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Brooklyn Community Board

Honoring a Brooklyn Activist

Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn brings us news of the push to rename the corner of Carroll Street and Seventh Avenue after Park Slope activist Jackie Connor, who died last week from lung cancer. Ms. Conner was instrumental in having the Department of Sanitation pick up trash along Seventh Avenue twice a week instead Read More

Cemetery Shuffle

Minerva, looking down. Last night, Brooklyn Community Board 7 overwhelmingly voted against HMS Associates' plan to build a 70-foot-high development at 614 Seventh Avenue in Sunset Park. The neighborhood had recently been down-zoned by the Department of City Planning, and the lot in question has a 50-foot height limit. (See our previous coverage on the Read More

New Residences in Red Hook? Nah.

Dude, where's my car? Nearby 146 Conover Street. Last Wednesday, Brooklyn Community Board 6 rejected a variance request for a vacant, trash-strewn lot at 146 Conover Street in Red Hook to be converted into a four-story residential building. The lot is zoned for manufacturing, and illustrates the age-old dilemma in Red Hook: How to keep Read More

Two Trees Tries Again … and Fails

Brooklyn Community Board 6, at its monthly full-board meeting last night, put the ixnay on Two Trees' long-sought-after proposal to turn the parking lot of Independence Bank, at 130 Court Street, into a six-story residential complex. Two Trees has gone before the board before to develop the property, which sits on the edge of the Read More

Gowanus Jam-Up

While condo conversions of industrial buildings are all the rage, Brooklyn Community Board 6 took a stand against the latest attempt at gentrification in the Gowanus neighborhood last night at its full board meeting, denying a variance for 255 Butler Street, at the corner of Nevins. The planned $27 million development would create 53 market-rate Read More

Progress Marches West on Atlantic

A new 114,319-square-foot, eight-story residential development on the corner of at 253 Atlantic Avenue (corner of Boerum Place) got the green light from the Board of Standards and Appeals last week. Currently the site of a Mobil gas station, the 64-unit development will finally fill in the squalid gap between downtown Brooklyn and Cobble Hill/Carroll Read More

The Owl of Minerva …

... flies only at Sunset Park? The Post reports today that the Department of City Planning is promoting a rezoning of South Slope/Sunset Park to curtail out-of-scale development on the side streets around Fourth Avenue, while at the same time allowing larger developments--up to 12 stories--on the avenue itself. According to Brooklyn Community Board Read More

Flying Walentas

Quirky developer David Walentas and his son Jed--the duo that either ruined DUMBO or made it, depending on whom you listen to--is making inroads into Cobble Hill. Their somewhat bland Courthouse luxury residential apartments just opened up at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street, and their company, Two Trees, is already angling for Read More