Day: July 15, 2025

A new, legal cannabis dispensary, “Kaya Bliss,” hopes to open at 64 Henry St. in Brooklyn Heights before the end of July.

The post New Brooklyn Heights cannabis dispensary draws ire of Landmarks appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

Namel Colon, 39, will spend the next 25 years in prison following his guilty plea to first-degree manslaughter for fatally shooting Jennifer Ynoa inside a Brooklyn smoke shop, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced July 15.

Ynoa, 36, was inside Salim Smoke Shop at 488 DeKalb Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant with her dog, Blue, on Jan. 2, 2022, when, at approximately 9:45 p.m., Colon, a Lower East Side resident, exited his vehicle, crossed the street, walked into the store and opened fire, striking the mother of four in the torso, according to surveillance video.

Ynoa, who had no connection to Colon, was rushed to The Brooklyn Hospital Center, where she was pronounced dead. Colon also killed her dog.

At the time of the shooting, a second person was present in the store, and investigators believe that individual may have been the intended target.

Colon fled the scene but was apprehended by members of the NYPD Violent Felony Squad on Feb. 22, 2022, and charged with murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.

On June 9, 2025, Colon pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Phylis Chu sentenced him to 25 years in prison on July 15.

“This defendant brazenly opened fire into a store open to the public, killing a completely innocent woman and endangering everyone inside,” Gonzalez said. “Today’s sentence ensures he is held accountable for this outrageous act of violence and reflects the seriousness of the harm he caused.”

Mayor Eric Adams is set to receive his first round of major labor endorsements on Thursday from a cadre of law enforcement unions as he seeks reelection as an independent candidate, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to amNewYork.

The source said the “many uniformed” police and corrections officers unions — including the Detectives’ Endowment Association, the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, and the Correction Captains’ Association—will back the mayor at a Thursday news conference that will likely take place at City Hall. However, the city’s largest police union, the Police Benevolent Association, will not be at the event, the source said.

“They’re trying to give him a boost,” said the source familiar with the potential endorsements.

The development was first reported by the New York Post and Daily News.

Adams’ campaign spokesperson Todd Shapiro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The support of several law enforcement unions lends some legitimacy to Adams’ long-shot reelection bid. The mayor, a former NYPD captain, was elected on an anti-crime message four years ago and has sought to emphasize that he delivered and drastically lowered the numbers of murders and shootings during his tenure.

Adams has also often sided with correction officers against policies pushed by criminal justice reformers, such as the City Council’s law to eliminate the use of solitary confinement in city jails.

The potential endorsements mark Adams’ first in an election cycle in which most labor groups that backed him in 2021 defected to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary and have now backed Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani.

Adams is running as an independent in the general election after sitting out the Democratic primary due to his now-dismissed federal corruption case.

Over the past few weeks, Mamdani has nabbed the support of most of the city’s other prominent labor unions, including District Council 37 — the largest municipal workers union, 32BJ SEIU, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, and the United Federation of Teachers. Many of those same unions endorsed Adams four years ago.

The slate of support for Adams shows that Mamdani, who has supported defunding the police in the past but has since moved away from that position, may have a tough time winning over uniformed officers who would report to him as mayor.  

Jianming Zeng, 33, a Brooklyn man, was captured in Norwalk, Connecticut on July 13 after escaping a New Hampshire prison.

The post Brooklyn ICE detainee captured in Connecticut after prison escape appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

A proposed development just north of Bushwick Inlet Park is stirring controversy among locals before the official rezoning process has even begun.

Developers are hoping to build a mixed-use high-rise building at 40 Quay St., an MTA-owned lot that currently houses a truck wash station, as well as a smaller building at the adjacent 56 Quay St.

Dubbed Monitor Point, the development would include 1,150 apartments, retail, a physical space for the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, and publicly-accessible outdoor space. The “west building,” closest to the inlet, would comprise two glass towers rising 600 and 450 feet tall, respectively; the “east building” at 56 Quay would stand 230 feet tall.

The project, which is expected to begin the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Process this fall, came out of the MTA’s efforts to generate revenue for its capital program by leasing the waterfront property for 99 years. As part of the deal, the Gotham Organization — the developer chosen by the MTA in 2021 — will also relocate the existing wash facility and a separate MTA emergency response facility to an industrial lot in Williamsburg.

Local opinion on the project is strong and split. Dozens of people testified at a virtual City Planning Commission scoping hearing in April, and a Community Board 1 meeting where Gotham presented in June reached capacity so quickly that people had to be turned away and submit their feedback virtually.

Supporters say the community desperately needs more housing, especially affordable housing – Monitor Point would include about 288 affordable units — and both temporary and permanent union jobs. Developers say the project would also help gird the vulnerable waterfront community against climate change and flooding.

But opponents fear Monitor Point would have the opposite effect, endangering the still-incomplete Bushwick Inlet Park and the ecosystems surrounding it while driving up housing prices in a fast-developing neighborhood where rents have already risen significantly. 

Development raises environmental concerns 

The MTA-owned lot at 40 Quay St. is currently zoned to allow four to six story buildings, including residential ones. The height limit was intentional, said Katherine Conkling Thompson, president of Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park.

“They understood that it is only 50 feet from the water’s edge, adjacent to Bushwick Inlet Park, and they wanted to make sure the structures wouldn’t impose upon the public park, wouldn’t impose upon the ecology, and would make a graceful transition from the historic Greenpoint neighborhood and the historic waterfront to the Bushwick inlet,” she said. 

The city promised to build the 1.5-mile Buswick Inlet Park as part of the 2005 Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning, which upzoned the neighborhood significantly and paved the way for dozens of new buildings and tens of thousands of new residents. 

Since 2010, more than 26,000 new units have been built in CB1, and the neighborhood has become one of the most desirable in the city. But, 20 years after the rezoning was approved, the park still isn’t done, thanks to a series of setbacks and delays as the city struggled to buy up and develop all the parkland. As of July 2025, two nonadjacent parts of the park are finished and another is nearing completion, but two large parcels are still undeveloped and under-funded. 

A City Planning Commission review of the Monitor Point proposal found that it would likely have significant environmental impacts on the surrounding area, documents show, and is likely to cast new shadows on “sunlight sensitive” areas like Bushwick Inlet Park and the East River, and could have a “significant adverse impact to natural resources” including the inlet and the river.

Conkling Thompson worried the buildings could harm migratory birds who take advantage of the park during their long flights — window strikes kill up to 230,000 migratory birds in New York City each year — though Gotham has said Monitor Point will use all bird-safe glass. The Bushwick inlet itself is a delicate ecosystem, she said, where fish, eels, and other sea creatures breed and feed. 

But supporters and developers say Monitor Point would help protect the area against climate change. Bryan Kelly, President of Development at Gotham, said the property now owned by the Greenpoint Monitor Museum is particularly vulnerable to flooding and erosion.

“It’s in significant distress, it’s deteriorating, and would require north of a $15 million investment to stabilize the shoreline,” he said. “Essentially eliminate the decay, build it up, make it flood resistant — all items that will benefit … resiliency, not only for our development, but also to protect the inlet and the improvements being made as we speak by the parks department.”

Monitor Point would include two publicly-available green spaces, he said, one that would connect to West Street and one along the water. 

Daniel Hernandez, a senior associate at landscape firm SCAPE, which would help design Monitor Point, said the spaces would make use of native plantings and permeable pavers to mitigate storm water, and would include a waterfront grove and open-air classroom. Additionally, Kelly said, Gotham would make a $300,000 contribution to Bushwick Inlet Park each year. 

Gotham would also foot the bill to construct a new MTA facility in Williamsburg, Kelly said, which would eventually house both the Quay Street facility and the separate ERU facility, which currently sits on Box Street. That would facilitate the construction of the long-promised Box Street Park, Kelly said, which is currently blocked by the MTA’s use of the lot. 

Affordability and access

Steve Chesler, vice president of Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, worried that the scale of Monitor Point would make the park feel like “part of the private property’s front yard,” making it most accessible to residents who are largely paying market-rate waterfront rents. 

CB1 offers only .6 acres of park space for every 1,000 residents, well below the city’s goal of 2.5 acres per 1,000. 

“Parks are the great equalizer, no matter what your background is, ethnic, socioeconomic, wherever you work, you just come here and this is your park,” he said. 

Monitor Point would bring about 1,105 new units, about 288 of which — or 25% — would be made affordable under Mandatory Inclusionary Housing requirements. Those units would be offered at around 60% of the Area Median Income, according to documents filed with the city, or $87,480 per year for a family of three.

At 60% affordability, a two-bedroom unit would run about $2,187 per month. Average market-rate rent in Greenpoint is about $3,659, according to RentHop, and the going rate for a two-bedroom in the nabe was $5,704 as of June 2025. 

“300 lower-income homes on the waterfront of Brooklyn without any public subsidy capital is an astounding number,” said Bryan Kelly, Gotham’s President of Development. “And what we heard from the community board, and we’re happy to hear and work with them on, is creating or making a commitment to certain family-sized homes for those lower-income homes.”

Giving families an affordable opportunity to live in a desirable waterfront neighborhood with good amenities, Kelly said, is a “public equity discussion.” 

At the CPC meeting in April, local Ariel Dixon — who is also a member of Local 79, a union which would likely be part of the Monitor Point construction, if the project is approved — said the housing is much-needed. 

“It will give people like me more opportunities to work with good wages, build up our community, and it means more Brooklyn families can actually afford to stay here,” she said. “People who already own or live on the waterfront shouldn’t be the only ones who get to enjoy it.”

But not everyone is convinced, and some locals have said their hesitance is influenced by the outcome of the 2005 rezoning. 

“The community had to take luxury high-rise buildings in exchange for open park space, this being a community that was starved for open space,” said local Chris Dunn at the CPC meeting. “We have the high-rise towers, we don’t have a park. Most of that park space is years if not decades away from utilization.”

Conkling Thompson said she isn’t opposed to building new housing, or even luxury housing on private property, and would support Gotham if it wanted to build all-affordable at 40 Quay St. 

“But we feel that because of this being a publicly-owned property, to give it over to private developers who would stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars, versus the MTA making $38 million … why would we be giving public land to private developers?”

“Asking developers to create affordability hasn’t worked in our neighborhood,” Conkling Thompson said. “People might try to say that we’re NIMBY, and that’s kind of true. We don’t want luxury housing on the edge of our public park, which is our backyard.”

Next steps for Monitor Point

The Monitor Point ULURP application is expected to be certified before the end of the year, and the official ULURP process could begin as soon as this fall. That would bring more meetings with the community board, the borough president, and the CPC before the proposal was voted on by the City Council. 

If the project is approved, Kelly said, Gotham would start constructing the new MTA facility in Williamsburg in 2026, and could start work on Monitor Point in 2028.

Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani said on Tuesday that he has a “desire for partnership” as he heads into high-stakes meetings with business leaders and Democratic Party bigwigs who have yet to endorse his candidacy this week.

Mamdani is set to meet with roughly 100 CEOs behind closed doors, scheduled for 4 p.m. on Tuesday, according to a source close to Mamdani’s campaign and the Partnership for New York City, a business group that organized the meetings. He is then scheduled to convene with leaders in the city’s tech industry late Wednesday afternoon as well, the source said.

Mamdani, a Queens Assembly member, and the business leaders agreed to both meetings, hoping to allay their fears that his democratic socialist branding and left-wing policies would drive wealthy New Yorkers out of the city. He seeks to get business leaders and establishment Democrats behind his general election effort as independent opponents, including incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, attempt to block his path to City Hall.

Specifically, business leaders have voiced concerns about Mamdani’s proposal to fund his priorities by raising New York’s corporate tax rate to 11.5% and increasing taxes on those earning over $1 million annually.

During an unrelated Tuesday news conference, where Mamdani was endorsed by District Council 37 — the city’s largest municipal workers union, he repeated that he will “say the same things” in the meetings that “I’ve said outside about my fiscal policies, about my commitments.”

“I will also underline that the core of my politics is not just sincerity, but also a desire for partnership,” Mamdani said. “I go into that room knowing that there will be disagreements, and also knowing that the foundation of it is a belief in the possibility of this city. And it will take a new kind of politics that unlocks that possibility.”

Who’s meeting with Mamdani, and who isn’t?

Partnership for New York City President Kathryn Wylde has reportedly expressed an openness to working with Mamdani and worked to organize the meetings.

The organization has 350 members, including banks, Fortune 500 companies, and law firms. Its board includes corporate honchos like Dr. Albert Bourla — the chairman and CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. — and Rob Speyer, the president and CEO of the real estate firm Tishman Speyer.

Mamdani said that while he believes he can get on the same page with many business leaders, “there are some who cannot be convinced.”

Among those figures, he listed billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who backed Cuomo in the primary and has shifted his support to Adams in the general election, and Bo Dietl, a former cop turned political operative.

“They are not those who have seemingly any interest, and that’s fine,” Mamdani said, referring to those he feels cannot be convinced to back him. “There’s room for them in our politics as well.”

Set to talk with Jeffries, too

The Queens lawmaker also previewed how he will approach a planned confab with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in the city later this week. Jeffries has publicly defended Mamdani from attacks by Republican President Donald Trump and has complemented his ability to excite voters in the primary, but has stopped short of endorsing the Democratic nominee.

Jeffries has voiced concerns about Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which many in the Jewish community take as an incitement to violence against them. Mamdani has said the phrase is “not language that I use,” but has sought to contextualize its Arabic meaning as a call for liberation.

Mamdani said he plans to approach his meeting with Jeffries in a similar manner to his conversations with business leaders, noting that while they may disagree on certain subject areas, they share the same core values as Democrats.

“When we describe our party’s big tent, it also means many people who call themselves Democrats, who belong to the Democratic Party, have different views about different questions, none of which are the question of whether or not they’re Democrats,” he said. “At the core of being a member of the Democratic Party is a belief in working people, in the idea that hard work should be enough to stay in the city that you call your home.”

U.S. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Gov. Kathy Hochul have also so far declined to endorse Mamdani, while coming to his defense against Trump’s broadsides. But Mamdani has been picking up support from many others in the Democratic establishment, including pols like U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan/Bronx) and unions such as 32BJ SEIU.

At the same Tuesday press conference with DC 37, the union’s president, Henry Garrido, emphasized that Mamdani is providing the Democratic Party with a fresh message it sorely needs.

“We have been hungry for a leader that has a message that speaks to working people in a way that resonates and is willing to replicate nationally,” Garrido said. “And he has delivered it.”