David Walentas Calls Brooklyn Heights ‘Old Guard’ Anti-Semites and Racists in New York Magazine Profile

By on June 27, 2014 12:38 pm in DUMBO

You can call David Walentas many things, but he sure knows how to get attention. In a New York Magazine profile published this week the developer and King of all DUMBO has a thing or two to say about Brooklyn Heights’ “old guard”:

NY Magazine: His prime adversary was the Brooklyn Heights Association. There was a battle in 1999 over a Walentas proposal to build a Jean ­Nouvel–designed entertainment complex at the bottom of Old Fulton Street that featured theaters, restaurants, and a hotel that swooped out over the East River. In 2004, Heights residents lobbied fiercely against a Walentas bid to construct a 17-story hotel at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. In recent years, both sides tussled over where to locate a 1922 carousel that David and Jane had spent years painstakingly restoring. “When I asked him, ‘Can we talk about where it might be sited?,’ he would say, ‘I’m going to put it where I want,’ ” recalls Marianna Koval. “ ‘My wife wants to see it from my living-room window, and I don’t care what you guys think.’ ”

“They’re just stupid, insulated people,” David says when I ask him about the carousel controversy. “The truth is that the Old Guard up the Heights are racists and anti-Semites, if you really want to know. They don’t want anything to happen to disturb their little community. They don’t want shvartzes walking through the community to get to the park.” Today, he says, “the Heights people love the carousel.”

So is he right? Comment away!

NY Magazine Photo

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  • Michael D. D. White

    Crudely and insensitively put or not, race and racism is apparently a definite factor in the shrinkage and sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library according to Brooklyn Heights Association President Alexandra Bowie. You can figure out whether her words were less crude and insensitive. There are also the less than sensitive and politic words of those commenting on pages like this blog, see the following article.

    Here is where you will find those words and a discussion of this issue.

    Tuesday, May 14, 2013

    A Consideration of Race, Equality, Opportunity and Democracy As NYC
    Libraries Are Sold And The Library System Shrunk And Deliberately
    Underfunded
    http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-consideration-of-race-equality.html

  • http://www.incase.org Peter Myers

    Decades ago there was some anti-Semitism, as per the Casino, and certainly some members of the community fear non-Whites, but he is over the top in playing this card. The blue blood old guard anti-Semites have died off.

  • Andrew Porter

    Not only is this offensive and wrongheaded, but it’s libelous as well. Maybe you should be hiring the same legal firm the BHA used.

    Jut because you disagree with an organization, doesn’t make them evil, Ms. Marsha One Note.

  • Andrew Porter

    I remember that hotel plan. It would have been an enormous upside down cake of a place, cantilevered out over the East River, totally illegal under the zoning and landmark laws. Other Walentas plans were also oblivious to Landmarks, and symbolic of his ideas of what is suitable for a historic area. Witness the placing of the Carousel in BBP, where it replaced an area actively used by sunbathers, picnickers, those who wanted to enjoy quiet parkland.

  • marshasrimler

    Mr. Andrew. I know it hurts but it is the truth..So sue me..I was on that board years ago.. I know

  • ellymay878

    I love the carrousel…reminds me of Coney Island where I would go with my Dad to get on the Carrousel. I got on with my 85 yr. old Mom and my daughter and totally enjoyed it. We have many parks in BH but only one beautiful carrousel.

  • Daddyo

    Where do you live, Lori? Do you read the news? New middle school under construction in Dock St. Condos (going up on the other side of the BB, where St. Ann’s Warehouse was)…see curbed (5/28/14): After years of sitting stagnant as a giant dirt pit, the 17-story Dock Street Dumbo project is finally rising, and it’s rising quickly. Construction started this past winter, and the 290 apartments should be ready for occupancy in the first quarter of 2015. Workers are currently installing windows and the facade on the lower floors, and the tower portion is up to the 11th floor. The 50,000-square-foot school will be turned over to the city’s School Construction Authority this summer, and it will welcome students in August 2016. Dumbo overlord Two Trees is the developer, and the designers are LEESER Architecture and Ismael Leyva Architects. Fifty-eight of the apartments will be affordable, with rents starting at $538 for a studio; market rate rents have not rent been released.

  • Martin L Schneider

    Yes, of course, we all love merry go rounds. But the issue is: Does it belong right there, exactly in the most prominent spot blocking the view of the Great Bridge and taking up grassy space overlooking the river? It could have located anywhere down there, back over by the bridge. But, no, the piggy greedy Walentas’s demanded that it be center stage. And that’s what they got.

  • Sen. Bob Forehead

    What difference could it possibly make at this time what happened 30 years ago?

  • marshasrimler

    Because it is still there. Less obvious but there to today.
    “lets keep those folks from the projects out of the heights..lets destroy and downsize our library to do it

  • Dr Livingston

    Takes one to know one

  • Sen. Bob Forehead

    If that were the case they would be destroying the movie theater on court street first.

  • marshasrimler

    they fought against it and lost

  • marshasrimler

    You are right Martin. the Merry go round which my daughter loves.. is in the wrong place.
    With Dock st. oversized as it is the area is overbuilt .

  • Andrew Porter

    So, you’ve never been to the carousel (I knew them as a “merry-go-Round”) in Prospect Park, which predates this one by decades? It’s near the boathouse and the intersection of Empire Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue.

  • ellymay878

    I knew them as merry-go-rounds ,too.

    I was going to Prospect Park ,the Coney Island, and Forest Park merry-go-rounds way back so many years that I don’t want to say. However, this one is conveniently in my neighborhood, has a great view, and therefore my favorite.

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