Day: November 27, 2024

The ambitious Brooklyn Yards development plan, an engineering feat that will build housing over an active rail line, was approved by the City Council on Thursday. The rezoning calls for a 14-building mixed-use mid-rise complex with 267 residences poised on a narrow platform spanning two blocks above a curved section of railway in Borough Park.

The unanimous vote is likely to conclude the public review process, during which the tallest building was reduced from 10 to nine stories and the number of parking spots doubled from 40 to 80. The zoning of the land slated for development has been changed from manufacturing to a mixed residential and commercial district.

Developers David Tabak and Meyer Lebovits, along with architecture firm STUDIO V Design + Planning, are behind the plans for the platform and complex slated to go up between 14th and 16th avenues and 59th and 61st streets. The project — comprising 10 four-story townhouses with penthouses, two six-story apartment buildings, one nine-story mixed-use building, and one two-story commercial building — won’t affect the rail line or its future development, they say in the rezoning application filed with the city.

Twenty feet below the proposed platform, a freight train rolls along the Long Island Rail Road track once a day. Owned by the MTA, the course as a likely route for the planned Interborough Express that will knit together Brooklyn and Queens.

The development team has been working with the MTA and other city agencies for years on the plans, and the MTA had to approve the final construction drawings, said Jay Valgora, a principal at STUDIO V Design + Planning, at the July Brooklyn Borough President’s hearing on the rezoning. The project allows for an expanded IBX line, he added.

“We even figured out how to do the structure to support the future rail lines which support both freight and passenger service, and that was a big thing,” he said. “We worked for years with the MTA, so they supported the project going forward because we’re actually helping create a prototype for how we can improve transit access to our neighborhoods.”

He said the development team, which includes the “best engineers, environmental consultants, land use council,” found the way forward was by building 14 separate smaller buildings rather than large towers, which he said was also commensurate with the scale of the community.

“A lot of people put a lot of effort into figuring out how you take a rail cut in the middle of a residential neighborhood, going through backyards, and you replace that with housing, including affordable housing,” Valgora said.

Brooklyn Yards will be built as one large-scale development where four-story walk-ups are flanked by the taller buildings – the tallest nine-story building being beside the elevated D train station on New Utrecht Avenue. A public park will be built at the New Utrecht Avenue end of the development with movable cafe tables and chairs, as well as a separate playground and public pathways.

According to Studio V’s website, the firm is leading a team that includes Arup, Ken Smith Workshop, and AECOM Tishman to handle the rezoning, design, and development of the “transit-oriented development.”

The developers specify in the filing that 81 of the 267 units will be affordable to those earning an average of 115 percent of Area Median Income, one of the options under the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program required for housing that takes advantage of a rezoning. The development will cater to Borough Park’s large Orthodox Jewish community, with balconies on most units, limited elevators, and plentiful bedrooms. Valgora said the residential buildings will have more three- and four-bedroom units than what is typical in new developments.

The complex, Valgora said, will be “a whole series of small walkups,” with different colors and textures to fit naturally into the surrounding residential buildings.

“The walkups are like classic Brooklyn walkups. They’re mostly four stories, they have stoop gardens, they have staircases. They’re fully accessible. We made sure that we meet all the accessibility requirements, including the ground floor…this was the amazing thing, that doing these smaller buildings actually not only fit into the community better, but it was more economic. It was actually easier. In other words, it was using classic Brooklyn prototypes.”

In order to provide the increased parking requested by the community, Valgora said the developer had purchased another site next door to hold vehicles. “Again, it’s a transit-oriented site, but for the community we committed to going from 40 cars to 80 cars. So we’re really trying to be responsive and work with them.”

Instead of the required rear yards, the development will have a private landscaped pathway that the application says would be “designed in the vein of traditional 17th and 18th century mews.”

The pathway will link the three tax lots together and give access to the adjacent streets through gated entrances. It will include raised planters, seating, gardens, and a perforated parapet wall.

“The green walkway actually connects through the whole neighborhood and goes through each of the blocks and connects into these series of arches,” Valgora said, “So it does create this kind of pedestrian connection.”

The rezoning proposal passed Community Boards 11 and 12 in June. The development area mostly sits in CB 12, and one CB 12 member said it was exactly the kind of development locals had been asking developers to do. “We have an opportunity here where they’re offering us three- and four-bedroom apartments, which almost never happens with a proposal for housing in our neighborhoods. Three- and four-bedroom apartments are exactly what our community has been asking to be built, and exactly what they’re building,” he said.

Following the July Brooklyn Borough President’s hearing, Antonio Reynoso in August gave his support to the project, but with the modifications that the parking be reduced to the original 40 spots and that the developer ensures the complex won’t interfere with the planned expansion of the rail line.

The Borough Park development isn’t a completely new idea: The air rights for three lots above the LIRR rail track were bought by a private developer in 1985. The rights were flipped in 1994, and Tabak and Lebovits, through Brooklyn Yards Development LLC, bought them for $4.25 million in 2019, city records show. As part of the deal, Brooklyn Yards Development LLC will also give the former air rights owners, LIBR Corp. of Manhattan, the deed to one 4,500-square-foot condo or its master lease once the project is complete.

Tabak’s Williamsburg-based Watermark Capital Group’s many projects in Brooklyn include a 19-story apartment tower that replaced a one-story church at 321 Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg and the adaptive reuse of an historic school at 125 Eagle Street in Greenpoint. The developer also recently bought and demolished St. Lucy-St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Bed Stuy.

The project is not without risks: The challenges associated with building above an active railroad are well known in New York City. Lawsuits, financial problems, and delays have plagued the more than decade-old unfinished Atlantic Yards development in Prospect Heights, which is in need of a new owner to take over. At Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, approximately half the development has opened on top of one of two planned platforms over rail lines.

This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site Brownstoner

A collection of topical political cartoons from various artists curated by the Brooklyn Eagle editorial staff.

The post Cartoon Sketchbook: November 27 appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

A judge on Wednesday found New York City in contempt for failing to staunch violence and brutality at its jails.

The post Judge finds New York City in contempt over jail conditions, moves closer to a federal takeover appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

A Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday said she is “inclined” to appoint a federal receiver to oversee the use of force and safety on Rikers Island — moving the jail complex the closest it has ever been to federal control.

US District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain’s statement was part of a Nov. 27 ruling in which she found the city Department of Correction to be in violation of multiple court orders to get rampant violence on Rikers under control.

“The court is inclined to impose a receivership: namely, a remedy that will make the management of the use of force and safety aspects of the Rikers Island jails ultimately answerable directly to the court,” Swain wrote.

The judge ordered all parties in the case to devise a plan for receivership by a Jan. 14 deadline.

In her decision, Swain sided with the Legal Aid Society in holding the city in contempt of the 2015 consent decree Nunez v. the City of New York, which ordered the city to make significant changes to curtail violence in the jail complex on Rikers Island. The Legal Aid Society, which represents detainees within the city’s jails, made the contempt motion late last year.

The judge also found the city Department of Correction to have violated three subsequent court orders over the past decade.

In fact, Swain wrote conditions the city was ordered to meaningfully stem over the past nine years, such as the use of force, stabbings, slashings, fights, assaults on staff, and deaths in custody, remain “extremely high.”

“There has been no substantial reduction in the risk of harm currently facing those who live and work in the Rikers Island jails,” she wrote. “Worse still, the unsafe and dangerous conditions in the jails, which are characterized by unprecedented rates of use of force and violence, have become normalized despite the fact that they are clearly abnormal and unacceptable.”

Numerous reports issued by Steven Martin—the federal monitor in the case—over the past several years supported much of the judge’s ruling.

Amaris Cockfield, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, did not directly address the contempt ruling in an emailed statement.

Instead, she said the administration has made “significant progress” in addressing the “decades-long neglect and issues” on Rikers — especially under the leadership of DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, whom Adams appointed late last year, 

“Commissioner Maginley-Liddie has also proven herself to the court and the monitor as the necessary steady hand to continue protecting those in our care and who work for the DOC,” Cockfield said in a statement. “We are proud of our work, but recognize there is more to be done and look forward to working with the federal monitoring team on our shared goal of continuing to improve the safety of everyone in our jails.”

The mayor has publicly railed against a federal takeover of Rikers Island on many occasions, insisting the city is in the best position to improve conditions at the facility.

Meanwhile, Legal Aid commended Judge Swain, in its own statement, for issuing what it called a “historic ruling.”

“As the court found, the city has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to provide the oversight necessary to ensure the safety of all individuals housed in local jails,” the group said. “We laud this ruling, which will finally create a pathway for reform that can protect those who DOC’s leadership has failed by making leadership accountable to the court and not political authorities.”

The Brooklyn Nets center — who has been fighting a “long term” back injury — scoped out a five-story, 3,976-square-foot townhouse in Red Hook.

Brooklynite and veteran Boris Sirota commemorated his 100th birthday with a day of music, dancing, fun and festivities.

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More than 100 environmentally conscious community members, including those seeking green employment, attended an offshore wind event.

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