
organizations, and is expected
formulate its recommendation
this fall.
The Robert Moses-designed
highway first opened in 1948,
and surpassed its intended 50
year lifespan in 2008.
The city’s timeline now is to
start rerouting trucks in 2026,
with a plan to shut it down completely
by 2036 — 28 years after
the roadway’s planned retirement
date.
The BQE brain trust — which
is chaired by Carlo Scissura, chief
of the building industry advocacy
group the New York Building
Congress and previous head
of the business advocacy group
the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce
— expressed misgivings
about how DOT’s proposed temporary
highway would intrude
on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade,
a popular walkway that sits
atop the highway’s cantilevered
section, as well as the adjacent
Brooklyn Bridge Park.
“The commission has serious
concerns about the proposed
highway and encroachment
on the Promenade (other
than to renovate and upgrade the
promenade) or major incursion
into the Brooklyn Bridge Park
with a temporary highway,” the
presentation read.
The panel also noted opportunities
to reduce future planned
highways from six to four lanes,
including instituting a two-way
toll on the Verrazzano-Narrows
Bridge, the congestion pricing tax
set to hit drivers heading into
Manhattan in 2021, and adding
high-occupancy vehicle lanes,
which require motorists have at
least one passenger to travel in.
The BQE panel has held 10
meetings since April and will
now draft its recommendations.
Its members would also like to
meet with the community again
before it issues its report, its presentation
said.
FIXING
the BQE
By Craig Hubert
Brooklyn Paper
A classic Victorian pile that
stands on a rare historic corner
of Williamsburg may soon lose
its historic character to development.
A developer plans to enlarge
the former Church of the Annunciation
School at 70 Havemeyer
St. and remove its distinctive gabled
roof and bell tower to convert
it into apartments.
“Very disappointed that the architects
for the William Vale Hotel
have proposed this clumsy rooftop
addition to this 19th-century
schoolhouse,” said a tipster who
sent Brownstoner, one of our sister
publictions, a rendering. “This is
an architectural crime and will be
a loss for the neighborhood.”
The school is part of a complex
of three buildings on the corner
that are related in design.
A rendering shows major alterations
to the picturesque 1892 red
brick and brownstone Romanesque
Revival building. The enlargement
will remove detail and alter windows
on the existing building, remove
the roof and bell tower, and
appears to be made of textured
black stucco.
The dark addition and missing
roof, along with black birds
in the rendering, give the building
a slightly foreboding air reminiscent
of a controversial design at
410 Tompkins Ave. in Bed-Stuy.
(The plan was eventually jettisoned
for something more conventional.)
Churches in need of funds have
struck deals with developers all
over Brooklyn, sometimes losing
spires and roofs to apartment development,
such as St. Mark’s Lutheran
Church and School and Holy
Tabernacle Church of Deliverance ,
both in Bushwick.
The alteration will add 48 units
and three stories to the building,
bumping it up from four to seven,
according to a March building
permit application. (No permits
have been issued yet.) The development
will borrow floor area from
a nearby development.
The “proposed project is on a
compensated lot that is purchasing
6,400 square feet of floor area
generated by affordable housing
constructed off site,” according to
the permit, which does not specify
the address of the affordable
housing.
Double U Real Estate is the developer.
They leased the building
for 99 years from the owner, Roman
Catholic Church of the Annunciation,
in May for $6 million,
By Aidan Graham
Brooklyn Paper
One of New York’s Finest used
a pair of handcuffs to pummel a
man’s face during a bloody Bedford
Stuyvesant traffic stop last
year, according to a lawsuit against
the city and the cop alleging excessive
force.
Officer Julio Ramos pulled
21-year-old Ricardo Mendoza’s
BMW to the side of Flushing Avenue
near Nostrand Avenue after
spotting him speeding in April,
2018, according to the suit.
Before exiting his unmarked
cruiser, a body camera worn by
Ramos recorded him directing two
other cops to approach Mendoza’s
car with their weapons drawn.
“Yo, we’re jumping out and
f---ing everybody right now,” said
Ramos. “Yo everybody go to one
fucking car, bro. Guns out. F---
this.”
The three lawmen surround
Mendoza’s vehicle and repeatedly
ordered him to exit his car,
but the driver refused to leave, asking
why they pulled their guns out
over a speeding violation, the footage
shows.
“You’ve got your gun out, for
what?” said Mendoza. “What’d I
do?”
Ramos gave the man several
warnings, before opening the car
door, dragging Mendoza out of the
driver’s seat, and then using his
The former Church of the Annunciation School (pictured at
left in 2015) will soon be converted to apartments, removing
the roof, bell tower, and most historic detail.
Photo by Christopher Bride for PropertyShark
Rendering by Albo Liberis
One bloody lawsuit
handcuffs to slug the plaintiff in
the face as his partners held him
down, according to the suit.
The attack itself is obscured on
cameras worn by Ramos and another
officer, but cellphone footage
obtained by the plaintiff’s attorneys
shows Mendoza bleeding
profusely from his face.
Following the arrest, Ramos
could be heard telling another officer
the plaintiff attacked him,
saying “I put hands on him, he
started fighting back,” but Mendoza’s
suit claims he at no point
resisted arrest.
Authorities slapped Mendoza
with multiple charges related to
the incident, but dropped all criminal
complaints in the months
following the arrest.
Mendoza filed suit against Ramos
— who still patrols Brooklyn
streets for the 79th Precinct — in
Kings County Supreme Court on
May 30, accusing the officer of
using excessive force during the
incident. He then filed an amended
lawsuit last week against New
York City, alleging a pattern of
improper training and oversight of
the police force by the city.
Mendoza’s lawyer, Abraham
Rubert-Schewel, said Mendoza
suffers from possible long-term
nerve damage as a result of the
beating.
Rubert-Schewel pointed to a
2015 Inspector General report
that incriminates the Police Department
for “failure to properly
instruct and employ de-escalation
tactics” as evidence in their
case against the city.
The police department’s
press office did not immediately
respond to a request for
comment.
Abraham Rubert-Schewel
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