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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 12 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 49 • December 6–12, 2019
HELP FROM ABOVE
Tower redevelopment would provide homes for homeless
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A nonprofit developer wants to
retrofit a tower formerly owned by
the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Downtown
Brooklyn to provide housing
and services to formerly homeless
Brooklynites.
Developer Breaking Ground
filed a land-use review application
with the city to rezone the
29-story tower at 90 Sands St.,
which would pave the way for the
construction of 500 apartments
— most of which will be tailormade
for the recently homeless
and Brooklynites in need of affordable
housing, according to
its chief.
“Our mission is to work with
vulnerable populations and help
them get back on their feet and stay
on their feet living in permanent
housing for the long term,” said
Brenda Rosen, chief executive officer
at Breaking Grounds, before
Community Board 2’s Land Use
committee on Nov. 20.
The company plans to refurbish
the 1992-built tower between Jay
and Pearl streets — which once
housed volunteers for the Christian
evangelist group — and open
305 so-called “supportive housing”
units, which come packaged
with social services that help residents
obtain employment, manage
their medical needs, and transition
back into stable housing.
The development will also include
202 below-market-rate rentals
ranging from $504 for a studio
to $2,000 for a one-bedroom,
according to a rep for Breaking
Ground.
The company hosts some 4,000
units across the city and already
operates four supportive housing
centers in the borough, including
interior renovations in June 2020,
plans to revamp a cellar space for
use as a community, commercial,
or light manufacturing facility, and
expects to turn over a plaza outside
the building at Jay Street for public
use, the company’s vice president
of development David Beer
said at the civic meeting.
The application to change the
building’s permitted use from manufacturing
to residential also includes
an adjoining eight-story
office tower at 175 Pearl St., another
building the Witnesses sold
to RFR bigwigs in 2013 for $53
million, and which is now owned
by New Jersey firm Normandy Realty,
which bought it off the developer
in 2017 for just north of $102
million, according to records.
Some 82 percent of the units
will be studios and 18 percent will
be one-bedroom apartments, with
rental units prices aimed at households
making 30-100 percent of
the area’s median income, which
is currently set at $96,100 for a
family of three.
One community board member
said the company should offer
larger units too.
“They’re managing it with a
whole big building full of single
male, single female,” said Hazra
Ali. “I think you should have done
more… even if you added 20 to
that with more units.”
Another civic guru praised the
company’s mission of building affordable
housing, and said they’d
make a welcome addition to the
neighborhood.
“They’re addressing a need for
the community that is not being met.
I’ll tell you right now, commercial
developers will not address this,”
said Bill Flunoy.
A nonprofit developer’s plan to turn this 29-story tower on
Sands Street into housing for the formerly homeless will require
a change in zoning from the city.
Benjamin Perry, Deidra Gadson, and Jason Woodland pose in front of an array of board
games at the Brooklyn Public Library Central Branch.
Library to begin lending out board games
By Rose Adams
Brooklyn Paper
The Brooklyn Public Library
will begin lending out board
games at branches in Prospect
Heights and Crown Heights next
spring, allowing members to take
home a wide array of puzzles,
card games, and brain teasers
for up to three weeks, according
to a library rep.
“There will be some ‘gateway
games’ — which are games
with easy-to-understand rules to
help interest newcomers,” said
Fritzi Bodenheimer. “And, some
more complex games for experienced
players.”
Librarians are staying silent on
which games will be loaned out
through the program — which will
kick off at the Central Branch in
Prospect Heights and the nearby
Crown Heights library — but
Bodenheimer said that book lender
conducted an extensive survey of
library goers’ preferences before
choosing their catalogue of analogue
amusements.
“The librarians who developed
the proposal surveyed patrons
to learn what games they
liked, what games would be good
for children, and what games they
would be interested in checking
out,” she said.
Funding for the project will
be provided by Bklyn Incubator,
a Brooklyn Public Library
program that funds creative programming
ideas developed in the
system’s 60 branches.
Photo by Caroline Ourso
a Schermerhorn Street residential
building between Smith and Hoyt
streets, which they opened in 2009
and which also houses the dance
school Brooklyn Ballet.
They bought 90 Sands St. from
Big Apple developer RFR Realty
in August 2018 for $170 million,
one year after that company purchased
it from the Witnesses for
$135 million, as the religious group
sold off a swath of properties in
the area to move upstate.
Breaking Ground hopes to start
FUN ON LOAN
Inmates heading to local hospitals
City to open 250 therapeutic beds, and Woodhull is fi rst up for new program
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The city wants to set aside 250
beds for jail inmates with medical
needs at two public hospitals
in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Manhattan,
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced
Tuesday.
The hospital system’s Correctional
Health Services plan to set
up so-called therapeutic beds in
Woodhull Hospital on Broadway
at Flushing Avenue, and at Bellevue
Hospital on the distant isle,
which Hizzoner said will provide
a better environment for incarcerated
New Yorkers in need of
treatment.
“As we move forward to a
smaller, safer, and fairer criminal
justice system, we’re exploring
all options that will improve
our justice system and end the
era of mass incarceration,” said
de Blasio in a prepared statement.
“That means pushing for creative
solutions that will help improve
the lives of people in custody
by providing a more therapeutic
environment that is so crucial
to help people reenter their
communities.”
The pilot program comes in addition
to the city’s move to shut
down the beleaguered Rikers Island
prison complex in favor of
four smaller borough-based jails
and will offer incarcerated patients
treatment for medical, mental
health, and substance misuse
needs in a more normalized environment,
according to officials.
This will remove 250 beds from
the borough-based jails, which are
slated to host 3,300 beds across
four lockups in all boroughs except
Staten Island, as part of de
Blasio’s plan to close the Rikers
Island jail complex by 2026.
The city plans to close down
the House of Detention on Atlantic
Avenue in Boerum Hill in January
to make way for a 29-story, 295-
foot, 886-bed jail facility, replacing
the current 11-story 170-foot
building housing 815 beds.
The mayor’s press team did not
immediately clarify how many
beds would go to which hospital,
how many would be cut from
which borough jails, or provide a
timeline for the project.
The beds will be separated
from the rest of the hospital and
Department of Corrections staff
will provide security, according
to the mayor’s office.
The head of the Bed-Stuy public
health facility said the move
will give ill incarcerated Brooklynites
the help they need.
“NYC Health + Hospitals/
Woodhull is proud to be selected
as one of two sites to pilot this
innovative initiative, which will
help provide critical support to
this vulnerable population of patients,”
said CEO Gregory Calliste
in a prepared statement.
Photo by Google Maps
The city plans to move 250 therapeutic beds for inmates of
borough jails into hospitals, including Woodhull in Bedford-
Stuyvesant.
Boxed out!
Brooklyn inventor debuts his
crafty package-theft deterrent
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A Kings County carpenter has
developed a low-tech security device
that he claims would defeat the
scourge of package pirates plaguing
the borough — if only people
would buy it!
Inventor Bob James chained
his anti-thievery device, called a
“Bob Box,” to a light post at Remsen
Street near Borough Hall last
Wednesday, as part of a guerrilla
marketing campaign designed to
drum up interest in what’s undeniably
an awkward-looking creation.
But the Bob Box, which appears
like a cross between a wood chipper
and a mailbox, met a lukewarm
reception from passersby, including
one woman who noted that the
box, while good in theory, might
not work so well in practice.
“I can definitely understand the
need for that because I’ve always
said, society is not ready for all
this online shopping,” said Evaleen,
who didn’t give her last name.
“I think it could be a little more
compact, the design needs to be
jazzed up a little, because I don’t
know if anyone is going to want
that in their yard like that.”
James, a Bedford-Stuyvesant
retiree, designed his namesake box
— which serves as a secure, curbside
package receptacle that’s accessible
by key — as an answer to
the dramatic rise in package thievery
throughout the borough.
But the handcrafted security
device costs a whopping $199, is
made entirely out of wood, and
features a comically large nozzle
jutting out from the storage
compartment, which one local said
A “Bob Box” appeared outside Borough Hall Wednesday.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Legal drama’s second act
Play about Cellino & Barnes’ breakup returns
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Brooklyn’s hottest courtroom
drama is back on the stage!
As famed New York injury attorneys
Ross Cellino and Steve Barnes
head early next year to settle their
long-running legal battle, a play satirizing
the law hawks’ bitter feud
will return to a Gowanus stage for
one night only on Jan. 4
“It’s interesting timing.”said David
Rafailedes, who stars as Barnes
in “Cellino v. Barnes.”
Rafailedes and co-star Michael
Breen, who plays Cellino, penned
their script based off of news reports
detailing the feud between the New
York law partners, whose names are
synonymous with kitschy TV ads
thanks to their very catchy jingle.
Cellino filed a lawsuit in 2017
to start his own firm after a series
of disagreements, and the attorneys
are set to return to state appellate
court on Jan. 14, the Buffalo
News reported.
And Cellino also made a recent,
Photo by Andrew Breen
out-of-court jab at Barnes with a
an online video touting “the new
team of Cellino and Bobbi” — a
reference to his a charitable partnership
he’s formed with Queens
animal shelter Bobbi and the Stray
— that was eerily reminiscent of
the iconic advertisements that urges
viewers, “don’t wait, call 8!”
“Ross Cellino and his family
have found a partner — and it’s
shelter animals,” the video on the
nonprofit’s website says.
Rafailedes and Breen performed
their sold-out show in Brooklyn last
August, and have since taken their
show on the road, attracting audiences
that included real-life Cellino
and his mother at the lawyers’s
hometown of Buffalo, New York.
“He felt a lot of people looking
at him, but he had a really
good time and gave it 10/10 stars
— which is not how you rate a
play but we’ll take it,” Breen said.
“His 86-year-old mother saw it and
didn’t appreciate the profanity but
she liked the show.”
The actor talked to Cellino after
their recent show, who told him that
their fictionalized retelling was actually
pretty close to the real story.
“Obviously we take it to an extreme,
but he confirmed that we
weren’t too far off,” he said.
“Cellino v. Barnes” at The Bell
House 149 Seventh St. in Gowanus
(718) 643–6510 Jan. 4 at
7:30 pm. $15.
A play about the high-profile
break up of injury attorneys
Cellino and Barnes returns
to the Bell House on Jan. 4.
See BOX on page 4
Photo by Kevin Duggan
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