Long time IMBY crack addicts will be especially pleased to hear that 396 15th Street , after many years in extensive rehab, has apparently sold for the asking price of $1.5 million . The new owners as of August 2012... Carriage House 396 LLC. The name of course invites speculation as to whether the current certificate of occupancy (D-1 Industrial/Factory) for the 4,600 square foot, two story garage might be converted to single family residential use. The neighborhood's R6B zoning laws could allow an additional two stories to be added, topping out at some 50 feet with setbacks or something like 7000 buildable square feet in total. Crack of DawnThis week incredibly loud early morning jackhammering required that I research the DOB"S BIS page to see what's up at this long time vacant property. Permit activity suggests all that noise is the result of on-going demolition work to remove a "structurally defective" section in the rear of the building. No applications for change of use though. No "New Building" plans filed.
396 15th Street between 7th And 8th Avenues across from the castle like Park Slope Armory Sports Center
Architect's rendering for a Carriage House
2nd Floor Mega Skylight
Zoning Porn
Suggested Floor Plans
The seller has posted these interior shots of the second floor as well as some suggested architectural plans, drawn up to give potential buyers an idea as to the property's potential. If this building truly goes residential it just about completes the block's decade long up scale transformation from auto shops and parking lots to multifamily rentals and condominiums.
The last hold out?... What remains is the old, cinnamon sugar scented, Rojas Mexican Bakery still baking traditional breads a few doors up the block at 404 15th.
A brief history of 396's survival, in pictures and words from the IMBY Archives...
The Blumpkin: That's sweet little 396 on the left, eviscerated, a casualty of adjacent 400 15th Street's improper foundation excavation. That's the basement of 400 15th submerged in water on the right. They actually tried to build and unbuild both buildings simultaneously.
Collateral damage: The side wall of 396 collapsed during the construction of 400 15th street. Braces hold up the roof until new underpinning and cinderblock walls can be rebuilt. The entire front facade had to be replaced as well.
Groundbreaking foundation work awakens $1.6 million Prospect Avenue sleeper. Looks like Mark Zeldin, South Slope landmarker, has acquired the stalled site 379 Prospect Avenue adding to his already extensive neighborhood portfolio. Eleven buildings and counting .
Zoned R5B, filed plans call for 10 dwelling units and 7 off street accessory parking spaces on the vacant L shaped lot. That's going to be a building with 14,465 buildable square feet, some 33' tall, three stories and cellar.
The building's lay-out will be 2 units on the ground or first floor, 4 units on the second and another 4 units on the third floor. Look out for a 12' curb cut on Prospect Avenue with a pass through to accommodate parking in the rear yard of the building... My guess anyway. Antoine Sayad of Moss and Sayad Architectects have agreed to self-certify this project...
L -shaped lot between WIndsor Place and Prospect Avenue in pink. Notice the long white roofed wedge-shaped building on the right? That's the recently completed, on the market condo 1638 8th Avenue... The Windsor Lake Building for my devoted readers.
Persona non grata.
Zeldin, has had his troubles developing several of his previous properties in the South Slope. In February 2006, two construction workers were injured during demolition of a wall at 226-228- 230 16th Street, a multiple building Zeldin condominium project. A Stop Work Order Violation was served by the Department of Buildings that same day in response to the accident. Days later, the contractors were caught working at the site disregarding the SWO, and were served an additional violation for failure to comply. They were fined $2000.
The adjacent home owners of 232 16th St. have filed a lawsuit against Zeldin and 16th St. Development for extensive damages to their property, they claim, resulting from unprotected demolition and excavation work while digging the foundation for 230 16th Street.
In 2007 Zeldin was accused by neighbors of committing "demolition by neglect" after a vacant brick apartment building, 18-20 Jackson Place, collapsed on adjacent properties during a storm. The block was closed off until HPD could finish the demolition as ordered by the DOB. Brownstoner captured the event and the disgruntled local commentary at the time.
Again in 2007 and 2008 Zeldin's team of contractors racked up various Stop Work Order Violations and fines while building another South Slope condo project, 390 14th Street. A recent BIS search shows $7,500 in unpaid fines issued to Marie Grasso and MMG Demolition, Zeldin's go-to-gal for breaking all things architectural. There are, again, violations and fines for unsafe excavation on record here and here.
The legacy: Visual illiteracy
Zeldin's infamous portfolio of projects offer future architectural historians a visual record of the prolific, opportunistic property speculation that occurred during and after the 2005 panic driven frenzy to down-zone our South Slope neighborhood. Maybe, someday, a round table panel of developers/architects/real estate brokers could be subpoenaed and forced to examine their role in the gentrification of the Park Slope South neighborhood and how it has created a demand for a breed of nondesign-centric, low-end, high-priced developments.
In the mean time a picture as they say is worth a 1000 words.
Parting Shot: September Sunset. Sayonara Main Street, Millerton NY
My Rumspringa
"Did I miss you? No not really."
I haven't spent more than three continuous weeks away from Brooklyn in more than twenty plus years that I've known her. Four weeks have passed. Has my heart grown fonder in her absence? If I don't say yes, what trouble will I bring upon myself. I'm afraid to ask because I already know the answer. I don't think she cares one way or another.
The gig is up. Get out there and move your cars Southern Slopers. July 2nd is a Monday which is the odd side of 16th Street's regularly scheduled 11:30am moving time.
Rumor has it that there may be some kind of grace period from ticketing until the word gets out. True?
400 15th Street lit up like a big jackass-o'- lantern. There's got to be a lesson to be learned from living behind a painfully slow construction site for eight years. A layman observer might compare this job site to that of watching one of those high speed 10,000 frames per second films capturing every minute detail of some great explosive human catastrophe, shown in ultra-slow motion... Only in reverse... Where the frame by frame action begins just after the point of impact with an opening shot of some smoldering, horrific gash and finishes up with a still of an intact toddler picking wild flowers.
They delivered the sheetrock this week! The end is nearer.
'Too Tall Radusky" speaking before a class of young entrepreneurs at Brooklyn College on the trials and tribulations of being a practicing NYC architect.
For those of you who want to cut to the chase I recommend jumping to the 8:07 mark where he briefly addresses building and zoning codes or maybe the 11:23 mark where he acknowledges that builders have the desire to cut corners that can jeopardize workers and the publics safety.
98% of my clients want to max out their buildings and take advantage of every loophole in order to reap the biggest rewards.
Judging by news reports, Radusky and Bricolage Designs seem to attract a certain kind of developer, builder, engineering firm…It would have been interesting to hear him speak candidly about his relationships with many of the more unpopular developers in Brooklyn.
543 Carroll St., left, and 560 Carroll St., right, are prime examples of the new apartments on Fourth Avenue. Ken Maldonado for The Wall Street Journal
Just as great architecture can lift the spirit, bad architecture can crush it.
In few parts of New York is this more the case than with the rash of new apartment buildings along Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue, the six-lane street that runs south from Atlantic Terminal and cleaves Park Slope from Gowanus. Because of bad decisions by Amanda Burden's City Planning Department and the profit-above-all-else motive of some developers, Brooklyn is going to be stuck for decades with this depressing wasteland of cheap materials and designs.
Just how bad is Fourth Avenue? Consider the latest addition, a 12-story rental apartment building under construction at Fourth Avenue and 6th Street. It was designed by Karl Fischer, an architect with offices in New York and Montreal who has been criticized for his numerous slap-em-up buildings in other parts of the city.
A rendering shows the new condo to be bland and uninspiring. But it says a lot about Fourth Avenue that compared with the eyesores that were built before, it's actually an improvement.
Sadly, the damage already is done. Fourth Avenue, anchored at the north end by the sublime Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, could have one day become one of New York's grand avenues, a broad street full of life, mixed uses and appealing architecture.
But the Planning Department lacked such foresight in 2003 when it rezoned the noisy avenue to take advantage of the demand for apartments spilling over Park Slope to the east and Boerum Hill and Gowanus to the west. Focused primarily on residential development, it didn't require developers to incorporate ground-level commercial businesses into their plans, and allowed them to cut sidewalks along Fourth Avenue for entrances to ground-level garages.
Developers got the message. With the re-zoning coinciding with the real-estate boom, they put up more than a dozen apartment towers, many of them cheap looking and with no retail at the street level, effectively killing off the avenue's vibrancy for blocks at a time.
The city finally got wise and passed another zoning change last year, correcting some of these mistakes. But it was too late. Walking along parts of Fourth Avenue today is like walking in the suburbs, bereft of the interaction between pedestrian and building, except for occasionally having to dodge a car darting out of a garage.
"Not every building has to be a masterpiece, but I think developers owe it to the community to pay attention to the fabric of the city and the urban landscape," says David Briggs, an architect who lives in the area. "On Fourth Avenue, that just didn't happen."
Ms. Burden declined to be interviewed for this article. A spokeswoman for her office claimed in an email the city's policy has been a success because of the hundreds of new residential units developed along Fourth Avenue.
But the spokeswoman acknowledged that the early buildings developed after the 2003 rezoning "failed to engage the street by placing garages and other unattractive uses on the ground floor" and did not bring a "vibrant mix" of ground-floor uses. "It was not a concern at the time that development controls would be needed to prevent the negative aspects of development that has occurred on Fourth Avenue," she wrote.
Of course the Planning Department was only partly responsible. Some of the architects responsible for middle-brow architecture along Fourth Avenue are surprisingly candid about the other cause: They pass the buck to the developers who hired them and the pressure they faced to cut costs at the expense of aesthetics.
"I try to do my best for my clients and try to get them as big a building as possible," says Henry Radusky, a partner with Bricolage Architecture and Designs LLC, which has built nine buildings along Fourth Avenue in the last decade.One of Mr. Radusky's buildings was 586 President St., one of three buildings on the same two-block stretch of the avenue that contribute to its canyon of mediocrity look. Another is the Novo Park Slope, at Fourth Avenue and 5th Street, a pallid, prison-like structure with parking and a medical facility at ground level that towers menacingly over its next-door neighbors. Each Radusky project looks like a slapdash building with blank, deadened bases that add nothing to the street.
"We're always urging our clients for better architecture. Some of them go for it, some of them don't. It is a shame, no question about it," Mr. Radusky says. "The city gifted these developers with a really profitable zone, and not everyone took advantage of it to build good architecture."
Gregory Rigas, the developer of 586 President, and Isaac Katan, the developer of the Novo, couldn't be reached for comment.
The rendering of Mr. Fischer's new building shows a massive, blocky, 12-story hunk of steel and glass, in cool blacks and silvers, with three floors of penthouses, set back from the building's base with small balconies strapped on. It's nothing special, but at least the building has more than 3,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, in bays along Fourth Avenue, and just one small, garage-like parking entrance on 6th Street.
"The Fourth Avenue corridor was a major blemish for Amanda Burden," says Drew Popkin, development director for the Naftali Group, the project's developer. "But is it too late to rectify that? Certainly not. This is just the beginning for Fourth Avenue."
The spokeswoman for the Planning Department says: "We learned from this and from re-zonings in other parts of the city." After Mayor Bloomberg leaves office at the end of 2013, Ms. Burden may be replaced as head of the Planning Department as well as chairwoman of the Planning Commission. Let's hope her replacement makes his or her mistakes before taking power.
Architects of Brighton Beach condo in deadly collapse had history of flouting regulations
Buildings Department claim they operated on the fringe, says Assemblyman James Brennan
TODD MAISEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSOne worker died after a building collapsed in a construction accident on Brighton 5th St. in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, on Tuesday. Rescuers rushed into to save four other workers who were trapped.
The architects of a Brighton Beach condo complex that collapsed — killing a worker — have a troubled history of flouting regulations, the Daily News has learned.
Douglas Pulaski and Henry Radusky were forced to surrender some privileges in the past because of problems with projects, city records show.
“They have been known by the Buildings Department for many years to operate on the fringe,” Assemblyman James Brennan (D-Park Slope) said Wednesday.
He said that in 2005 he demanded the Buildings Department review all projects submitted by their firm, Bricolage Architecture and Design.
And he said the agency should have had them in its “line of sight” before the five-story development on Brighton Fifth St. crumpled Tuesday as concrete was poured.
Officials said concrete is normally spread from the bottom floors up — but the contractor started with the third floor and was working down.
Jerry Gargano, who delivered 67 cubic yards of concrete to the site Tuesday, said the contractor may have been trying to save time.
When concrete is poured top down, the line pump needs to be primed with lubricant once. Working bottom up, pipes must be primed for each floor.
“If you’re starting from the bottom, it takes longer to set up,” Gargano said.
When the building collapsed, five workers were injured, and one of three men pulled out of the rubble later died. He was identified as Ivan Lendel, 54.
It’s unclear if Bricolage was on site when the concrete was laid, but a former Buildings Department official said architects or an engineer should have been there.
“Professionals would never have allowed pouring concrete in this way,” the ex-official said. “In fact, skilled union workers would not do it. Not ever.”
In 2009, Pulaski surrendered his self-certification — his right to certify that design and construction comply with codes, records show. Radusky, surrendered his self-certification privileges in 2002 for a year after inspectors found problems on 55 jobs.
It wasn’t clear if the duo had regained those privileges. Bricolage did not return a call, and the Buildings Department did not respond to questions about the architects.
The city issued nine violations to SP&K Construction after the collapse, but more are expected as the probe unfolds. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is also investigating.
