A Duffield Street Underground Railroad Home Escapes the Wrecking Ball!

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, the city has pledged that it will not use eminent domain to condemn 227 Duffield Street, one of the seven sites on Duffield said to be part of the historic Underground Railroad .

The city, in a settlement filed on Friday, agreed to allow Joy Chatel to retain ownership of her home on Duffield Street. Sources told the Eagle that the city most likely wants to avoid a long, messy legal battle that would delay the construction of a public plaza and parking garage planned there as part of the Downtown Brooklyn Redevelopment Plan.

Oddly enough, one hand of the City recently co-named Duffield Street "Abolitionist Place" in honor of its Underground Railroad past, while the other hand had been steadfastly trying to demolish many of the homes thought to be part of this past.

According to Develop, Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a press conference -- to be attended by a slew of representatives, advocates and others -- is slated to be held Monday at noon in front of the Chatel home.

UPDATE: Monday's toast here.

More here.

- Second Hearing on Underground Railroad Properties in Downtown Brooklyn
- Second Chance for Duffield Street Underground Railroad Homes
- Buildings Shooting Up in Downtown Brooklyn, Why Offer Incentives?
- City to Commemorate Underground RR in Brooklyn -- At Site Where It Wants to Demolish Alleged Underground RR Safehouse
- Goodbye Duffield Street Underground RR Homes
- Video Explains All: Brooklyn's Duffield St. Houses
- Lawsuit to Save 'Duffield Seven' from Downtown Brooklyn Plan
- Brooklyn Underground Railroad Home for Sale for $4.5 Million
- Underground RR Consultants Tried to Pull (Another) Fast One
- Atlantic Yards Consultant Bill Up to $4.8 Million
- Red Hook Lane Demapped, No Longer Exists
- Is $500,000 Underground Railroad Study Bogus?

Photos by MK Metz

Ricky's Brooklyn Christmas

Have yourself a merry little Christmas at Ricky's in Brooklyn Heights.

But don't bring the kids.

- Ricky's Does Halloween
- Wigs, Soap and Yep, Sex Toys Hit Brooklyn Heights
- Wigs, Soap -- and Sex Toys -- in Brooklyn Heights

Photo by MK Metz

Little Christmas Trees

At Peas n' Pickles in Brooklyn Heights.

Photo by MK Metz

Hotels Grow Like Mushrooms in Downtown Brooklyn

Here's the latest look at the burgeoning hotel site(s) at 216-228 Duffield Street. The Lam Group is building two hotels on Duffield, across the street from the famous alleged underground railroad sites, that will add up to 501 rooms. The construction shown above will be a 325-room Sheraton;to its right, work not yet visible, will be a 176-room Aloft hotel.

- Boutique Hotel on Duffield Street, and More Brooklyn in Brief Tuesday
- Goodbye Duffield Street Underground RR Homes


Photo by MK Metz

Bogus Birds Sing at Brooklyn's MetroTech

Or, The Kind of Thing You Sometimes Run Into When You Least Expect It

So there we were, strolling through MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn when we heard, up in the trees, the sweet warbling of -- wait a minute -- the weirdest, most ungodly "birds" we ever heard. One of them sounded like somebody was croaking out, "Poor Sam Peabody. Peabody. Peabody..." Another sounded like a bunch of Zen monks taking a spin on riding lawn mowers.

Peering up into the branches, we eventually realized that the sounds were not coming from actual birds, but were emanating from overhead speakers placed throughout the trees running down the middle of the walkway running through Metrotech.

"Ha!" we thought. This must be Art. And sure enough, after rooting around a bit, we discovered that this particular piece of Art was Nina Katchadourian's "Please, Please, Pleased to Meet'cha," part of the Public Art Fund's "Everyday Eden" exhibition going on at MetroTech until next September. (Unless the real birds stage a revolt and attack the hell out of those speakers.)

Public Art Fund's Web site describes the project this way: "Please, Please, Pleased to Meet'cha is a sound project inspired by the elusive task of describing birdsong ... Because the human attempt to describe birdsong is a kind of translation problem—from aural to written, from animal to human sound—the artist asked UN translators and interpreters to interpret the sounds, suggesting that human communication might have the innate ability to cross linguistic (even species) boundaries."

Well, okay then. As long as they don't drop any -- you know -- stuff on us as we walk under the speakers.



Photos by MK Metz

A Brooklyn Folly? Someone's Not Happy at 110 Livingston

Stephanie from IntoTheBox.tv sent this video about the lawsuit over alleged square footage fraud at 110 Livingston, the former Board of Ed headquarters that Mayor Bloomberg calleda “notorious Kremlin” and Giuliani wanted to blow up.

Seems like a few unhappy tenants may want to blow it up, too -- or at least their contracts. A couple who paid almost $800,000 for a yet-unbuilt apartment, found that the place was 109 square feet smaller than Two Trees had promised -- a 17 percent difference, and one that they call fraud.

The Observer provides a link to the actual lawsuit here.

Is This the Start of the Recession? Ad Revenue in Newspaper Industry Predicted to Drop 9 Percent Next year

Bank of America analyst Joe Arns cut his rating on the New York Times company to “sell” from “neutral” and reduced his price estimate on the stock to $14 from $21. Mr. Arns estimated that ad revenue in the newspaper industry will likely drop 9% next year as a collapse in the housing market, coupled with a hiring slowdown, reduce the demand for classified advertising. Crains New York

The Market Has 'Peaked' in New York, and More

- The Real Deal has packaged together a list of links relating to the ever-so-slowly sinking real estate market in New York. Here are numbers 1 - 3 out of 11 points (not all are pessimistic):
1. Panel at REBNY event agrees that the market has passed its peak more [NYO]
2. A look at the subprime mortgage crisis' impact on the market more [NYO]
3. Trulia adds foreclosure listings more [Trulia Blog]
Points 4 - 11 here.

- We love the ever-optimistic New York City Housing Bubble blog. Today's headline is 'The Existing Home Sales PlungeOmeter.' Read it and weep here.

Biggest Building in Brooklyn -- So Far -- Proposed for City Tech's Klitgord Auditorium Site

Everybody's been posting this rendering of the new City Tech tower that's been proposed for the corner of Tillary and Jay Streets in Downtown Brooklyn, but it is so stupendous it deserves to be seen again.

As reported in the Brooklyn Eagle, Forest City Ratner’s MaryAnne Gilmartin had announced the project and its designer, Italian architect Renzo Piano, at a meeting of the Metropolitan New York Chapter of the Appraisal Institute in 2006, but this is the first visual of the "stunningly tall" building -- estimated to be between 65-70 stories.

The site is that of the existing two-story Klitgord Auditorium on the southeast corner of Tillary and Jay (shown below), which will be demolished. In October, we noticed that the Jersey Boring and Drilling Co. was conducting test borings around the auditorium as part of the subsurface investigation of the site.

Photo of the existing Klitgord Auditorium by MK Metz

The credit chain: The rendering was first posted on the Wired New York Forum on Thanksgiving Weekend and then picked up by the 110 Livingston Blog. From there it went to the Gowanus Lounge and Brownstoner.

UPDATE: The Daily News reports that a Forest City Ratner spokesperson says the design is a year old, and "not a reflection of what we're considering today."

UPDATE: Here are several future iterations of the complex.

- Digging For Gold at City Tech's Klitgord Auditorium

Brooklyn Bridge Park to Have Permanent Floating Pool? And More Brooklyn in Brief

- The Floating Pool Lady was such a big hit last summer, when it was moored at the foot of Atlantic Avenue, that Brooklyn Bridge Park planners are considering building another one to be permanently docked within the planned, 85-acre park. Brooklyn Eagle

- Borough President Markowitz has named CB 2 chair Shirley McRae to be the new Brooklyn representative to the city Planning Commission, replacing Dolly Williams, who was forced to recuse herself from discussions about Atlantic Yards. Brooklyn Paper

- The 300-acre Brooklyn Navy Yard will soon be adding four acres through a dredging project that will pave the way for more than $500 million in private investment there - the greatest expansion there since World War II. New York Post

- Dumbo Improvement District’s Second Annual Holiday Lighting Ceremony will take place on Thursday, November 29, 2007 at 6:30pm in the Pearl Street Triangle. DumboNYC

- The most widely used influenza drug in the world -- Tamiflu -- should carry a stronger warning label about psychiatric problems seen in a handful of patients, government advisers said Tuesday. New York Times