BROOKLYN HEIGHTS ASSOCIATION TO OPPOSE DUMBO DEVELOPMENT

The Brooklyn Eagle reports that the Brooklyn Heights Association, along with the DUMBO Neighborhood Associaiton, will oppose a development by Two Trees Management that has already received certification by the City Planning Department. The groups believe the proposed structures will obscure views to and from the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Two Trees project will consist of three buildings of varying heights, with 400 rental apartments and 100,000 square feet of parking. 80 of the 400 residences will be the first permanently affordable housing in DUMBO. The structure also brings another ‘first’ to the neighborhood – a LEED-certified “green” building.

The Two Trees project was the catalyst for a new 45,000 square foot middle school that would serve approximately 300 students, and faces the new development on Dock Street. The BHA is working on an alternative plan that would expand  P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights to include a middle school. However, a parents group associated with P.S 8 is preparing to testify against the BHA at the January 17 hearing. They support the construction of the new school site and will argue that the BHA does not represent them on this issue.

 

Artist's rendering of the proposed Two Trees site

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN PRINCIPAL TOPS CITY PERFORMANCE AWARDS

The Brooklyn Paper reports that a downtown Brooklyn principal was awarded the largest performance bonus check of those handed out by The Board of Education for the 2008 school year.

Pam Taranto, of Brooklyn International High School, walked away with $25,000 for her efforts in improving the performance of the downtown school. It was the highest individual sum of the $8.3 million in bonuses awarded this year to teachers and administrators.

Under her leadership, the school at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and Concord Street, earned the highest score in New York in the latest round of progress reports. A major factor in the high score is the school’s on-time graduation rate, which sits at a whopping 80 per cent.

“The graduation rate is more impressive because Brooklyn International only admits recent immigrants learning English as a second language,” writes Zeke Faux of The Paper.

The average at schools across the city hovers at about 50 per cent. Another coup for Taranto is the incredible rate at which Brooklyn International’s graduates attend college: 95 per cent.

“The staff deserves the credit,” Taranto told The Brooklyn Paper. “Something this amazing doesn’t happen because of one person.”

Since 1993, the school has increased its community from 30 students to 400. It has a long and critical relationship with the Peace Corps Fellows program, with returned volunteers recruited to teach at the school. Faux writes that the multicultural experience of these men and women, “helps teachers develop collaborative curriculums based on the philosophy that being bilingual is ‘an asset, not a liability.’ “

The modest Principal, who took over the ranks of Brooklyn International 2 years ago, told the The Paper she will use some of the money to reward her staff.  

“Maybe there’ll be time for me to take the teachers out to dinner,” Taranto said.

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS GROUP LIGHTS UP NEIGHBORHOOD, AVOIDS $4,000 FINE

The Daily News‘ Kathleen Lucadamo reported that The Montague Street Business Improvement District in Brooklyn Heights has managed – unlike many residents and community groups across the city – to avoid a fine of up to $4,000 for displaying traditional holiday sidewalk adornments.

“A little-known city regulation bars New Yorkers from adorning sidewalk trees without a permit,” writes Lucadamo. Residents who put up tree-lights during December without the permit, are forced to pay a fine.

The Montague Street organization lights up three dozen trees in Brooklyn Heights, free-of-fine, for the first time this holiday season tonight. Chelsea Maudlin, director of the Improvement District, learned of the permit regulation from a tree specialist last year. She describes the application as only half a page.

“I respect the Parks Department’s interest in who is messing around with their trees,” she told The Daily News.

Despite its obscurity amongst New York City residents, the regulation, designed to keep trees healthy, came into being 20 years ago. The fines range from $1,000 to $4,000.

LOCAL LAWMAKERS FILE SUIT AGAINST DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN DETENTION COMPLEX

Backed by New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson and local councilman David Yassky, local support groups filed a lawsuit against a Boerum Hill detention complex that partially re-opened on the weekend.

They claim the city failed to run an analysis on the environmental and community impact of the expansion of the location.

Construction for the expansion of the Atlantic Avenue facility will cost $440 million and according to NY1, local residents and officials say “it is a waste of taxpayer money.”

“At a moment of financial crisis, the city is purposely leaving the public out of a decision in building a jail we don’t need at a time we can’t afford it,” said Thompson.

“This is a fiscal responsibility issue and the city is choosing to spend money very unwisely,” Yassky adds.

But the Department of Correction says doubling the inmate capacity of the facility will save the city money, since it will keep inmates closer to the Downtown Brooklyn courts, instead of transporting them from Rikers Island.

The local councilman believes the funds are being misplaced.

“We’ve got to tell them to bring that money back into the city budget so we can spend it on schools and parks and things that we desperately need,” said Yassky.

The jail, which closed in 2003 to save money, saw fifty inmates return over the weekend as part of a test run. The expanded facility is supposed to open in 2012, as part of a New York-wide plan to reduce crowding at the Rikers Island prison and create a decentralized system in which there are jail complexes in each borough, close to local courts, social services and the prisoners’ families.

HOOVER v. MAILER, U.S (1962)

Norman Mailer is one of Brooklyn Heights’ most famous former residents. An icon of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s, Mailer won two Pulitzer Prizes and was one third of the team who first published The Village Voice. And according to an article in the Washington Post, he was also the target of a 15 year FBI investigation while the agency was under the auspices of Herbert Hoover. The Post alleges that Hoover became “obsessed” with Mailer after the author “mocked former First Lady,” Jackie Onassis, in an article in Esquire Magazine.

In today’s Washington Post article, Joe Stephens reports:

“In the summer of 1962, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was scanning his morning Washington Post when an item on Page A15 caught his eye. Norman Mailer‘s most recent article in Esquire magazine had mocked Jacqueline Kennedy for, among other things, being excessively soft-spoken for a first lady.

Hoover scribbled a note: “Let me have memo on Norman Mailer.”

Over the next 15 years, FBI agents closely tracked the grand and mundane aspects of the acclaimed novelist’s life, according to previously confidential government files. Agents questioned his friends, scoured his passport file, thumbed through his best-selling books and circulated his photo among informants. They kept records on his appearances at writers conferences, talk shows and peace rallies. They noted the volume of envelopes in his mailbox and jotted down who received his Christmas cards. They posed as his friend, chatted with his father and more than once knocked on his door disguised as deliverymen.”

THE ELEVENTH DAY OF THE ELEVENTH MONTH : Veteran’s Day 2008

Sergeant Maria Canales of Brooklyn, served in Balad, Iraq, from October 2005 to October 2006 and earned a Combat Action Badge after her first mission, when insurgents attacked the convoy in which she was traveling in October 2005.

According to Canales, seven mortar rounds exploded 20 feet from where she was positioned on her first day in service. The 28 year-old from East Williamsburg, and her comrades, suppressed the assault, and Canales was honored with a Combat Action Badge.

Having seen action in Iraq, Canales says she is extremely proud of her fellow war veterans and honored to take part in the annual Veterans Day parade in New York.

“A lot of people don’t like the war,” she said. “But they don’t recognize the soldiers. The veterans should be honored.”

“It was an honor for me to serve,” Canales added. “I want to be a part of it for as long as I can.”

HEIGHTS BROWNSTONE SELLS FOR $10.8 MILLION, BREAKS BROOKLYN RECORD

A New York real-estate site, The Real Deal, just broke the news that a Brooklyn Heights property sold last week for $10.8 million. It is the highest home price recorded in the neighborhood, surpassing a 2006 Heights sale by $500,000. 

Financial meltdown? What financial meltdown?

The only thing many residents of Brooklyn Heights must be thinking about Wall Street, is how nice the view of it is from the promenade.

WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN HALLWAY, DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

An unidentified white woman was found dead at 9.30 this morning in a hallway in Downtown Brooklyn, according to a DCPI report released today.

Emergency Medical Services discovered the “unresponsive” female body, assumed to have been in her 30s, inside a residence at 177 Sands Street where they prounounced her dead at the scene.

According to DCPI, a medical examiner will determine the cause of death. The investigation is ongoing.

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WALL STREET MELTDOWN DOES LITTLE TO UPSET BROWNSTONE BROOKLYN REAL ESTATE

Today, The Brooklyn Eagle reported that a narrow brownstone on Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights, has gone on the market with a hefty $7.2 million price tag attached.

The listing, which according to Linda Collins of The Brooklyn Eagle, was first cited on Brownstoner.com, is yet another confirmation that Brownstone Brooklyn is not yet feeling the waves of the Wall Street meltdown and sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Last week, a property in Boerum Hill sold for $4.2 million to a Manhattan investor despite a tumultuous week for the Dow Jones, and dire unemployment predictions by New York City’s Comptroller, William C. Thompson.

Mohamed B. Mohamed, a broker at Nancy McKiernan Realty, says that neighborhoods like Boerum Hill and Brooklyn Heights have not seen substantial change in their real estate markets despite the crisis on Wall Street.

“If anybody wants to sell, they sell very quickly,” Mohamed says.

“Prices didn’t change at all,” he says, explaining that its normal for the real estate market to move up and down- “that’s the industry.” 

He does acknowledge a small change in buyer attitude though.

“We’re on hold right now,” he said. “Most people are waiting to see what’s going to happen with the mortgage crisis and the economy.”

He adds that cash sales are becoming more regular.

Mohamed did say the rental market has picked up significantly in the last few weeks as a result of this on-hold mentality, and that young would-be purchasers are choosing to rent rather than buy in the wake of the meltdown and the credit uncertainty it has wrought.

The Boerum Hill broker has also heard that savvy developers are converting spaces that were originally designated as coops, into rental apartments.

In fact, the Remsen Street vendor has the same idea.

According to the article in The Brooklyn Eagle, Karen Heyman of Sotheby’s International Realty, who has the listing for the $7.2 million five-story brownstone, said the owner would consider renting the property.

Price? $23,000 a month.

CAR EXPLODES ON ATLANTIC AVENUE, BOERUM HILL

Two East New Yorkers are lucky to be alive after their car exploded in Boerum Hill at approximately 2.30 this afternoon.

Vicki Williams, 43, was driving her grandfather’s 1990 Cadillac Seville on Atlantic Avenue, with her grandfather in the passenger seat, when smoke began to billow into the car.

Williams, a day-care center owner, stopped the car outside a Subway fast food outlet near the intersection of Court Street and Atlantic Avenue, and ran inside to get help.

“I was like – help. Help me, my car’s on fire,” Williams said. “And no-one moved.”

According to Williams, three minutes later, the car burst into flames.

“You heard a boof – like it was going to blow up,” she said.

Williams’ 84-year old grandfather, Charles Jones, narrowly escaped the explosion. He had resisted his granddaughter’s calls to get out of the car, because he wanted to save it.

An Emergency Medical Services officer pulled Jones out of the burning vehicle before flames engulfed the entire car.

The retired army chef, and owner of the Cadillac, was sombre as he watched onlookers gawk at the wreckage.

“He needs a moment to himself,” Williams said. “He’s very upset.”

Williams revealed that they had experienced problems with the used car before, including sparks, and what she describes as regular mechanical problems.

“I’m upset,” said Williams. “But I thank god we’re alive.”

“We could have been in ICU – we’re not.”

Many amazed pedestrians stopped to stare at the wreckage; most took photos on their cell phones or digital cameras. One person even tried to steal the car battery, before Jones ran from inside the Subway store to interrupt him.

Williams was amazed at the attention given to the burnt-out car. While Boerum Hill residents were intrigued by it, Williams joked to her grandfather that having grown up in East New York, it’s a scene they’re used to.