According to the Daily News, Miss Brooklyn, one of the centerpieces of Atlantic Yards, has been redesigned. Also, once it’s built, it will house only offices, not the original mixture of condos and offices. With all due respect to architect Frank Gehry, this looks like milk crates stacked outside a bodega.
According to the New York Sun, the condo boom on 4th Avenue is being helped by Park Slopers buying up the new units. The result could make a 1.4-mile section of the avenue the most densely populated area in the borough.
Everyblock now reports recent real estate sales as recorded by the city’s Department of Finance. The data are updated once a month. You can search by sale date, neighborhood, borough, ZIP Code, building class category, year built or building class.
A Chelsea condo project that promised “sky parking” has run into structural problems. The perk was to deliver owners and their cars right to their front doors (on whatever floor). Now the city has a stop-work order on the site at 200 11th Ave. after finding “questionable construction practices.” See the full story.
Park Slope Oscar winner Cynthia Wade had her local moment in the sun last week with a profile in the New York Times. It’s amusing and humanizing and you can read it here.
Prospect Park is about to get another glass tower overlooking it. Park Tower, a 23-story luxury condo tower on Lincoln Road is due to be finished in 2009. The 88,000-square-foot-building, with an interesting skew in its upper floors, will also include retail on its first floor. You can see what it looks like in the Daily News. The Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood didn’t get as much bounce from the recent real estate boom as other areas. This project could make a difference.
Garrison Keillor, the amiable host of NPR’s “Prairie Home Companion,” has put his above-average home up for sale. The seven-bedroom, Georgian style house is in St. Paul and priced at $1.65 million. His departure drives a stake in the heart of a dispute with his next-door neighbor. You can read the full story on the New York Times site.
Two Park Slope residents won an Oscar this week for their short documentary Freeheld. Directed by Cynthia Wade and produced by Vanessa Roth, the film reports the struggle that Detective Lieutenant Laurel Hester faced trying to transfer her pension to her domestic partner, Stacie Andree. Hester was a 25-year veteran of the Ocean County, N.J., police force when she found out she had terminal cancer.
Yesterday’s NY Daily News included several pages of properties with city liens against them. What was different about this set is that many of the properties are there for unpaid water bills.
Apparently, about 18 percent of the city’s water customers don’t pay their bills. And that’s no drop in the bucket; collectively they owe some $600 million.
A new law, signed early this year, lets the city impose liens that can be sold to collection agencies. As a last resort, those agencies can foreclose on a deadbeat's property for unpaid bills.
"What was going on for a long time was similar to four people going out to dinner, and one of the four people then goes to the men's room or ladies' room and never comes back. So what that meant is that the three that were left were left with the bill for the fourth person," said Councilman James Vacca of the Bronx.
Owners of single-family homes don’t face the new lien approach nor do those who get tax exemptions for seniors, the disabled and the poor.
Curious about the future of the Gowanus Canal area? The blog Curbed has renderings and maps of a development planned by the Toll Brothers. The project, aimed to open in 2011, has a ways to go, including securing city approval.
And Brownstoner has photos of buildings now occupying the Toll Brothers’ target area.
Union Hall's prohibition of strollers attracted the attention of the New York Times. But the Grey Lady got it wrong. The watering hole had already declared a truce with Park Slope parents, offering to open for strollers during some afternoon hours.
Here's the Times story if you missed it.
According to a story on Fox News, a real estate agent in England was showing some would-be buyers a house when he discovered a body inside a closet. The body in question turned out to be the former owner, whose son had inherited the property.
"The buyers were shocked as well. But we exposed as few people as possible to the body," said the agent.
Full story
