City Planning Commission Approves Library Project

By on November 2, 2015 10:19 pm in Brooklyn Heights, Development, Government, News, Real Estate

The Commercial Observer reports that the City Panning Commission has, by a 10-0 vote, approved the deal by which the Brooklyn Public Library would sell the existing Brooklyn Heights Branch to the developer Hudson Companies, which will demolish the existing building (along, alas, with the perhaps less than artistically notable friezes on the facade that your correspondent nevertheless loves) and replace it with a projected 33 story residential and commercial building with a new library at the street and lower level. In the interim, Hudson would rent space at Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral, Henry and Remsen streets, as a temporary location for the Brooklyn Heights Branch.

The next hurdle for approval of the library project is the City Council and, ultimately, the Mayor.

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  • Jorale-man

    An interesting point here:
    http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/11/8581534/brooklyn-heights-library-plan-clears-planning-commission-vote

    A coalition of unions “are troubled the project does not include any requirements to pay a prevailing wage or use unionized labor.” So the library will be one-third the size of the original one and the developer won’t have to pay a going wage to the workers who build it.

  • William Gilbert

    And they’ll probably work 7 days a week. Welcome to the new world order.

  • Jeffrey Smith

    This is exactly what happen when everyone follow the current Heights “leadership” This is the result of listening to and following the BHA/casino/leading critics who council us to ” go through the system” to flight this. Of course that only allows the cancer to grow and ever increasing parts of what is (or increasingly was) great about the Heights to fade away or be torn up! And if you continue to listen to and follow the incompetents and conflict of interest types there going to be just more disasters. We simply need a new leadership. Or get ready for many more disasters.

  • DIBS

    I’m going to assume that many of the critics and hand wringers will not be able to “move on” after this decision.

  • Concerned

    Who do you suggest should be the new leader? How do you suggest they change things?

  • Brixtony

    Based on the writing style, content and a couple of other clues, I believe this is the elusive will o’the whisp. If I’m wrong, I’ll delete this post.

  • Brixtony

    Hi gang,
    Look what I found in the archives: http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/30169

  • Solovely

    This was a starting comment, from a few months back, “Alicia Glen, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development, told the City Council today that obligating developers who receive the controversial 421a tax break to pay construction workers prevailing wages could result in 17,000 badly-needed below-market apartments not getting built—and argued that the demand for low-cost housing trumps the call for union jobs” AND “Ms. Glen justified this measure by arguing that maintenance and service employees need prevailing wages more than construction workers.“Those are incredibly important jobs, because those workers tend to be on the lower income of the wage scale,” she said.

    http://observer.com/2015/06/deputy-mayor-prevailing-wages-would-cost-city-17000-affordable-apartments/

  • Concerned

    Wow! Nice work. WSW messed with the wrong person.

  • Jeffrey Smith

    Wow, what total rock throwers. Hey try speaking to the (very critical) issue involved.
    By the way, brix is going from blog heading to heading reporting the same ” expose”

    Once a rock thrower…but it’s interesting, brix is apparently following the
    the idea that if you repeat a lie (or half/or one tenth truth) enough people will totally believe it. And I wonder who said that? Hmmm…..
    Is that who brix/studio/Archie think was correct?

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlsiLOnWCoI Arch Stanton

    Bingo Got him!

  • W Gilbert

    Maybe we’ll be like you and move out of the Heights (to Bucks County) in order for us to “move on!”

  • Jeffrey Smith

    Well I could easily tell you, if someone would allow my very reasonable comments to stay up……

  • Willow Street Watch

    Well, Blaz is 100% a invention of the big banks and the real estate community. Look at who his big $$$ backers are..and were from day one.

    Of course, the RE tulip craze has now gone wild, even beyond that of Bloomie’s era. The good news is that blaz appears to have gone irretrievably into negative public opinion. A mayor who less and less people support, can’t cover his friends swarmy deals. So a lot of his friends in the financial/RE/urban policy “community” don’t have the protection they had a few months ago. Not that they’re being awash in $ billions leaves them unprotected. But someone might be made to roll now.

  • William Spier

    I am wondering: if this is a mixed use building in BH, are the folks who really need decent housing going to live there or take out the trash? Heights leadership may be lacking these days, but who are they leading? I can count the number of people I know here who showed up to support our hospital with my fingers.

    New York City has no master plan for development that makes sense. The “City Planning Commission” is oxymoronic. The big developers and real estate funds own the streets, not the people who taxes relative to income make them the true owners. Libraries that have a space that speaks, “I am a library”–like the one we have now– no longer mean what they always did through history: a repository of human creativity that when engaged makes us smarter and more human.

    I wonder if the new building will have a gym and iPhone store?

    Mr. Dibs makes a snarky comment above about hand wringing. He’s a real deep dude whose picture screams my pockets are deeper than yours. Ah, um, wrong.