No official announcement has been made, but the buzz is that the city is reconsidering evicting container port operator American Stevedoring from Piers 7-10 in Red Hook, according to the Daily News. The Bloomberg administration had wanted to replace the container port with a second cruise ship terminal, a brewery, a bottle distributor and other more consumer-friendly maritime businesses.
Officials from the city’s Economic Development Corporation decline to speak on the record. But last week, new project manager Madelyn Wils told the New York Observer that the agency was considering putting out a “request for expressions of interest” seeking a container port operator for the piers.
Apparently, the one that has been there for two decades might not be the right one. “Just because new employers take the place [of American Stevedoring] doesn’t mean the jobs will stay,” Sandy Pope, president of Teamsters Local 805, tells the News.
There’s been a lot of speculation on the reasons behind the Bloomberg administration’s “unexpected about-face.” The Daily News focuses on the lack of jobs created by the first cruise terminal on the piers — only 14 full-time employees. Plans for a second cruise ship terminal were abandoned over a month ago.
The Eagle reported last month that every other component of Bloomberg’s pier makeover campaign were complicated by American Stevedoring’s refusal to vacate — most recently bottle distributor Phoenix Beverage and those interested in developing a marina.
Also, the Federal Maritime Commission extended its decision date last week on whether the eviction of an American Stevedoring subsidiary from Pier 7 is legal.
City Council Member Bill de Blasio is taking on architect Robert Scarano. According to the New York Sun, the councilman is now asking the city’s Department of Buildings to stop work on all Scarano projects, saying he should not be allowed to build while under investigation by the State Department of Education for “repeatedly violating the city’s building code.”
The city Department of Buildings took away Scarano’s right to self-certify his own permit applications last year, but a spokeswoman told the Sun the department is not legally allowed to stop work based on an architect’s history.
Scarano, who has designed hundreds of properties in Brooklyn, did not comment to the Sun.
The current project that is garnering attention, particularly on blogs like Brownstoner and Gowanus Lounge, is at 360 Smith St. in Cobble Hill. Some residents there oppose the height of the building and the loss of the corner plaza.
One Carroll Gardens resident writes Gowanus Lounge to say: “It is no doubt a great little photo op for Mr. de Blasio, but several CG residents have told me they do not trust him [de Blasio] at ALL!”
When asked about THE Atlantic Yards project, architect David Adjaye, a British favorite new to the city, tells New York magazine, “There are a lot of emotional discussions about development everywhere. As an architect, I have to be an optimist.”
One of his few U.S. projects was a Fort Greene studio for artists Lorna Simpson and James Casebere, but we’ll be seeing more of the young architect in the coming years. An exhibit based on his book, “Making Public Buildings,” is opening today at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and his New York office is opening this year.
Like Atlantic Yards architect Frank Gehry, Adjaye has had his own public roasting, but in his case it was from a client. He says it made him want “the earth to swallow me,” but defends himself, saying the criticism that stemmed from leaks was a result of shoddy contracting work, not his design. Perhaps embattled Brooklyn architect Robert Scarano can use that defense.
Adjaye's public works “encourage permeability,” and include the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, two Idea Stores in Europe and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. His private spaces, however, look virtually impermeable from the outside, giving the feeling of “a kind of retreat from the urbanity of the city.”
— Compiled by Sarah Ryley
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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