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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 18 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 50 • December 13–19, 2019
CHARGED UP
Developers unveil a ‘fully electric’
tower at 80 Flatbush development
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
This development’s all out
of gas!
A Dumbo-based development
firm unveiled designs for
an all-electric high-rise to be
included in Boerum Hill’s 80
Flatbush mega-project, bringing
good clean living and hundreds
of luxury apartments
to the borough, according to
one builder.
“As developers, we should
be doing everything we can to
plan for the future,” said Jared
Della Valle, chief executive officer
at Alloy Development.
“In the same way that we aren’t
running copper phone lines to
each apartment anymore, we
don’t think running gas lines
makes sense either.”
The building at the corner
of State Street will be just a
few feet shy of the nearby
Williamsburg Savings Bank
tower in height, and is the
shorter of two planned towers
included in the overall 80
Flatbush development, which
also encompasses three existing
buildings due for substantial
renovations.
The upcoming tower will
house 256 apartments featuring
all electric systems and
appliances, such as kitchen
equipment, water heaters,
and climate control, according
to the developer.
Tenants will share the
building with businesses occupying
100,000 square feet
of office space and 30,000
square feet of retail space.
All work is expected to begin
this spring.
Alloy will also begin construction
this spring of two
new public schools located on
State Street, including a 350-
seat elementary school and the
new Khalil Gibran International
Academy high school,
of which the latter is located
in a crumbling building on the
80 Flatbush Ave. lot.
The schools are designed
by Manhattan-based firm
Architecture Research Office
to conform to the Passive
House standard, which
requires buildings to be constructed
to maintain comfortable
temperatures year round
while using the least amount
of energy possible.
This includes a highly-insulated
exterior, triple-pane
windows, daylight exposure
for all classrooms and energy
efficient air-conditioners, according
to the developer.
Construction on the schools
is slated to wrap in 2023, according
to Alloy.
This marks the first of two
phases for the massive fivebuilding
project, which the
city approved during a controversial
land-use review
last year.
The full 80 Flatbush project
is due to be completed by
2026 and will also include a
69-story, 840-foot tall residential
tower, a total of nearly 900
units of housing, some 200
of which will be below-market
rate, along with 200,000
square feet of office space and
40,000 square feet of retail.
Photo by Alloy Development
100 Flatbush — part of the 80 Flatbush development —
will be the city’s first fully-electric residential tower.
Michael Ayoub and his artwork “Pizza” which hangs at his restaurant
Fornino in Greenpoint and can be yours for a steal at $100,000.
PIZZA MY ART
Greenpoint pie yours for $100,000
State trying to backtrack on Gowanus cleanup: advocates
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
State conservation honchos
want to lower New York’s water
quality standards — for the
Gowanus Canal!
As if Brooklyn’s Nautical Purgatory
didn’t have enough problems,
officials at the state Department
of Environmental Conservation
want to reclassify the notoriously
fetid waterway in a move that activists
fear would strip the canal
of much-needed resources.
“We do see removing this language
as backtracking on the designated
use of these waterways,”
said Erin Doran, an attorney for
the water-quality activist group
Riverkeeper.
Brooklyn’s putrid, man-made
tributary is currently classified as
a Class SD saline surface, which
means the canal “shall be suitable
for primary swimming and
secondary boating contact recreation,”
according to the state’s
website.
But officials want to remove
that line, which qualifies the waterway
for state programs aimed at
improving its water quality.
The move comes as a local
watchdog group seeks to reclassify
the waterway in an effort to
net additional resources for the
canal, and one member said the
state is essentially acting in direct
opposition to the expressed
interests of constituents.
“The State’s proposed changes
for language clarification… would
be detrimental to the CAG’s request,”
said Amy Motzny, a member
of the Gowanus Canal Community
Advisory Group, which
oversees the ongoing federal
Superfund cleanup of the waterway.
Gowanusaurs have been campaigning
to divert more resources
to making their neighborhood’s
canal cleaner for marine life and
humans since before Uncle Sam
designated the waterway a Federal
Superfund site in 2010.
ness for the need to clean the fetid
waterway.
In 2018, officials at the EPA told
the state agency’s head of its division
of water, Mark Klotz, that
they needed to introduce stricter
bacteria standards in order to meet
that goal.
The Department instead decided
to lower its targets by filing
their proposal to eliminate
the language saying the waters
shall be suitable for boating and
swimming.
The Department filed for that
change in October and will take
comments from the public in writing
until January 13, along with a
public hearing at its regional office
in Queens on January 8.
The agency ultimately decides
whether to make the change, but
their resolution could be challenged
in court, Doran said.
“It’s up to DEC, but that’s not
to say they’re not subject to judicial
review,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the agency
denied claims that the classification
changes would deprive the
Gowanus Canal of funding, adding
that the state will continue to
invest big bucks in Brooklyn’s Nautical
Purgatory.
“There is no backsliding by the
state under this proposed clarification
and through our ongoing and
aggressive enforcement oversight,
hundreds of millions of dollars is
being spent on projects to improve
the water quality in the Gowanus,”
said Maureen Wren.
And, gross though it may seem,
daredevil Brooklynites are already
playing in the canal, which is home
to a local canoeing club and serves
as the on-again, off-again swimming
hole for environmental activist
Christopher Swain, who swam
the canal in an effort to raise aware-
Cleaning the
Gowanus
Advocates accused the state of trying to backtrack its commitments
to cleaning the Gowanus Canal.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
The male driver suffered minor injuries from the crash, but the shop was demolished.
Driver crashes right into Bed-Stuy slice shop
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A motorist sliced clear through
a Bedford-Stuyvesant pizza parlor
, wedging his vehicle in a back
room at the demolished eatery.
The driver veered off Fulton
Street near Brooklyn Avenue at
6:15 am, when he shot through the
pie joint, leaving a trail of broken
glass and rubble in his wake.
It’s unclear how the driver managed
to exit the vehicle, which appeared
to be lodged tight enough
to prevent his driver, or passenger
side doors from opening, and
it’s possible the motorist escaped
the wreckage through the hatch
at the rear of his vehicle.
The restaurant’s facade was
completely annihilated and the
inside strewn with debris, but the
driver suffered only minor injuries
and remained on the scene
following the crash.
— Additional reporting by
Lloyd Mitchell
Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Not-so-special delivery
Vets’ long wait gets longer
Parks Dept. again misses construction start on memorial reno
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The Department of Parks and
Recreation missed yet another important
construction deadline to
allow the city to reopen the longshuttered
World War II memorial
in Cadman Plaza Park, and veterans
of the conflict are outraged at
the city’s ongoing failure to provide
access to the monument.
“It’s been so many years ago that
we’ve been fooling around with
this here — everybody wants to
know what the heck’s going on,”
said Marine Park resident Jack Vanasco,
92, who served as an army
corporal from 1939 to 1947.
The Parks Department closed
the World War II memorial’s hallowed
interior — which bares the
names of 11,500 Brooklyn boys
who fought and died during the
conflict — way back in the early
90s, with the Parks Department
blaming the closure on the tribute’s
lack of accessibility features
in the wake of the 1990 American’s
with Disabilities Act.
It’s nearly 30 years later, and
parks officials now claim that the
agency’s $3.9 million revamp failed
to meet its November construction
start date on a wheelchair-accessible
ramp and an elevator for the
granite and limestone Brooklyn
War Memorial — a project which
was announced in early 2017!
The agency’s online capital projects
tracker shows that officials rescheduled
to this month, with of-
ficials citing asbestos remediation
as the cause for the delays.
“We are eager to get the project
started on the World War II
Memorial, however, we discovered
asbestos material at the site
which requires remediation before
we can proceed,” said Anessa
Hodgson. “We are preparing
the site for abatement and look
forward to starting construction
once this is completed.”
But one local park steward has
yet to see any sign of movement
at the site and voiced doubts that
construction will start any time
soon.
“They’re never going to do it —
they’re stealing the money, that’s
the bottom line,” said the president
of the Cadman Park Conservancy,
Toba Potosky. “If they’re not starting
next week, are they going to
start on Christmas?”
Hodgson did not immediately
provide an exact start date for the
works.
Officials have repeatedly kicked
the can down the road on this project,
previously when they moved
it back from this spring to November,
with one spokeswoman
claiming at the time it was because
of trouble with the elevator
manufacturer.
The 1951 memorial was built
under the auspices of then-Parks
Commissioner Robert Moses
and is dedicated to the more than
300,000 Brooklynites who fought
in the war.
Currently, only family members
of the Brooklyn heroes whose
names are etched into the memorial
are allowed into the inner chamber,
according to Hodgson, who advised
relatives to contact the agency’s
Brooklyn borough office at
(718) 965-8900 to schedule a visit,
where they’ll be accompanied by
a Parks staff member.
Potosky has worked for years
with Vanasco and his 93-year-old
brother, Navy veteran Roy Vanasco,
and with Brooklyn Parks
Commissioner Martin Maher —
himself a Gulf War veteran — to
bring the war memorial back to
life, including possibly turning
it into an educational space, the
New York Post reported back in
2012.
The interior once hosted a wide
variety of functions, including veteran
and community meetings, art
shows, and school graduations,
until parks officials closed it, but
Potosky said that Brooklyn’s war
heroes and their families deserve
better.
“These are war heroes, they’ve
been waiting for so long. When we
got the money allocated we were
overjoyed and for Parks to sit on
this money for so many years —
they’re just sitting on this money
and I don’t know why,” he said.
The Parks Department once again pushed back their construction
start date to make the Brooklyn War Memorial
wheelchair accessible.
File photo by Sarah Portlock
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
It’s the pizza de résistance!
The owner of a Greenpoint pizzeria
has cooked up a cheesy homage
to the absurd banana duct-taped-toa
wall “art” that sold for $120,000 in
Miami last week, and hopes his own
food-inspired piece will fetch a sixfigure
price.
Fornino owner Michael Ayoub ducttaped
a margherita pie to the wall of
his Manhattan Avenue shop entitled
Photo by Caroline Ourso
See PIZZA ART on page 13
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