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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 10 pages • Vol. 42, N Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint o. 48 • November 29–December 5, 2019
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Developers replace iconic ‘Watchtower’ sign by Brooklyn Bridge
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
It’s a “Welcome” addition!
Builders replaced the iconic “Watchtower”
sign that once greeted travelers
heading over the Brooklyn Bridge
with a new sign that reads “Welcome”
on Monday.
The rooftop marquee sits atop the Jehovah’s
Witnesses’s former headquarters
turned office-and-retail complex in
Brooklyn Heights, where it will salute
work-a-day New Yorkers — and, not to
mention, potential tenants of the bougie
new commercial tower — as they cross
the borough’s namesake span, according
to a rep for the landlord.
“Seen from Lower Manhattan and
greeting travelers as they cross the Brooklyn
Bridge, ‘Welcome’ embodies the
message to our tenants and the entire
city that Panorama is a vital part of the
transformed Brooklyn waterfront and
reinforces the idea that Brooklyn is an
inviting place for companies to set up
shop,” said the principal of investments
at CIM Group Jason Schreiber in a prepared
statement.
The new sign was designed by Manhattan
firm Morris Adjmi Architects
with lettering that resembles the original
sign’s neon-red characters, and is
illuminated with energy-efficient LED
lights. The sign will continue to sport
the old alternating time and temperature
display above it, according to reps.
Workers tore down the original sign
— which formerly graced the Kings
County skyline since 1969 — in late
2017. The “Watchtower” sign replaced
Photo by Will Femia
Developers installed the new “Welcome” sign to lure businesses and visitors to their planned office and
retail complex.
an earlier sign of the pharmaceutical
company ER Squibb and Sons, which
constructed most of the campus in the
1920s.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses setup shop
at the Watchtower building in 1969, and
expanded their Brooklyn Heights headquarters
several times before selling the
property to developers ahead of a move
upstate in 2016.
Big Apple developer CIM Group,
along with partnering Dumbo-based
firm Livwrk, plan to ceremonially light
up the new sign on Wednesday, on the
50th anniversary of the “Watchtower”
sign’s debut.
After the old sign was taken down,
Brooklynites were left to wonder for
more almost two years whether developers
would install a replacement on the
building’s rooftop scaffolding, and renderings
— including at one time the project’s
website —showed a sign spelling out the
development’s name “Panorama.”
City officials ruled in November
2018 that the owners could put their
own branding on the sign.
Boerum Hill advocate Christopher Swain nabbed some good reading
material for his 5,000-mile walk across the country.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Walk of lives
Activist to march across the US to
protest detention of migrant kids
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A Brooklyn activist famous for
swimming the Gowanus Canal is turning
his attentions landward, and is walking
across the country to protest the
deaths of children in Federal custody
at the US-Mexico border.
Boerum Hill resident Christopher
Swain strolled through Brooklyn on
Wednesday bearing an Olympic-style
torch on his journey west to the Golden
State, a 5,000-mile trek by which he
aims to raise awareness to the inhumane
treatment of migrant youth detained by
Uncle Sam, in whose custody six children
have died since last year.
“The way we’re treating these children
is a crime against the spirit of the
America that I know and against these
children,” said Swain. “When I heard
that six kids had died in my government’s
custody and one of them was
2-years-old and couldn’t walk and was
separated from its mom, I wanted to
shine a light on this situation… I didn’t
want to stand by and wait any longer
and be silent.”
The advocate has previously made
a splash by swimming in the the filthy
Gowanus Canal and the putrid Newtown
Creek wearing his tailor-made
hazmat suit, which he hoped would
call out the government’s failure to
clean up the dirty waterways.
See WALK on page 4
City to shutter House of D by January
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The city is reportedly gearing
up to shut down the Brooklyn
House of Detention early next
year to pave the way for an expansion
of the Boerum Hill holding
facility.
Officials want to move inmates
and corrections staff out of the Atlantic
Avenue jail by the end of
January 2020 as part of Mayor
Bill de Blasio’s $8.7 billion plan
to close the beleaguered Rikers Island
jail complex and build four
borough-based facilities, according
to a report by the New York
Daily News.
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, agency spokeswoman
Latima Johnson said in
an email.
The department decided to close
the facility because of the lack of
air conditioning and programming
space, according to Johnson.
The city’s Department of Design
and Construction on Thursday
issued a request for qualification,
kicking off a bidding process
to select contractors to demolish
the 62-year-old jailhouse between
Smith Street and Boerum Place.
Officials will close the Rikers
Island lockup known as the Eric
M. Taylor Center — which houses
some 850 of the jail complex’s
7,000 inmates — in March.
The city previously closed
down the George Motchan Detention
Center on the island last
year.
De Blasio’s plan, which City
Council approved in October, aims
to close the Rikers Island jail complex
by 2026 and move its inmates
to smaller facilities sited for all boroughs
except Staten Island.
The city plans to raze the House
of Detention and erect a 29-story,
295-foot, 886-bed jail facility, replacing
the current 11-story 170-
foot building housing 815 beds.
That building is the first of the
four existing borough jails to be
closed down.
Corrections staff union leaders
in August claimed that inmates
would move out of the facility to
Rikers by the end of the year —
months before the plan’s land use
application was approved — but
agency officials subsequently denied
those reports.
The city plans to close down the Brooklyn House of Detention
by January 2020.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Nets unveil ‘Bed-Stuy’ jerseys
By Joe Hiti
for Brooklyn Paper
Brooklyn Nets fans lined up
outside the Barclays Center on
Thursday to be among the first
to don the team’s new limitededition
jersey, which honors both
Bedford-Stuyvesant and the legendary
rapper Biggie Smalls.
“Pretty f--g fresh,” said former
Bedford-Stuyvesant resident
Sam L. as he was waited
outside Barclays Center to snag
a jersey.
The uniforms are emblazoned
with “Bed-Stuy” in all
caps across the chest, while pay
homage to Brooklyn’s own Notorious
B.I.G., one of the most influential
voices in hip-hop.
“If you’re a hip-hop person it
makes you feel included,” said
Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Glen
Wallace. “You don’t have to be
from Bed-Stuy to enjoy it.”
The Nets themselves will debut
the jersey at their Nov. 29
matchup against the Boston Celtics,
and will sport the limitededition
uniform for 28 games
this season.
The Kings County basketball
club made a big splash this offseason
with the acquisition of two
of the top free agents available
this summer — Kevin Durrant
through a trade and sign that
saw the Nets sending D’Angelo
Russell to the Golden State Warriors,
and Kyrie Irving through
free agency.
Massive garage prompts worry
Prospect Heights fear upcoming traffi c chaos due to large Pacifi c Park parking
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Residents living around the Pacific
Park mega-development in
Prospect Heights are wary of a
new 455-space parking garage being
built near the Barclays Center
arena, claiming developers and
their allies in state government
have failed to prepare the neighborhood
for the influx of hundreds
of additional cars.
“You’re degrading that environment
— without developing a
plan,” said Prospect Heights resident
Peter Krashes.
Manhattan development firm
TF Cornerstone is working in partnership
with Empire State Development
— the state’s economicdevelopment
arm — to install the
massive, subterranean lot beneath
two upcoming residential towers
located on Dean Street between
Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues.
The new garage would be accessible
via the single entrance to an
existing 303-space parking facility
located near Carlton Avenue,
and would cause traffic on the already
narrow, one-way artery to
devolve into gridlock, according
to residents at a community meeting
on Tuesday.
“If you’re anticipating approximately
800 more cars to an area
that’s already extremely congested,
what provisions are being made to
address the addition of 800 cars to
what’s already an extremely congested
area,” said Daphne Eviatar
at the bi-monthly “quality of
life” meeting hosted by the state
agency’s project task force, the
Atlantic Yards Community Development
Corporation.
That question was asked over
and over at Tuesday’s meeting,
but representatives for the Empire
Development Corporation
struggled to provide an answer.
One liaison for the state agency
Photo by via Google Maps
claims that the issue has already
been the focus of adequate study,
and that actions have been taken
to “mitigate” the effects of hundreds
of additional cars. The rep
did not, however, provide specifics
examples of what measures
have been taken.
“When the project was first approved
in 2006 and 2009, also
subsequent modifications and environmental
impact statements
there, there was an analysis that
was done looking at what the traffic
impact would be on the community
and mitigations have been
put in place,” said Tobi Jaiyesimi,
the state’s Pacific Park project
manager.
Jaiyesimi added that state officials
would work with the operator
of the existing garage to
help manage traffic and that additional
traffic studies would be
conducted once the number of
new residents exceed 1,500 tenants,
but residents worried that
bureaucrats were waiting for traffic
problems to manifest, before
choosing to take action.
“It’s not actually mitigating the
traffic, and it’s not going to until
you do an assessment in 2021
that will then start thinking about
what you might do in the future,”
Eviatar said.
Spaces at the upcoming parking
garage will not be reserved
strictly for residents, and Barclays
bound patrons are expected
to take advantage of the new accommodations.
However, locals
questioned the wisdom of building
additional facilities for drivers
in one the borough’s most transit
rich areas — the Barclays Center
is serviced by nine subway lines
and the Long Island Railroad —
and one resident insisted the garage
would simply invite more
motorists into the area.
“Everybody knows that if you
build parking, cars arrive — that’s
a simple vision of any city planning,”
said Louis Galdieri.
Developers previously planned
three entrances for a larger garage
with 910 spaces for the four-tower
block, a 2014 environmental impact
statement shows, but the addition
of the gym may have led
to the reduction, local watchdog
journalist Norman Oder wrote in
his blog.
A spokesman for the state
agency would not answer why
the the state, or developers scaled
back the number of entrances from
three to one, saying only that plans
shown to the public in 2014 were
“illustrative, not definite.”
The two new towers at 615 and
595 Dean St. — dubbed B12 and
B13 respectively as part of the project
formerly known as Atlantic
Yards — will host 798 new housing
units, at least a quarter of which
will be below market rate, along
with retail and a controversial outpost
of Manhattan gym Chelsea
Piers, according to officials.
The development will also
come with some 72,600 square
feet of space open to the public
divided into three parcels, including
a quarter-acre sloping lawn
at its center, flanked by a plaza
with amphitheater seating to the
east and a playground and dog
run to the west.
Prospect Heights fear incoming traffic chaos if developers
at a Dean Street parking garage.
Biggie league
nba.com
The Nets new “Bed-Stuy” jersey have a big inspiration.
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