Owners Have Applied for Permits
But Work Has Yet To Begin
By Charles Maldonado
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
SCHERMERHORN STREET -- Work to improve the piers and bulkheads around the now-destroyed
Greenpoint Terminal Market has yet to begin as father-and-son developers
Joshua and Jack Guttman faced another court date Monday in an ongoing criminal negligence case in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Judge Toko Serita, who granted an adjournment of the case at the request of prosecutor Richard Farrell, Monday granted another stay until mid-April. At the hearing, Farrell said that the Guttman family was keeping him updated on progress with the property.
The Guttmans, who face 434 counts of Failure to Maintain Privately Owned Waterfront Property, has applied for permits with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to fix the problem and reach compliance.
“I would be surprised if we got to April and those things were done,” said Evan Thies, environmental chair for Brooklyn Community Board One and a critic of the Guttman family’s management. “Simply saying ‘let’s wait five months’ is naïve.”
In May 2006, the property, on West Street between Quay and Noble streets, burned down in one of the largest fires in recent memory in the city. Homeless Polish immigrant Leszek Kuczera was arrested for arson and sentenced to alcohol rehabilitation in a plea bargain with prosecutors late last year. In June 2006, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office charged the family with negligence.
Guttmans Purchased Site
With Eye Toward Condos
The site, which the Guttmans purchased in 2001 for $24 million to develop into high-rise condos, has drawn anger from community leaders over the alleged negligence.
“The site is decrepit; the bulkheads are falling into the water,” Thies said.
Thies cited an article by the New York Post that appeared last August. The Post’s investigation found that, in addition to their current legal troubles, the Guttman family at the time owed the city $52,000 in unpaid taxes and $59,000 in unpaid fines.
The Guttman family and 72 West faced up to $2.17 million in fines for negligence of the Greenpoint property, up to $5,000 for each of the 434 counts. The number of counts represents days from the first inspection of the property in Jan. 2005 up to the fire in May 2006.
The Greenpoint Terminal Market was identified as one of the city’s most endangered pieces of historic architecture before the May 2006 fire destroyed most of it. The buildings were originally home to the American Manufacturing Company, a Brooklyn-based rope manufacturer that was founded around 1890, according to a report by the Municipal Arts Society (MAS) of New York.
According to the report, which was prepared just after an Environmental Impact Study was prepared for the rezoning of the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfront in 2005, the 16 buildings that comprised the complex were once home to the fifth largest industrial employer in New York City and possibly the largest rope manufacturer in the world.
The MAS recommended that the building be taken off the list of sites that were to be rezoned for higher density, i.e. high-rise condos, but the fire prevented that from happening.
Now, people like Thies just hope that Guttman is able to fix up the property so that something can be done with it.
“At the least it’s an eyesore. At worst, it’s halting the progress of a neighborhood,” he said. “Considering the potential value to the community a completed project could bring, something really has to be done about it.”
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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