Thursday, February 27, 2014

Worlds Fair Pavilion in Flushing, Whats to happen in the Future?


While the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fair in New York may be a distant cultural memory, it’s undeniable that its architectural remnants–the New York State Pavilion, the Tent of Tomorrow, and the Space Needle–are some of Queens’ most recognizable landmarks.  Symbolically, the two mid-century World’s Fair, not only culturally defined New York but also the United States.
The World’s Fair events were also a moment of optimism for children all over America. Carl Sagan, one of the world’s most important scientists first discovered his passion for science from the 1939 Fair’s “World of Tomorrow” science exhibit. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor experienced similar inspirations at the 1964 World’s Fair as a youngster. Additionally, the pavilion structure encapsulates the technological advancements of the time from an architectural and engineering point of view and its abandoned remains  the disposable, consumerist mentality the era ushered in.
Vintage Postcard-Tent of Tomorrow-Phillip Johnson-Abandoned-Flushing Meadows-Corona Park-Queens-NYCImage via Alamedainfo.com
With such influence, wouldn’t the New York State Pavilion serve New Yorkers and Americans decades of further excitement? Apparently not. After the 1964 World’s Fair, the NYS Pavilion had limited usage for the public. Sitting inside the large Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the Pavilion became neglected, abandoned and deteriorated. In 1970 an ice skating rink was opened but closed shortly after. With the exception of a few movie sets including Men in Black, the pavilion became yet another blighted area of past memories. Preservation efforts of the pavilion started back in 1966, when Nathan Silver listed the pavilion as a possibility of destruction. In 1994, the Queens Theatre took over the area of the Circarama and uses the decayed pavilion as a storage area. The Pavilion was listed on the New York State Register of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
On Monday, the New York City Parks Department held a public event at the Queens Theatre called “Listening Sessions”regarding the future of the NYS Pavilion. The event consisted of architects, historians, preservationists, and park employees. After a brief presentation of transformative World Fair sites in cities such as Paris, the room broke into three groups to discuss questions such as the iconic nature of the Pavilion and solutions to restoration.
Almost all participants at the event argued that even partial demolition of the pavilion would not only be counterproductive to restoration but would also be too costly. The Parks Department laid out figures of costs for renovation, which includes two policy decisions – demolition and or not.  Demolition would cost about $14 million. The bigger question though is the future of the pavilion. What should we do with this public space?
A recurring term during the talks was how to adaptively re use the space. Some argued from a business perspective, giving companies such as ESPN rights to advertise which could start at $100,000 in advertisement revenue. Others want to use the space as a community area that encourages local engagement while representing a connection to the world. Additionally, the structure and design of the pavilion discourages re-use of something completely different from its former operations. Regardless of plans for usage, the Parks Department noted that 2014 is the year for the conversation to begin. This year is the 50th anniversary of the 1964 World’s Fair and an attempt to engage the public in revitalizing the pavilion is a must for future use.

you can find the original contents of this article Here

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Brownstone Sections of Bedford Brooklyn to become Landmark?

Most people would agree that the brownstones and small apartment buildings nestled in the southwest corner of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, are for the most part drop-dead gorgeous. The 800 largely intact residential buildings, representing Italianate, Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival and Renaissance Revival styles, are executed in rich rusts, browns and terra cottas, and adorned with gracious bowed windows, generously proportioned stoops and adorable little turrets. The result, in the opinion of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, is “an extraordinary well-preserved late-19th-century streets cape.”

Prosperous black families began buying these houses, many of which were designed by prominent architects, in the early 1900s. Despite being battered by crime, drugs, poverty and neglect in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, Bed-Stuy has for two thirds of a century endured as one of the nation’s largest and most storied concentrations of African-Americans and, more recently, Caribbean-Americans.

For these reasons, the landmarks commission has proposed designating a 16-block area bounded by Gates Avenue, Fulton Street, Bedford Avenue and Tompkins Avenue as the Bedford Historic District. The area sits just blocks from the Stuyvesant Heights Historic District, which was approved in 1971, and its extension, which was approved last year.
As is invariably the case when the city seeks to create a historic district, the proposal has prompted strong responses both pro and con. 

Many were aired at a public hearing in January 2013, when more than three dozen people testified before the commission, largely in favor of the proposal. In addition, 355 people submitted form letters in support of designation, and 220 people submitted letters seeking additional information, saying they knew too little about the proposal to make an informed decision. (According to the commission, only 37 of the letters were from property owners within the district).

Exuberant railings at 74 Halsey Street.
SASHA MASLOV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Supporters contend that a designation would preserve an architecturally and historically significant part of the city while also rewarding residents who had stuck with the neighborhood during tough times, in part by increasing the value of their homes and preventing unwelcome new development.
Opponents predict that a designation would bring heftier renovation costs and a tangle of regulations for homeowners seeking to improve their properties, along with higher rents and sale prices that would force out the largely low-income minority residents who form the area’s core. 

Opponents also argue that most Bed-Stuy residents weren’t adequately informed about the proposal. The wheels of historic designation grind exceedingly slowly, and no vote on the proposal has been scheduled. But as the city awaits the appointment of a new commission chairman, both sides continue to marshal their arguments.
The Proponents
Hancock Street
SASHA MASLOV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

If beauty were the sole criteria for designation as a historic district, proponents say the neighborhood would win hands down. Its smart-looking townhouses and small apartment buildings were designed by some of the city’s most celebrated 19th-century architects, and preservation groups have been vocal in praising their charms.

The Victorian Society New York described Bed-Stuy as home to “a wide array of exciting and important Victorian architecture.” The New York Landmarks Conservancy called the buildings “an extraordinary collection of architectural treasures with attractive streetscapes and a vivid sense of place” and praised their “dazzling array of the styles of the late 19th and early 20th century.”

The Historic Districts Council, which included the larger Bed-Stuy neighborhood in its first class of “Six to Celebrate” — New York neighborhoods worthy of attention — took note of “the architectural splendor of this remarkable Brooklyn neighborhood,” pronouncing it among the city’s “richest and most remarkable collections of 19th-century rowhouses.”
With Bed-Stuy second only to Harlem as a destination for black New Yorkers, many people also regard these streets as representing a vital thread in the city’s development. As the New York Landmarks Conservancy summed up their importance, “The sense of place is heightened by the strong sense of community, including many families that have owned their homes for generations.”

The area’s architecture can also be dignified, as on Madison Street between Marcy and Nostrand Avenues.
SASHA MASLOV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Advocates of historic designation say it is precisely this sense of community that they yearn to preserve.
“My 7- and 8-year-old sons are growing up in a Bedford Village brownstone that their great-grandparents purchased to raise their grandmother and great-uncles and host countless Thanksgiving dinners,” Yoidette Erima said. “Neighbors have come to know each other’s families over generations. The retired men on our block are out and about, keeping watch daily.”

Advocates also say that a historic designation would prevent existing buildings from being torn down and replaced by less attractive speculative developments.
“I am concerned about the cheaply made, thoughtlessly designed new buildings developed in our area in the last decade,” said Onika Abraham, a resident of Hancock Street who described herself as a second-generation homeowner in the proposed district.

In Bed-Stuy, many a playful turret is to be found; this one is on Jefferson Avenue.
SASHA MASLOV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

“I am hopeful,” added Ms. Abraham, who is in her late 30s and works as a communications director for a sustainable food network, “that the landmark designation would make developers consider the history, beauty and cohesion of our neighborhood when designing and constructing new buildings or renovations.”
Alicia and Steven Foxworth, Verona Place homeowners, are also not happy about such newcomers. “As residents that were born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant,” Ms. Foxworth told the landmarks commission, “myself a teacher, my husband an architect, we have watched closely as new development has changed the look and feel of our community. As such, we grieve the possibility that this trend will continue without the greatly desired protections of this landmarking process and we happily support the landmark designation.”

Some brokers endorse this position. Michelle Kadushin, an agent with Rutenberg Realty, who described herself as a “proud homeowner” in the proposed district, said: “I sell New York real estate and can see firsthand how preserving the original landscape of housing stock preserves our past. Every parcel has a story to tell, and we should preserve all of the chapters of the story.”
Many local civic groups and elected officials have supported the proposal, among them Community Board 3;the former borough president, Marty Markowitz; and Albert Vann, a former city councilman who represented the area for 40 years. They say that residents have been kept fully informed about the proposal and that any additional costs or red tape incurred would be worth it. “Yes, landmarking imposes some obligations on property owners,” Mr. Vann said, “but it gives more than it takes away.”

Also part of the tussle: houses on Monroe Street between Marcy and Nostrand Avenue.
EVAN SUNG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Perhaps the most heartfelt argument in favor of historic designation is that it will reward those who have kept faith in the neighborhood over the years. According to Claudette Brady, a founder of the Bedford Stuyvesant Society for Historic Preservation, the majority of those who testified in favor of the proposal before the landmarks commission were African-Americans between the ages of 65 and 95, many of them third-, fourth- and even fifth-generation residents, who hope that a historical designation will protect their economic investment.

“Bedford-Stuyvesant is a hard-working community of proud people who, when the city and government failed them, took back the streets, one block at a time,” said Suzanne Spellen, a preservationist and one-time Bedford resident who blogs as Montrose Morris on Brownstoner.com. “We swept our sidewalks, planted flowers in our yards and watched everyone else’s children as if they were our own.

“Landmarking is an affirmation of that struggle,” Ms. Spellen said, “a reward for holding on tight to something of great value, and that is this remarkable community of brick and mortar, tradition and pride, flesh and bone. It will protect what has been preserved for the last 150 years so that it can be handed down for those who will come after us, without the dangers of overdevelopment or arbitrary tear-downs and alterations.”

As for the specter of gentrification? “Gentrification and landmarking don’t necessarily go hand in hand,” Ms. Brady said. “Prices in the neighborhood, especially rentals, were already rising before landmarking was proposed.”

The Opponents
Opponents of the proposed Bedford Historic District agree that many of the buildings recommended for designation are exquisite. But, they wonder, are they all so handsome as to deserve being draped with an official mantle of protection?
The Real Estate Board of New York, an organization that has been vocal in identifying potential downsides of historic designation, has cited many structures in the proposed district that it considers decidedly mediocre.
“Looking at these inferior structures,” said Michael Slattery, the group’s senior vice president for research, “we ask ourselves: Are these buildings or the collection of buildings so special, so distinctive, that we want to preserve them forever?”

His association, which contends that only the most attractive structures were featured in the commission’s official description of the area, thinks not, and points to structures on Putnam Avenue, Madison Street and Monroe Street that, in the board’s opinion, do not measure up aesthetically.
The real estate group also questioned exactly how these homes reflect the area’s historic importance.

“It is impossible to establish a significant link between that history and this group of buildings,” Mr. Slattery said. Virtually every city neighborhood can claim an interesting history, he said. And he added, “What is it that elevates such history from interesting to important and that requires the preservation of these particular buildings forever?”
As is common in debates involving preservation, the loudest arguments have to do with money and red tape. Changes on the exteriors of buildings in a historic district must meet certain standards and must be approved in advance by the landmarks commission. Critics of the proposal contend that improvements could prove costly and time-consuming. And given that the average household income in the Bedford neighborhood is slightly over $50,000, according to census data, they say the burden will fall most heavily on longtime minority residents, many of whom are elderly and live on limited incomes.

“My family and I worked very hard for our property,” Kenneth Washington, a retired inspector for the city Department of Transportation, said in a statement to the commission. Citing the time and money that could be required to restore buildings within the district, he added, “We do not want to see this happen to our neighborhood.”
As for a city program that offers grants for facade restoration to eligible owners of buildings in historic districts, critics say the money available is too limited to do much good.

Opponents also worry that historic designation will lead to an unwelcome spike in property values that could force out working-class and middle-class residents who had survived the area’s difficult years and helped make the neighborhood what it is today. They say the costs of renovating designated buildings would be passed on to renters. The jury is out as to whether designation increases property values, Mr. Slattery said; however, the board’s analysis of historic districts in Manhattan shows that the median income in designated areas is much higher than the city average.

At the hearing, Kirsten John Foy, the president of the Brooklyn chapter of theNational Action Network, a civil-rights group, said that, as a result of foreclosures and other factors, “people are being forced out of their homes at still alarming rates. At a time when the community was beginning to reestablish itself,” Mr. Foy added, “why would we encourage gentrification, predatory lenders, buyers and racketeers? Making homeownership more costly for existing residents will accelerate normal market and business cycles, drive up evictions, and create more gentrification, more displacement.”

A common argument against historic designation is that it will hinder development. In this case, the real estate group contends that designation will choke off the production of affordable housing, a priority of the new de Blasio administration. Without designation, the real estate group said, developers would be able to build low-rise apartment houses that contain more units per structure than their neighbors.

For many residents, the issue simply boils down to information, or more accurately, what they see as the lack of it. Opponents of the plan criticized the scheduling of the commission’s hearing (in the middle of a workday) and its location (in Manhattan), on the grounds that it catered to what Mr. Foy described as “architectural elites.”
Even some who see merits in the proposal contend that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

“I am not opposed to protecting the historic and majestic neighborhood where I have worked and lived for over 20 years,” said the Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood, the senior pastor of Mount Pisgah Baptist Church, which sits just outside the proposed district. “However, I am opposed to additional and unnecessary landmark designation that will place undue financial constraints and burdens on people who can barely afford to maintain what they have spent years building.”

Mr. Youngblood also took issue with the way the city was handling the issue, saying the commission was trying to “ramrod this designation down our throats.”
And Sehu Jeppe, 64, a longtime city health department administrator who now runs a nonprofit organization called Black Wellness, told the commission: “What needs to be preserved are the people of Bedford-Stuyvesant.” Mr. Jeppe, a third-generation Bedford-Stuyvesant resident and a homeowner in the proposed district since 1987, added, “I’d hate to see us become a Harlem, where the jewel has been extracted.”

You can find the original contents of this article Here


Staten Island Prison To Be Turned Into Movie Studio

A film production company has announced plans to buy Staten Island's shuttered Arthur Kill Correctional Facility and turn it into the borough's first movie studio. Broadway Stages, which operates a total of 27 sound stages in Brooklyn and Queens, has agreed to pay the state $7 million for the prison and will put another $20 million into the facility. 
The correctional facility, which at one point housed more than 900 prisoners, was closed in 2011 as part of a statewide effort to cut down on prisons. It will not meet the wrecking ball, however, as Broadway Stages plans to keep all the former jail buildings for future film scenes. They will also build five sound stages on the 69-acre property.
Former ideas for repurposing the closed prison have included turning into a retail center or a college campus. Staten Island politicians seem pretty happy with this outcome, though, which they say will create 1,500 jobs over the next five years, more than three times the number of people employed by the prison when it closed.

you can find the original contents of this article Here


Thursday, February 6, 2014

East New York Brooklyn to become the next Bushwick?



Because every neighborhood has to be the “next” something, and, more to the point, because no Brooklyn neighborhood can go undeveloped, it would seem East New York is on deck to get some new residents, and some higher housing prices.

The Daily News recently dubbed the area a “home buying frontier,” (a theory that would seem to be bearing out) and now Untapped Cities has a thoughtful look at what’s going on in a neighborhood that, while it’s improved, can still rightly be deemed the “murder capital” of the city.

From the sound of it, the area hasn’t exactly taken on much of Bushwick’s “playground for 20-somethings-with-disposable income” hallmarks:
A walking tour reveals few of stores that the young and well-to-do have come to know and love. There are plenty of hair salons and 99-cent stores, as well as a bizarre preponderance of tax prep places, but prepared food in the vicinity is strictly limited: there’s a chicken and biscuits place, a Golden Krust, and a Chinese take-away kitchen, where a fried chicken liver and a fried half-chicken cost $3.50 and $4.50, respectively (cheaper than Bushwick!). The local grocery offers more Spam and liter-bottles of soda than a gentrifier might like, though tofu, hummus, and soy milk have made inroads. As for night life, the gentrifier is advised to look elsewhere: as Barney, a longtime resident, explained to Untapped Cities, there’s not enough disposable income in the area to justify investment in a bar or nightclub (yet!).
A lack of bars and restaurants does not a “next Bushwick” make! But then, when I first lived off the JMZ in Bushwick there weren’t really any bars that weren’t Lone Wolf, and inside of two years, the area around Myrtle-Broadway exploded (and became too expensive for me to live in anymore). When these things happen, they tend to happen fast.

For now, East New York just seems to be getting safer (other than iPhone snatchings, which are up), and a little more expensive. It’s also something of a haven for low-income residents who’ve already been priced out of Bushwick and Bed-Stuy and moved in as a “last resort,” as Untapped Cities points out. In that regard, it’s been “the next Bushwick” for a while now, which raises another, more important question: if the current residents do find themselves getting squeezed out by new residents, what’ll be the next East New York?


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Monday, February 3, 2014

Detriot to become the next Brooklyn?




















 -- Detroit is going to be the next "Brooklyn." Perhaps not all of Detroit. But certainly a portion of the city has the potential to become as rich and thriving as New York's trendiest borough.
Hope for Detroit would seem far-fetched if you had been on the "pornography of ruins" tour I have been going on for years, led by various residents over the years. But, it turns out that those tours were provided by folk who had lost their beloved city.

 I recently began to hang around with a younger crowd: Mark Nickita, for example, an architect and a maniacal optimist, and a serial small-scale entrepreneur who runs Archive DS, an architecture and urban design firm in downtown Detroit, and also co-owns eight retail establishments -- including two coffee shops, a cafĂ©, and a "Culture Shop" -- in and around the core of the city. What he showed me during some recent visits was astonishing.

There are in fact two Detroits: There is the oceanic disaster, and then there is an archipelago of vitality and potential, and even excellence. You can experience one or the other. You can be buried under the cold hard numbers of the fiscal situation -- or you can believe the evidence in front of your eyes.



How is this revival happening? The old way it seems; in that sequence that has always pioneered the revitalization of cities: the artists with a good eye, the penniless young people with a sense of adventure, and the fearless entrepreneurs. These were the pioneers of the Left Bank of Paris in the 1870s, Greenwich Village of the 1920s, SoHo in the '60s, Miami Beach in the '80s, and Brooklyn today. They are the first wave in a succession that thrives below the horizon of bureaucratic control. They can be classified as the risk oblivious cohort. Later, as a result of their success, when their neighborhoods have become cool, a risk aware cohort appears. These are the developers, who secure permits and mortgages.

Later yet, when it is perfectly obvious that the place is safe for investment, arrive the risk-averse -- the boring gentrifiers called "the dentists from New Jersey." By then, that generation of pioneers has been chased away, only to reappear at the next Brooklyn.
That Detroit is now attracting that first generation is an unintended consequence of its impoverishment. Detroit is now the city where the risk-oblivious millennials can get things done. Elsewhere, over the last three decades, there has arisen a regulatory regime so comprehensive that it is impossible even to make a cookie for sale without a certified kitchen, an accessible bathroom, and constant inspections. Almost everywhere else, the slack that once allowed revitalization to evolve organically has been exterminated by bureaucracies.

If this is not obvious, it is because most of us elders have grown up within the rising tide of regulation. We are inured -- and we even know how to operate within it -- but the young folk do not. They are flummoxed and repelled. As evidence, observe the extraordinary numbers of millennials who are currently in the arts. Could it be that art and video are among the few things that can be made and sold without regulation -- without the stranglehold of bureaucracy?

So, why is this happening in Detroit? Because its bankruptcy cannot support it, the glacier of American bureaucracy has receded. Detroit can no longer supervise crime, let alone gainful economic activity. There is a liberating adoption of the Nike mentality going on: Just do it! There is no red tape. So the young are immigrating in droves to start their businesses, to fix the buildings, to live affordably, to make their own security arrangements, to invent their amusements -- unimpeded. It is the agile deal flow of the Internet made physical.
There is already evidence of a related phenomenon: In other cities, because regulation has exterminated the first organic phase of revitalization, developers must be enticed before the cool is present, and so their expensively compliant projects must be subsidized -- hence the proliferation of the public-private partnership of the past 20 years. Development today is habitually subsidized. Why? Real estate is easily translated to wealth -- as was the expansion of the 19th and most of the 20th century.
 
Detroit has now inadvertently restored the organic sequence. Because the young people are in-migrating, the developers are following. Developers like Dan Gilbert are already renovating the big buildings and recruiting potential tenants by showing them that the workers they require are already there. This, which is today so unusual, is really just a reversion to the status quo before we became so rich that we could afford to be stupid.

Detroit is a model where wealth is absent, allowing millennials to grow wealth -- merely by withdrawing its bureaucratic impediments. Inspector: "Go ahead, just don't hurt yourselves" is not dissimilar to the situation encountered by my boomer generation when we were 30. Detroit is a Free Economic Zone, which should be institutionalized as the first Pink-Zone: a place where the red tape is light. This is a lesson for other cities, which can no longer afford to subsidize development (the need for which is ludicrous).

This trajectory, incidentally, is the future also of other to-be-bankrupt-cities so it is important. And the starting point is not zero: Detroit is so large that it has more good to revitalize than other big cities could ever hope to have.

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