No decision by Landmarks Commission on Brooklyn cinema

October 23, 2013 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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It’s no go from the LPC.

The city Landmarks Preservation Commission decided Tuesday not to vote on a new design for the apartment building that landlord Tom Caruana wants to build on top of the Brooklyn Heights Cinema.

“We haven’t quite found the formula yet,” said LPC Chairman Robert Tierney. The chairman suggested the project architect work with LPC staff on the design. Architect Randy Gerner of Park Avenue South firm Gerner Kronick + Valcarcel offered up a new design for the proposed 70 Henry St. project at a public hearing at the preservation agency’s Lower Manhattan Municipal Building offices.

The designer said the existing building should be demolished and its bricks turned backwards to expose their red side. The salvaged bricks would be used to build the ground level, where the cinema goes. There would be residential floors with floor-to-ceiling windows framed by ribbons of ductile concrete screens that are deep reddish brownstone color.

The first-floor movie theater in the proposed design has 98 seats, versus 150 seats in the current set-up. There are four upstairs residential floors with three apartments on each floor, and a 1,200-square-foot outdoor recreation space above the movie theater.

Caruana’s family has owned the property since 1968, when his grandpa Giuseppe Zevola bought it through a family company, Ridgeton Poultry.

Modesta Williams of the Historic District Council testified that the building design looks like “a new TriBeCa-SoHo loft.”