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World’s First Movie Theater for Short Films to Open Soon in Bushwick

BY JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

BUSHWICK — For the past two decades, 236 Troutman Street has been a reliable stop on the Bushwick nightlife circuit. In the beginning there was Tandem, an early hipster outpost that opened in 2007 and rose to local fame as the neighborhood’s “best hook-up bar” before closing in 2015. Then another watering hole, the island-themed Mad Tropical, took up the baton from 2017 until late last year.

Now the beloved location, a warren of side-doors with a sizable back room, is getting something indisputably new: Shorts Movie Theater, a nonprofit, 40-seat cinema that will exclusively show short films — the first in the world, in fact, based on semi-exhaustive Googling.

Viewers stamp a punch card when they arrive, and pay when they leave based on how many movies they’ve seen. The pricing ranges from $1 for mini-offerings of one to two minutes, to $9 for anything over 31 minutes long.

Karma Masselli conceived of the project in August 2023, after encountering a short film director at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival in Vermont. “There should be a theater for short films,” she thought in passing, but soon forgot about the idea. It was only when Masselli returned to the festival the next year and met someone else from the industry — a woman who bluntly told her that “people don’t watch short films” — that the idea took hold.

Was there really no audience for short films? Recent studies suggest that the average American watches a combination of Instagram Reels, TikTok, and Youtube for more than two hours each day, which amounts to 30 days of continuous viewing per year. This rapid-fire format was responding to a real need, Masselli believed, and she set about building a brick-and-mortar space that could channel those impulses, heavily monetized on social media platforms through cynical “attention fracking,” towards better ends. 

Masselli organized a string of pop-up screenings across Brooklyn last summer as a proof-of-concept, and the results were promising. In June, attendees crowded into a makeshift theater in the bowels of Threes Brewing, a bar in Gowanus, for a Pride-themed lineup of short films. A second gathering followed later that month; in November, Shorts Movie Theater won a $5,000 grant from the Brooklyn Public Library, helping to fuel a partnership with Art House New York and more sold-out events through this spring.

As fun as that period was, Masselli is eager to see her original plan come to fruition. “The danger of doing something besides the goal is that we do it well, and people say, ‘Just do that!’” she explained. “There are so many incredible screening series, festivals, and one-offs every night of the week for short films. The one thing that’s missing is the physical space.”

Last Friday, as New Yorkers began battening down the hatches for the impending nor’easter, Masselli and collaborator Jennifer Allen sat contemplating the layout of the lobby, set to be a bar and café called The Suggestion Box, under the washed-out glow of a skylight.

Patrons from the Tandem days will recognize the countertop, rescued from an Elks Lodge in Elmhurst where Ella Fitzgerald used to sing, and the stained-glass doors, made of repurposed scrap from Frank Gehry’s IAC building in Chelsea. But the faux-jungle foliage of Mad Tropical is gone, replaced with illustrated details of characters holding smartphones — a Tibetan monk, Masselli and her older sister, and Connor Storrie of “Heated Rivalry” as a gladiator — courtesy of local artist Pilar Herrera-Land.

Shorts Movie Theater is looking to carve a niche for itself between 10-second videos and feature films, and the decor reflects its rich but uncertain relationships with both extremes. Take Herrera-Land’s work: Although Masselli wanted to make an explicit visual link between social media and short films, she also considered banning visitors from using their phones — short films’ main competition — before her team convinced her otherwise.

“The goal is to create a space that is so enticing that people naturally don’t pull out their phones,” said Allen. “Sometimes when I enter a place that’s like, ‘No phones,’ it can create a barrier for entry.”

“It’s just not the relationship we want to have with our audience,” agreed Masselli.

If Shorts Movie Theater aims to keep social media at a reasonable arm’s length, it actively seeks out resonances with the heyday of film culture. The lobby will have a custom split-flap board, the kind that greeted travelers at train stations in the 1950s, but displaying showtimes rather than arrivals and departures. And Masselli plans to revive the even older, 1910s-era tradition of movie theaters showing newsreels, too, with a twist — once per week, she hopes to invite local journalists to give a 10-minute recap of citywide news.

“There’s this sense that we’re at the end of humanity. We’ve totally messed up, and we’ve ruined what was an ongoing thread,” noted Masselli. “But one hundred years ago it was the rise of fascism, it was economic collapse, and it was short films in movie theaters. We’re not that different now.”

While some movie theaters sell the chance to step outside of time, Shorts emphasizes its passage. A sun crosses over the bar on a mechanical track; in the back, twelve panels painted by Herrera-Land depict dreamlike scenes from each month, accentuating the feeling of a 1930s jewel box theater. (A review of last year’s Gowanus pop-up in the magazine Copy described the aesthetic as a “worn-in saloon transformed into an idyllic summer-camp movie night under the stars.”)

The space is ultimately in service of a mission. From the outset, Masselli was committed to establishing Shorts as a nonprofit, funded by a combination of donations, grants, and ticket sales — an arrangement that allows her team to focus on providing a tonic to an age of disaffection and disconnection.

“I think that the negativity around diversity is a response to an existential fear that we don’t have enough resources for all of us. That we have no ability to coexist, so the more people there are, the more ways there are to kill each other,” said Masselli. “But imagine if you could frame diversity and the size of the world as a positive, and say that for as many people as there are, there are just as many solutions, stories, and parallels.”

“It’s crazy when you see a short film and you’re like, I’ve never heard this language before, or I didn’t know this country existed,” she added. “And then it’s exciting when you’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is my sense of humor. This is my sense of beauty.’”

Shorts Movie Theater is scheduled to open in late October. For more information and updates about the exact date, visit shortsmovietheater.com.

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Greenpointers Push City to Move Forward with Senior Housing at Kingsland Commons

BY COLE SINANIAN | cole@queensledger.com

Debra Bender is among the presumably shrinking crowd of Greenpointers to have given birth in the Greenpoint Hospital. 

She had her oldest son there, before the long-dilapidated facility closed in 1982. Now, more than 40 years later, the 61-year resident of the nearby Cooper Park Houses is fighting to secure the former hospital’s future as a 557-unit affordable housing hub. 

On Thursday, September 17, Bender and about two dozen Greenpointers gathered outside the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) headquarters in the Financial District to demand that the agency vacate the Greenpoint Hospital site to make way for a long-planned affordable senior housing. 

At issue is the City’s abrupt decision to relocate 200 single homeless men from the former shelter at the old Bellevue Hospital on 30th St. in Manhattan — which the Mamdani Administration closed in March — to a temporary intake center at the former hospital, a move that interrupts plans from St. Nicks Alliance and Hudson Companies to redevelop the site as Kingsland Commons, a sprawling complex set to include deeply affordable housing, senior housing, as well as a homeless shelter. 

Speaking to the Brooklyn Star, Bender was clear that she and the other protesters are not against homeless shelters— the site already hosts a 200-bed facility for unhoused single men. It’s the City’s lack of communication with the Greenpoint community, and the fact that the intake shelter is preventing developers from moving forward with the senior housing development, that Bender and her neighbors are protesting. 

The crucial fourth phase of the Kingsland Commons project — housing specifically for Greenpoint’s seniors — cannot move forward until DHS vacates the site. 

“We have nothing against people being homeless because we are one step away from being homeless ourselves,” Bender said. “We want affordable housing. We need affordable housing, especially for our seniors.” 

The intake shelter at Greenpoint Hospital was always meant to be temporary, a DHS spokesperson said, and joins several locations throughout the city that are temporarily hosting the men once housed at Bellevue. And with the hospital site having been used as a Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelter in the past, it was a natural choice, the spokesperson added. 

“Following the closure of the 30th Street Intake Shelter, DHS had to address an urgent need for assessment beds so we could continue to connect New Yorkers to appropriate shelter placements,” the DHS spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Brooklyn Star.

 “As such, we utilized every resource at our disposal — including sites that previously served as DHS facilities and remained under our control — to meet this operational need.”

The spokesperson did not say how long DHS planned to keep the men at Kingsland Commons. 

But for the Greenpointers protesting Thursday, the move represents both a betrayal on the City’s part and an obstacle to the much-needed affordable senior housing slated for development on the site. Phase Two of the Kingsland Commons project is set to complete in early 2027, said St. Nicks Alliance Director of Affordable Housing Policy and Advocacy Frank Lang, with the lottery for its 311 units of 30-80 AMI affordable housing set to open in the coming weeks. But it’s the project’s final phase — which involves the demolition of a portion of the Greenpoint Hospital to make way for 135 units of multifamily housing and 109 units of affordable senior housing, approved by the City in 2021 — that cannot move forward until DHS vacates the site. 

Protesters criticized the department’s apparent failure to notify St Nicks Alliance and engage with community stakeholders regarding its decision to move into the site. 

It was only after Bellevue’s closure, when a St Nicks Alliance staffer read about the City’s plans to move into the Kingsland Commons site in a news article, did the community learn of DHS’ plans.  

”They did not engage us in any of these conversations,” said William Vega, who sits on Brooklyn’s Community Board 1, on Thursday. ”The promises that they made to the community, they broke.” 

About 30 minutes into Thursday’s rally, State Senator Julia Salazar showed up to address the crowd, taking care not to alienate the DHS workers in the building above. 

“I deeply appreciate the work that the public servants at DHS do, and they deserve and should have a more suitable location to do intake to serve constituents who are currently experiencing homelessness,”  Salazar said. 

She continued: “It’s not appropriate for them to endlessly use this site for that purpose, especially because it further delays this extremely important project that will benefit all of our communities.”

It’s this last point that drew the most ire from Greenpointers Thursday. Like other Brooklyn neighborhoods, Greenpoint faces a major shortage of affordable housing for its elderly population. Much of the new housing going up along the neighborhood’s waterfront is either luxury housing or affordable housing for single adults, meaning many of Greenpoint’s seniors are either forced into cramped arrangements with their younger family members, or leave the neighborhood entirely. 

With such urgent need for senior housing, the community simply cannot afford a delay to the Kingsland Commons project, the protester argued. 

“In their last chapter, what are they doing?” said Vega. “They’re sharing the bedroom with their grandchildren, having to travel to have their own apartment in the last chapter of life.” 

St. Nicks Alliance, which has provided elder care services in North Brooklyn since the 1980s, has several affordable housing projects for seniors in development around Greenpoint and Williamsburg. According to Lang, these developments already have long waitlists.

“That’s the population that’s lived in the community for generations that’s getting priced out,” Lang added. “They can’t stay in the community.”  

Bender, who lives with her 37-year-old, wheelchair-bound son, says she’s witnessed this displacement first-hand in her elderly mother, who moved out of Greenpoint years ago and now hardly recognizes the neighborhood she once called home. Without the seniors who remember how things were, Bender said, the neighborhood will lose its collective memory. 

“We’ve seen a lot of change.” she said. “My mom, when she visits, she feels like a tourist here. Sometimes I feel like a tourist here as well.”

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Encouraging “Natural Curiosity” at Greenpoint’s New Goddard School

BY ADELINE DAAB | news@queensledger.com

After scanning Brooklyn and Queens, Poonam Sharma and her husband Anand Parikh still hadn’t found the preschool they dreamed of for their daughter. They envisioned bright and interactive educational spaces, only to hit a wall of windowless basements and endless waitlists, sometimes years long. Most parents would have settled for the least disappointing choice, but Sharma and Parikh did not give in. 

Sharma and Parikh founded the Goddard School of Greenpoint, which is set to welcome the first class of approximately 130 students later this year. The school will open jobs for 30 teachers, who will collaborate across the school’s eleven classrooms. Sharma shared that the center, located at 85 Commercial Street, features bright windows, an indoor movement area, and access to multiple playgrounds.

This is the seventh Goddard School location to open in New York City but the first in Brooklyn. Sharma shared that she was drawn to Greenpoint because it is a “vibrant growing neighborhood” with “a ton of young families.” But these families are faced with a severe school seat shortage. In Sharma’s experience, though there are a number of high quality educational institutions in the neighborhood, their small size and prioritization of siblings make it difficult for new families to secure spots at their school of choice.

 “The first five years of every child’s life is so important,” Sharma explained. “It really dictates how they’re gonna approach not only learning but social interaction as they get older.” Sharma didn’t grow up in the U.S. Moving here shaped how she understood the importance of these early years of education. “I’m one of three sisters. My older sister and I, frankly, we didn’t have the best foundation for an education. Coming to this country when I was nine, I realized wow I’m a little bit behind, and it took me a while to play catch up.” Sharma especially noticed the difference in her younger sister, who was educated here under a philosophy that incorporated social emotional learning.

This perspective drew Sharma to Goddard’s educational philosophy. Goddard locations across the country follow the signature “Wonder of Learning” curriculum, which allows children’s innate curiosity to drive the learning process. “Kids learn best when they’re really encouraged to explore their natural curiosity,” Sharma expressed. “They don’t do best when a teacher is talking at them or reading a story at them. They have to get involved in their own learning.” 

At the core of Goddard’s curriculum is a collection of open ended questions. Each week, students are asked to contemplate a new idea, like “who am I?” and “how does it feel to be a part of something?” This shifts students away from learning that demands they find a “correct” answer, to a model where success looks like 15 different answers in a classroom of 15 students. The goal of this is to transform school into a space where children learn as much from their peers as their teachers. Critical thinking skills, problem-solving, and creativity are traits that Sharma hopes will sprout in this environment.

While every child deserves the opportunity to explore this form of learning, high tuition costs are a barrier to access for many families. The tuition enables the school to provide quality educators, nutritious food, and childcare from 7 a.m.–6 p.m. every school day for no additional charge. While Sharma hopes to expand access in the future, covering start-up costs without compromising the quality of care poses difficulties.

Though financial accessibility is a work in progress, Sharma seeks to incorporate values of diversity, cultural appreciation, and respect into the curriculum. Sharma spoke about how, because she and her husband come from a different background than many people in Brooklyn, they “want all of our kids, their backgrounds, and where their families come from to be celebrated. Kids aren’t born with empathy or kindness. These are qualities that must be taught.” Sharma says this is a huge part of why she is opening up the school. “I want to expose them to different languages, religions, cultures…I want all my kids to see themselves reflected in books, I want my own child to see herself reflected, I want my director’s grandchild to see herself reflected.”

Reviews of Goddard locations in NYC and beyond are not always positive—there are online reviews galore complaining of health hazards, disorganization, dissatisfaction with curriculum, and more. However, these critiques are typically traceable to management at specific locations. Each Goddard School location is an independently-run franchise; the motives and methods of school administrators make all the difference. While there is no way to know yet how the school will operate in practice, Sharma has her heart set on creating a nurturing environment for all students who walk through the doors of the Goddard School of Greenpoint.

Enrollment for the Goddard School of Greenpoint is open now.

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An Evening at Greenpoint Gallery

BY ADELINE DAAB | news@queensledger.com

On the final Friday evening of February, Greenpointers and visitors alike sought inspiration, intrigue, and evocative conversation at Greenpoint Gallery’s Photos Only Salon Show.

Curated through an open call for submissions, this semi-regular show gives emerging photographers a rare opportunity to publicly celebrate their work in a city known for an impenetrable arts scene. Once-blank walls were transformed into mosaics of prints in an expansive range of styles, sizes, color schemes, moods, and themes. Subjects of the featured photos oscillated from a curious orange bird titled “Andean cock-on-a-rock,” to swerving skid marks on an empty country road titled “Past Mistakes.” A striking set of silver gelatin prints of a college campus, processed using the Mordançage technique, depicted dissolving shadows flowing beyond the frame in billowy veils of ink.

The crowd was as eclectic as the photos: a blend of artists, art-appreciators, and people just looking for something to do on a Friday night. Everyone I approached was eager to converse, including (or perhaps, especially) the photographers behind the photos showcased that evening. I struck up a conversation with a woman who turned out to be the photographer behind a featured collage series of New York City subjects superimposed onto calming rural scenes. The idea for this series emerged from her experience of splitting time between NYC and a rural North Carolina property she acquired through a saga involving a cheap Craigslist car, a golden Ganesha statue, a five-leaf clover, and an unwavering belief in signs from the universe. I also spoke with Tashroom Ahsan, the up-and-coming photographer behind the aforementioned Mordançage works. “I’ve been at this show before as a witness,” he said, “but there’s something remarkable about being a participant. Lending physical presence to my work and seeing others engage with it has given it a life I’d never seen before.”

Many attendees were artists in mediums other than photography. In a pond of twenty- and thirty-somethings, the grey-haired painter Julie effortlessly matched the lively, youthful energy buzzing in the space. She was glad to see emerging artists getting the chance to gain visibility and feedback on their work, reminiscing about how the early days of her practice have shaped the way her artwork looks today. When she was young, she couldn’t afford frames for her paintings so she began a practice of painting artistic borders around her work. Decades have passed. Her frames have grown ever thicker around the page, swallowing more and more of the space available for a central image.

Now her paintings are almost entirely about the frame rather than what fills it. As Julie observed Friday night’s photographs, she pondered the three components of any work of art: the artist, the material, and the unknown. Looking for the element of the unknown within the displayed works framed my experience of the photographs for the remainder of the evening.

I was a few stairs up the flight to the gallery’s upper level when I peered over the railing. A gargantuan stuffed frog stopped me in my tracks. I asked the man standing beside it if he knew what it was for, and he told me he’d made it for a children’s puppet show. Somewhere in the midst of this conversation, he subtly revealed that he was the visionary behind the space, and Shawn James went on to humor all of my subsequent curiosities about the gallery’s origin and evolution.

He shared that this was all possible because John Perry Barlow—whom he identified as “the guy who wrote most of the songs for the Grateful Dead”—bought one of his early paintings for $25K. Gesturing to the painting on the wall beside us, James told me that Barlow had shipped it back to him from his deathbed, along with a note saying James could probably get $50K for it now. Barlow had become a mentor for James throughout his later years. When James asked how he could repay Barlow for everything he’d done to support him, Barlow told James to be to other young artists what Barlow had been to him. From this, Greenpoint Gallery’s mission was born in 2003: to empower emerging artists through classes, lectures, career counseling, and affordable exhibition space.

At the gallery’s information booth, a multi-medium artist currently interning at Greenpoint Gallery expanded on the gallery’s program offerings, including shows and lessons across a variety of popular mediums, communal studio space, and even an artist residency program. The gallery is also always looking for more interns—an invaluable opportunity to learn what happens behind the scenes in gallery spaces and build up experience in the New York art world.

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Mr. Greenpoint

Pete McGuinness left an indelible mark on the neighborhood he loved. 

BY GEOFFREY COBB | gcobb91839@Aol.com

Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past

Greenpoint, Brooklyn today is an area of luxury high-rise waterfront properties, pricey, Michelin star restaurants and chic boutiques. Its residents are increasingly Ivy League graduates who live an affluent lifestyle, but not long ago, Greenpoint was the heart of industrial, working-class Brooklyn, an area of blue-collar factory workers and longshoremen, and no one personified working class Greenpoint more than its Irish American political boss Peter  J. McGuinness.

A born and raised Greenpointer and former longshoremen, McGuinness represented Greenpoint on the City Council and then ran the area’s political machine from the end of the First World War until his death in 1948, as the last Tammany Hall style ward boss in the Borough’s history. People often said that McGuinness so embodied Greenpoint that it was hard to think of the one without immediately thinking of the other.

On Wednesday, February 25th, I will speak about McGuinness’ local legacy at the Oak and Iron Bar Local History Night, a forum where locals make presentations on aspects of North Brooklyn history. I have presented at the packed bar before and the atmosphere is great because we Greenpointers are really passionate about our community and its long, rich history.

I have written three books on Greenpoint history, including The King of Greenpoint Peter McGuinness: The Amazing Story of Greenpoint’s Most Colorful Character, which I published ten years ago. Though Greenpoint has over three hundred and fifty years of history, no character was as colorful as McGuinness and arguably no one left a greater legacy than Pete whose enduring contributions include playgrounds, the G Train stops, a bridge and the McCarren Park pool, just to name a few.

McGuinness, like the people he represented, grew up facing adversity and working hard. One of eleven children, Pete left school after eighth grade to work in the area’s lumberyards. An amateur boxer and a longshoreman, McGuinness was a powerhouse standing about six feet tall with a barrel chest, huge back and bulging biceps. Though he was a gentleman, he was well able to settle disputes with his fists. Once when six men tried to force him to accept a shipment of rotten lumber, a fistfight ensued, six-on-one. McGuinness knocked three of his opponents out and then lectured the remaining three on business ethics.

Nowadays, American politics is characterized by divisiveness, name calling and acrimony, but McGuinness, a Democrat, displayed a lifelong ability to work with Socialists and Republicans. He defied the Democratic Party and supported his childhood friend Republican John McCrate when he ran for the area’s congressional seat. When Fiorello LaGuardia defeated the Democratic candidate for mayor, McGuinness graciously stated, “The Little Flower is a most splendid gentleman. Under him, we know the poor people of this city will be looked after, irregardless of what may befall. What he done, he done honest and he done good.”

Charney Vladeck, a Socialist alderman from the Lower East Side and an enemy of corrupt Democrats was one of McGuinness warmest admirers. “That Irisher!” Vladeck used to say: “Sometimes he makes me wish I was a Democrat.” McGuinness won Vladeck’s friendship by giving Democratic sponsorship to a number of Socialist resolutions. “Many’s the time,” he said, “I used to say, Cheeny, old pal, if you got something you really want to get through this here board, give it to me, and I’ll make it Irish for you. I figured what the hell, if something was good enough for Cheeny, it was good enough for the other aldermen.”

McGuinness had a legendary sense of humor and there are a number of famous yarns about Pete. One of the funniest relates to Governor Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 visit to Greenpoint as part of his presidential campaign. McGuinness and the future president were touring the area in an open car, and huge crowds lined the streets to greet them. Roosevelt saw Jewish businesses, Polish children dressed in traditional costumes and Italian Americans, but few Irish Americans. Roosevelt inquired about the absence of the Irish and McGuinness somberly told him that most of the area’s Irish were now dead and buried in Calvary Cemetery. A tense silence ensued and Roosevelt thought he said the wrong thing, but suddenly in a loud voice McGuinness retorted, “But don’t you worry Governor Roosevelt, those dead Irish will still turn out for you on election day.”

Though McGuinness had passed away some thirteen years previously, he was still so beloved that when Oakland Street was widened and made into a boulevard, both local Democrats and Republicans agreed it should be named in honor of its legendary political leader. Come out on Wednesday February 25th to hear more about this local legend.

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Lincoln Restler Slams Monitor Point at Fiery Public Hearing

Greenpoint City councilmember Lincoln Restler voiced his opposition to the Monitor Point development in a passionate speech. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

BY COLE SINANIAN | news@queensledger.com 

The moment Bryan Kelly began speaking, several of the more than a hundred Greenpointers packed into the Polish Slavic Center solemnly pulled out their signs: “600ft Luxury Towers? Hard Pass,” read one. 

“Bushwick Inlet Can’t Be Replaced,” read another. 

Tensions in the room were high. Kelly, President of Development at the Gotham Corporation, had come to pitch an enormous mixed-use development that would add 3,000 residents to Greenpoint by its completion in the early 2030s. The sign-bearers had come to voice their disapproval before the Community Board. 

Hanging in the balance is the fate of Monitor Point, a spit of land north of Bushwick Inlet that’s Greenpoint’s last swath of undeveloped waterfront. A section of it is part of a 27.8-acre parcel that the City set aside in the 2005 Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning for the long-awaited Bushwick Inlet Park. 

Local activists with Save the Inlet and Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park have fought for years to prevent private developers from acquiring the promised parkland. Twenty years later, the Gotham Organization — in collaboration with the MTA — is seeking to remove the park designation from the City Map and upzone the adjacent property in order to build three high-rise apartment buildings, the tallest of which would rise to 600ft. The three towers would include 1,150 housing units, 40% of which would be affordable at 40-80% Area Median Income (AMI), and could add some 3,000 residents to the neighborhood. These towers,  developers say, would provide much-needed affordable housing to the district, and help fund major public benefits, like a building to house the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, public waterfront access, shoreline rehabilitation, and crucial MTA funding. 

But critics argue that the project is a land-grab. The 80,000-square-foot MTA-owned property located at 40 Quay Street will be leased to the Gotham Organization for a century, while air rights at the Greenpoint Monitor Museum-owned 56 Quay Street — designated on the City Map as park land but never acquired by the City — will be acquired by Gotham. It’s a betrayal, critics say, of the City’s 2005 commitment to integrating the land into Bushwick Inlet Park. 

Other critics are longtime Greenpoint residents with the trauma of the displacement and gentrification brought by the 2005 rezoning and the luxury high-rises that followed fresh in mind, fearing that such a population bump of mostly wealthy residents will only lead to more gentrification. And for others still, it’s an environmental issue; rare birds and sea life live around the Inlet, which was just a century ago toxic with pollution. Now, years of care and rehabilitation have allowed the public to access the estuary  once again, just in time to be overshadowed by residential skyscrapers that activists fear could turn the park and the Inlet into little more than a playground for the wealthy. 

Still, several groups in attendance came to support the Monitor Point project, including the labor unions SEIU 32BJ and Local 79, whose workers expect it to bring them good jobs, as well as Los Sures, a local Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) cooperative. 

The hearing, held on January 20, was the beginning of the project’s ULURP, set to go before Community Board 1 for a recommendation vote on February 3. 

Affordable for who?

Outside the Polish Slavic Center, activists with Save the Inlet rallied before the hearing, braving the cold to chant and hold signs that read “Public Land for Public Good!” and “Stop Stealing Public Parkland for Luxury Towers in GPT!!!”

Inside, developers began by presenting their vision for an integrated, mixed-used community space that would finally connect Bushwick Inlet Park, the East River, the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, and the rest of the North Brooklyn waterfront esplanade via a series of public walkways and open spaces, while restoring a degraded and flood-vulnerable shoreline on Greenpoint’s last remaining plot of undeveloped waterfront. They argued the project goes far beyond housing, and will unlock more than 50,000 square feet of public open space that would include retail, park land, public plazas and lobbies, and the Greenpoint Monitor Museum itself. Part of this is a $20 million investment in “site resiliency, waterfront infrastructure, and pedestrian connections.” 

“It adds 51,500 square feet of new open space — some of which was expected in the ‘05 rezoning and more — for the community, for public equity, not just for residents of the new building,” said Kelly. “It’s an open gate to the community, not a gated community.” 

It would be all connected by a meandering path inspired by Bushwick Inlet that would finally connect the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfronts. Dan Kaplan, senior partner with FX Collaborative Architects, said that the project’s architects were working on a “bird-friendly” design that would integrate texture and setbacks into the buildings to avoid bird collisions, and that an all-glass facade would be avoided “at all costs.” 

The 690 units of luxury housing would finance the public benefit, developers said, like an additional 460 units of “permanently affordable” housing at 40-80% Area Median Income (AMI), publicly accessible “open space,” and an expanded Greenpoint Monitor Museum. Key to the development team’s presentation was that the land’s current use — housing a degraded MTA mobile wash warehouse — adds nothing to the community, prevents the public from accessing the waterfront, and won’t protect the shoreline from the effects of erosion and climate change. And in leasing its property to the Gotham Organization, the MTA will earn more than $600 million over the course of the lease that could be put towards transit improvements throughout the city. Money for Bushwick Inlet Park, meanwhile, will begin at $300,000 annually, and increase over the course of the 99-year lease. 

Throughout their presentation, the development team repeated that their plan does more for the community than is required by law. At 40% affordable housing at 40-80% AMI, the Monitor Point towers will far exceed the 25% affordability at 60% AMI requirement in the City’s mandatory inclusionary housing law, Kelly pointed out. 

“We have had about 150 outreach meetings,” he said. “That’s to your elected officials, religious organizations, civics, friends of open space, people who are not friends of the project, and people who are friends of the project. Because the result is, we’ve done our best so far to make changes to address your concerns, and that concern is 40% affordability.” 

Activists from Save the Inlet held a protest against the development outside the Polish Slavic Center before the January 20 hearing. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

Restler weighs in 

Much of the public, however, was unimpressed. While Kelly was explaining the annual park funding, some audience members shook their heads and shouted “shame!” When he said that the towers would stand 56, 40, and 20 storeys, respectively, someone in the crowd shouted “Way too high!” And as Kelly explained the goal of the project — to create “intergenerational, mixed income housing and ultimately fighting for the goal of creating open space for everybody,” he said — shouts rang out from the audience: “Liar! Liar!” 

At several points throughout, Community Board 1 Second Vice Chair Del Teague, who moderated the hearing, had to silence unruly audience members. 

“We have 85 people who want to speak,” Teague said. “I don’t even know if I can give people a full minute.” 

The mood turned, however, when Greenpoint City councilmember Lincoln Restler — whose City Council vote will likely determine the fate of the project — got up to speak. 

“I want to just say plainly where I’m at on this project to all of you, which is precisely what I’ve said to Gotham and the MTA,” Restler said. “I’m a no on this project.” 

A raucous applause broke out before he’d even finished the sentence. Some audience members were on their feet in standing ovation. Kelly and the development team, meanwhile, looked uncomfortable as they retreated into the shadows in the room’s far corner. Someone catcalled: “Atta boy, Lincoln!” After about 30 seconds of applause, Restler approached the mic again:  

“We built significantly more new housing in our district than any other district in the city,” he said. “We built well over 26,000 units of housing, but the vast majority of that housing is market rate, luxury housing, housing that our communities quite simply can’t afford.” 

He continued: “This is the last large public site in Greenpoint, and the idea that we would build predominantly luxury housing on this site, I have to say, I find it offensive. This was the central jewel of the Greenpoint Williamsburg rezoning. And 20 years later, we do not have a fully funded park. In fact, most of the park is in need of significant remediation before we see construction move forward.”

Scot Fraser, a long time Greenpointer and member of Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

Union jobs, Trojan horse

After Restler’s speech, the some 85 members of the public who’d signed up to speak lined up in waves to deliver their testimonies. First up was the SEIU 32BJ union, which represents building maintenance workers. Several members attended the hearing to express their support for the project, which they argued would deliver reliable, well-paid union jobs to working-class Brooklynites. 

“I’m happy to report that developers of this proposed project have made a credible commitment to good jobs at the project,” said Theodore Perez, a worker with SEIU 32BJ. “Good Jobs mean prevailing wages. They mean benefits, and they mean a pathway to the middle class for the people who work them. We need housing built in every neighborhood in New York City to ensure that working families are not displaced by dwindling supply and skyrocketing rents.” 

According to an unnamed Gotham Organization spokesperson, communicated via William Roberts with a PR firm called Berlin Rosen, both the unions SEIU 32BJ and Local 79 — which was also present at the hearing — have partnerships with the company that guarantee union employment at all Gotham properties. 

“32BJ and Local 79 have been longtime partners of The Gotham Organization,” the spokesperson wrote. “All Gotham-owned buildings are staffed by 32BJ members, and we have worked closely with Local 79 across numerous housing projects. We look forward to continuing this partnership with Monitor Point.”

Sarah Roberts, also known as “the Brooklyn Bird Lady,” opposed the project on ecological grounds: 

“I am here to oppose the proposed Monitor Point development not because I dislike change or I don’t want affordable housing,” but because we must protect what is truly irreplaceable,” Roberts said. 

“Bushwick Inlet is not just another piece of industrial shoreline,” she continued. “These tidal wetlands provide natural climate resilience. They slow down storm surge, absorb blood water, store carbon and buffer our community from increasingly frequent and severe weather events

George Weinmann, Vice President of the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, testified in support of the project, highlighting the educational value of the museum, which showcases the USS Monitor, the legendary Civil War battleship that was built in Greenpoint. Weinmann traced his family history in Greenpoint back to his ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War, and explained how local children recognize him and his wife, Janice — who serves as the museum’s president — on the street as the “Monitor people.” 

“We tell them that we are going to build a museum on the land that shares the launch site of the USS Monitor, the ship that saved the Union, and we don’t want to disappoint them,” Weinmann said. “Please approve and make the Monitor Museum a reality.” 

Chris Duerr, a longtime Greenpointer and father, had a different take. He described how his son was eight-years-old in 2016 when Mayor de Blasio assured the community it would get the full, 27.8-acre Bushwick Inlet Park. Now, his son’s off to college, Duerr said, and the full park still isn’t built. 

“This is not about affordable housing,” he said. “Affordable housing and this museum are the Trojan Horse for luxury tower development.”

Duerr continued, addressing Gotham directly: “The plans that you guys presented are very compelling, but we’ve seen a lot of plans, and we would appreciate not being gaslit one more time.” 

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David, Meet Goliath

The state approved National Grid’s bid to expand fracked gas, but also ordered it to engage with its staunchest opponent: Greenpoint’s community board.

BY JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

WILLIAMSBURG — The two groups shuffled in from the cold, unzipping their coats as they settled uneasily into opposite sides of the room.

On Thursday, January 15, representatives for National Grid — which provides energy to nearly 2 million customers in the New York metro area — met with Brooklyn Community Board 1 (CB1) at Swinging Sixties Older Adult Center, the first in-person forum since the state approved the company’s request to expand its fracked gas infrastructure last fall.

But this wasn’t a victory lap. While the approval of its “Long-Term Plan” was a major coup for National Grid, the regulator’s decision included some caveats. First, it noted that a new pipeline project running from New Jersey to the Rockaways, known as NESE, could eventually render National Grid’s 120-acre gas depot along Newtown Creek unnecessary, a boost to locals who have been calling for it to be decommissioned for decades.

Second, the ruling ordered National Grid to engage with CB1 and “take part in its meetings,” as a way for the fossil fuel giant to “hear the community’s concerns and attempt to address [them].”

The exact parameters or duration of that engagement are uncertain, but the upshot on Thursday was clear: National Grid’s emissaries would have to answer questions from residents who have spent thousands of hours trying to shut down its primary foothold in North Brooklyn.

The meeting began with a presentation by MaryBeth Carroll, director of gas scenario planning for National Grid and a lead architect of its Long-Term Plan, who foregrounded the discussion with an overview of the company’s operations throughout New York City. Nearly all of its fracked gas is sourced from the Marcellus Shale in Northern Pennsylvania, she explained, before being carried by pipelines to two storage facilities — one in Holtsville, Long Island, and the other in Greenpoint.

“Do you all acknowledge that Greenpoint residents don’t want this LNG storage in the neighborhood?”

The audience, exclusively composed of local environmental advocates, wasted no time in interrogating Carroll’s high-level summary. One bone of contention during the two-year legal battle over the Long Term Plan was whether the quantity of natural gas stored inside the Greenpoint Energy Center made sense. National Grid claimed that the hulking tanks were a fallback in case the demand for gas spiked far above supply amid an extremely cold spell. But an independent consultant found that those reserves were almost never used — and as one attendee noted, the corporation’s forecasts are based on a hypothetical “design day” in which the average temperature drops to 0º Fahrenheit, something that has not happened in NYC since 1934.

“It has not gotten within 10 degrees of that in the last 15 years,” noted a member of Sane Energy Project, a Greenpoint-based advocacy group that was out in force for the CB1 meeting. “If there’s evidence to show that it should be raised, are you currently working to raise it? Because clearly this is not appropriate design day, and that’s costing all of us who pay bills here a lot of money.”

The presentation next turned to safety protocols. “We want to make sure that everybody who is a customer stays safe, that everybody who is living in the communities around our customers stays safe, and that our employees stay safe,” said Carroll. “It’s just something that we are uncompromising on.”

But the Greenpointers in the crowd shot back with several pointed questions. Kim Fraczek, director of Sane Energy Project, brought up an explosion at the nearby gas depot in 2022 that knocked a worker unconscious, asking why the community board was never informed. (“I’m aware of that incident,” replied Carroll, promising to loop in CB1’s Steve Chesler in the future. “I don’t know the details.”)

Next, Laura Hoffman inquired about the extent of soil pollution at both the depot site and an adjacent Little League field that was opened by National Grid in 1999 as a gift to the community before being closed in 2022 as revelations of contamination came to light. “To my knowledge, the lead that was on the property from previous demolitions was never cleaned up, which was part of the reason why the kids were no longer allowed to use the ball field,” she said. “My grandson was one of the kids that played there. Since you’re talking about the commitment to safety, I want to hear about that.”

Another prominent topic was National Grid’s initiatives to promote non-pipeline alternatives (NPA), a range of measures — such as heat pumps, improved insulation, and managing demand — that limit the need for companies to build more gas infrastructure. Residents noted that National Grid refers many customers to Con Edison’s program rather than investing in one of its own.

“We would be very interested to work with you on that. If you’re considering doing pipe replacements, you can work together with us from the community to organize blocks to do that,” said Fraczek. “The last time you had a community engagement person come to CB1, he told me and a few others that the only thing he does with his job is tell people when to move their cars. I wonder if there could be a better partnership.”

“We’re happy to do it,” said Carroll. “We want to deliver on these things, we just need willing customers.”

The final word, before the National Grid contingent ceded the floor to a representative of an organization working to abolish microplastics, went to fourth-generation local Kevin LaCherra, who refocused the conversation on the Greenpoint Energy Center.

“This community does not want this facility here. It is on some of the most polluted land in North America. It’s 120 acres — you could fit every park in the neighborhood on that facility,” he said. “We’re asked to subsidize it; we’re asked to live next to it. So I do think, with all of this, what I really want to know is do you all acknowledge that Greenpoint residents don’t want this LNG storage in the neighborhood?”

“What I am most interested in going forward is how your planning, as you come back here, is going to reflect what we as residents are asking for,” added LaCherra. “That needs to be a part of this going forward — otherwise, it’s a lot of fancy slides.”

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100 Years of the Northside’s Puerto Rican Community

GEOFFREY COBB

Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past

gcobb91839@Aol.com

The other night I met James Nunez, a lifelong Greenpointer of Puerto Rican heritage and we reminisced about the long history of Puerto Ricans in North Brooklyn. Though Puerto Ricans still comprise a vibrant part of our community, many have been forced out of our area, victims to gentrification. James’ grandmother ran a Puerto Rican restaurant in the area until the 1990s. When I first arrived in Greenpoint in the early 1990s, walking north of Greenpoint Avenue meant experiencing Puerto Rico’s exuberant culture. Families sat outside on the street often playing dominoes while listening to salsa music, the smell of pork or chicken being barbecued on a grill wafting through the air.

Many North Brooklyn residents are surprised to learn that Puerto Ricans have lived in our area for over a century. In 1924, Congress passed the first immigration law, severely restricting immigration by establishing national quotas based on the 1890 census, heavily favoring Northern and Western Europeans, and completely barring Asians, particularly Japanese, reflecting widespread nativism and xenophobia. This act dramatically reduced overall immigration, created the first U.S. Border Patrol, and aimed to preserve a perceived homogeneous “American” demographic makeup for decades.  In the 1920s, North Brooklyn was the beating heart of industrial New York City, then the planet’s largest industrial city. Local factories, heavily dependent on immigrant Jewish, Polish and Italian labor, facing a manpower shortage, looked to Puerto Rican whose residents were American citizens legally able to work in New York.

One of the local industries hit was the by the labor shortage was the American Hemp Rope Manufacturing Company located on a sprawling campus on West Street. Desperate for workers, the firm sent a ship to Puerto Rico and returned with 130 Puerto Rican women to make rope and shoelaces for the company Other local industries also recruited workers in Puerto Rico including Domino Sugar, which once ran the world’s largest sugar refinery in Williamsburg.

Puerto Ricans who spoke Spanish as a first language encountered many problems, including racism, discrimination and language issues because local schools for many years had no programs for immigrant children to learn English as a second language. Puerto Rican children suffered a very high dropout rate in schools.  In 1961, Puerto Rican woman Antonia Pantoja founded ASPIRA (Spanish for “aspire”), a non-profit organization that promoted educational reform to help struggling Hispanic students. In 1972, ASPIRA of New York, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit demanding that New York City provide classroom instruction for struggling Latino students and bilingual and English as a Second Language instruction was born helping Hispanic students learn English and stay in school.

By the 1950s, North Brooklyn had become home to thousands of Puerto Rican migrants. Many white residents left Brooklyn in the 1960s for the suburbs and Puerto Ricans quickly replaced them. The North end of Greenpoint became predominately Puerto Rican and the south side of Williamsburg also grew into a huge Puerto Rican quarter.

By the late 1960s, Puerto Ricans comprised about a third of the local population. Many Puerto Ricans bought houses left by locals fleeing the area for the suburbs and a generation of Puerto Rican Greenpointers came of age locally. Although some Puerto Ricans owned their own homes most were renters who were forced out by rising housing prices.

Puerto Ricans soon organized to fight gentrification. In 1972, Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics in the south side of Williamsburg helped organize Los Sures, a community organization that still exists, which fights to help working-class people secure their housing rights. Los Sures was also perhaps the first North Brooklyn organization to provide a number of vital community services including education, senior citizen services and even a food pantry. Los Sures began responding to problems that confront tenants today, including withdrawal of city services, lease violations and illegal evictions. The organization also fought property owners trying to vacate their buildings to gentrify and whiten the neighborhood. Los Sures promoted community-based control of housing, both through management and ownership. In 1975, Los Sures became Brooklyn’s first community-based organization to enter into agreements to manage City-owned properties. It also became one of the first tenant advocacy groups to undertake large-scale rehabilitation. Still fighting for local people, Los Sures is a vital force in community activism.

Though the Puerto Rican presence in North Brooklyn is far smaller than it once was, many Puerto Ricans still and work in our area. Many Puerto Rican Greenpointers run local businesses including lifelong resident Catherine Vera Milligan who runs a wonderful coffee shop at 269 Nassau Avenue. If you want to eat delicious  authentic Puerto Rican food try Guarapo restaurant on 58 North 3rd Street, Chrome at 525 Grand Street or La Isla at 293 Broadway. These places prove that Puerto Rican culture is still a vital part of the gorgeous mosaic of cultures that make up North Brooklyn. The other night I met James Nunez, a lifelong Greenpointer of Puerto Rican heritage and we reminisced about the long history of Puerto Ricans in North Brooklyn. Though Puerto Ricans still comprise a vibrant part of our community, many have been forced out of our area, victims to gentrification. James’ grandmother ran a Puerto Rican restaurant in the area until the 1990s. When I first arrived in Greenpoint in the early 1990s, walking north of Greenpoint Avenue meant experiencing Puerto Rico’s exuberant culture. Families sat outside on the street often playing dominoes while listening to salsa music, the smell of pork or chicken being barbecued on a grill wafting through the air.

Many North Brooklyn residents are surprised to learn that Puerto Ricans have lived in our area for over a century. In 1924, Congress passed the first immigration law, severely restricting immigration by establishing national quotas based on the 1890 census, heavily favoring Northern and Western Europeans, and completely barring Asians, particularly Japanese, reflecting widespread nativism and xenophobia. This act dramatically reduced overall immigration, created the first U.S. Border Patrol, and aimed to preserve a perceived homogeneous “American” demographic makeup for decades.  In the 1920s, North Brooklyn was the beating heart of industrial New York City, then the planet’s largest industrial city. Local factories, heavily dependent on immigrant Jewish, Polish and Italian labor, facing a manpower shortage, looked to Puerto Rican whose residents were American citizens legally able to work in New York.

One of the local industries hit was the by the labor shortage was the American Hemp Rope Manufacturing Company located on a sprawling campus on West Street. Desperate for workers, the firm sent a ship to Puerto Rico and returned with 130 Puerto Rican women to make rope and shoelaces for the company Other local industries also recruited workers in Puerto Rico including Domino Sugar, which once ran the world’s largest sugar refinery in Williamsburg.

Puerto Ricans who spoke Spanish as a first language encountered many problems, including racism, discrimination and language issues because local schools for many years had no programs for immigrant children to learn English as a second language. Puerto Rican children suffered a very high dropout rate in schools.  In 1961, Puerto Rican woman Antonia Pantoja founded ASPIRA (Spanish for “aspire”), a non-profit organization that promoted educational reform to help struggling Hispanic students. In 1972, ASPIRA of New York, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit demanding that New York City provide classroom instruction for struggling Latino students and bilingual and English as a Second Language instruction was born helping Hispanic students learn English and stay in school.

By the 1950s, North Brooklyn had become home to thousands of Puerto Rican migrants. Many white residents left Brooklyn in the 1960s for the suburbs and Puerto Ricans quickly replaced them. The North end of Greenpoint became predominately Puerto Rican and the south side of Williamsburg also grew into a huge Puerto Rican quarter.

By the late 1960s, Puerto Ricans comprised about a third of the local population. Many Puerto Ricans bought houses left by locals fleeing the area for the suburbs and a generation of Puerto Rican Greenpointers came of age locally. Although some Puerto Ricans owned their own homes most were renters who were forced out by rising housing prices.

Puerto Ricans soon organized to fight gentrification. In 1972, Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics in the south side of Williamsburg helped organize Los Sures, a community organization that still exists, which fights to help working-class people secure their housing rights. Los Sures was also perhaps the first North Brooklyn organization to provide a number of vital community services including education, senior citizen services and even a food pantry. Los Sures began responding to problems that confront tenants today, including withdrawal of city services, lease violations and illegal evictions. The organization also fought property owners trying to vacate their buildings to gentrify and whiten the neighborhood. Los Sures promoted community-based control of housing, both through management and ownership. In 1975, Los Sures became Brooklyn’s first community-based organization to enter into agreements to manage City-owned properties. It also became one of the first tenant advocacy groups to undertake large-scale rehabilitation. Still fighting for local people, Los Sures is a vital force in community activism.

Though the Puerto Rican presence in North Brooklyn is far smaller than it once was, many Puerto Ricans still and work in our area. Many Puerto Rican Greenpointers run local businesses including lifelong resident Catherine Vera Milligan who runs a wonderful coffee shop at 269 Nassau Avenue. If you want to eat delicious  authentic Puerto Rican food try Guarapo restaurant on 58 North 3rd Street, Chrome at 525 Grand Street or La Isla at 293 Broadway. These places prove that Puerto Rican culture is still a vital part of the gorgeous mosaic of cultures that make up North Brooklyn.

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Monitor Point, Explained

A proposal to build towers by Bushwick Inlet has drawn pushback, and a key hearing is next week. Here’s what you need to know.

By COLE SINANIAN 

news@queensledger.com 

On Tuesday, January 20, Greenpointers will testify to Community Board 1 regarding plans from the Gotham Organization to build three residential towers just to the north of Bushwick Inlet, marking the beginning of what is sure to be one of Greenpoint’s landmark land-use battles of the year.  

The proposed development, located at 40 and 56 Quay Street on a small peninsula called Monitor Point, would also include museum and retail space and require a rezoning from medium to high-density. It has garnered serious opposition from local activists, who argue the towers are far too big for the location and betray a two-decade-old commitment on the City’s part to reserve the area around the inlet for public parks. 

There are also environmental and gentrification concerns; the towers would sit on the banks of a rare and ecologically sensitive estuary that’s only just begun to recover from centuries of environmental exploitation. And with nearly 3,000 new residents expected to be added to the neighborhood — most of whom would be paying luxury rent — critics worry that the project will only accelerate displacement in an already gentrified community. 

Developers and City planners, meanwhile, have highlighted the importance of boosting housing stock and the public benefits the project would fund. Namely, a new Greenpoint Monitor Museum — which would explore the history of the USS Monitor, an early ironclad ship built in Greenpoint — and an extension of the East River esplanade that would connect the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfronts.

But the land on which the proposed towers would be built — currently owned by the NYC Transit Authority and the Greenpoint Monitor Museum — was set aside as park land as part of the 2005 Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezoning, with the intention of eventual acquisition by the City Parks Department. For the local critics, at issue is the question of the role the public should play in deciding the fate of New York City’s treasured waterfront land, and the City’s responsibility in honoring the word of former administrations. 

“There’s this choice that’s being presented to us that’s not fair or feasible,” said Katherine Thompson, one of the directors at Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, at a January 8 presentation at the Greenpoint Library. “That you can have either open space and protect the environment or affordable housing— it shouldn’t be this dichotomy.” 

The Plan 

The mixed-use development would include three residential buildings, pedestrian connections along the waterfront that would connect Bushwick Inlet Park to the Shore Public Walkway to the north, retail space, and a building that would house an expanded Greenpoint Monitor Museum. The residential towers would stand 640ft tall, 490ft and 260ft tall and sit about 50ft from the Bushwick Inlet shoreline. The two properties, 40 Quay Street and 56 Quay Street, currently house an MTA storage facility and the current Monitor Museum, respectively. 

The developers would need a rezoning to build towers of this scale. Currently, the area is zoned R6, which is medium density and requires developers to implement setbacks and other contextual considerations when building towers. They are seeking to upzone to R8, or “high density” residential. 

The Gotham Organization estimates construction cost of $630 million. Altogether the towers will include 1,150 residential units. 

The Opposition 

As part of the consequential 2005 Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning that transformed the heavily polluted, once-industrial area into residential neighborhoods, the City set aside several plots of land around Bushwick Inlet to be converted into public park space. Monitor Point was one of these properties, designated as park land on the City Map. Another became the current Bushwick Inlet Park. Others have remained empty, the soil contaminated from years of housing petroleum and fuel storage facilities, still awaiting cleanup. 

Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park was formed in part to hold the City accountable for ensuring this land became the public space that the rezoning designated it as, said Greenpointer Steve Chesler, who sits on the organization’s board of directors. In 2015, a paper storage facility owned by CitiStorage caught fire and burned to the ground. The City considered allowing the property owner to sell it to a private developer, but Friends of Bushwick Inlet launched an aggressive campaign, urging the City to purchase the property and keep its commitment to making this land available to the public. 

For Chesler and Thompson, the move to build residential towers on a property once slated as park land represents a betrayal by the City, and an insult to years of activism aimed at preserving the waterfront around Bushwick Inlet for. 

A petition by a group called Save the Inlet has already gathered more than 5,000 signatures. At the January 8 meeting at Greenpoint Library — organized to educate Greenpointers and to help them prepare their testimonies for the hearing on the 20th — community members expressed concern about the neighborhood’s population density, the shadows the towers would cast, the traffic construction could cause, and the use of small affordable housing concessions to justify what they have described as an unsustainable and out-of-context development. 

Scot Fraser, a documentary filmmaker who sits on Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park’s Board of Directors, called out the long shadows the towers would cast over the adjacent neighborhood. He also pointed out the irony of the situation — the northernmost section of the park, known as the Motiva Parcel, is set to open in the coming months after years of cleanup and advocacy. However, should the Monitor Point Towers be built, the Motiva section’s opening will likely coincide with the noisy arrival of cement trucks and construction crews. 

“That part of the park is just about to open, the Motiva section of the park, will be immediately devoured by excavating trucks,” Fraser said.  

Some residents at the meeting called the city’s affordable housing designations out-of-touch. According to the Draft Impact Environmental study, the Gotham Organization will make 25% of the Monitor Point towers’ residential units affordable at 60% area median income (AMI), a salary that, in New York City, amounts to about $87,000 for a three-person family. 

Others, meanwhile, criticized the City for making the discussion about housing at all.

“They love the idea about us spending time talking about what percentage of affordable housing, because then they’ve already forced the false choice,” said a Greenpointer named Andy.

“We don’t want to talk about what percentage of affordable housing. We want to talk about, find another site.”

The Process 

Despite the already simmering opposition, the plan is still in the earliest advisory stages of the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, which dictates the approval process for development. 

ULURP goes like this: A developer submits its plan, along with a draft environmental impact statement, to the Department of City Planning, which reviews and certifies it. Next, the local Community Board has 60 days to review the application and provide a recommendation. This recommendation is non-binding.

“It’s not technically binding conditions,” said Chesler, who also sits on Community Board 1. “But the board kind of sets the stage. The borough president, and especially our city council member, have to answer to the people.” 

The community board review stage is made up of several meetings, of which the public hearing on January 20 is a part. On February 3, the Community Board’s Land Use Review Committee will meet to deliberate, followed by a full-board vote on February 10. 

After the community board’s recommendation, the plan goes to the borough president, whose recommendation will take into account the community board’s. Still, the borough president’s recommendation, like the community board’s, is non-binding, meaning the plan could still proceed without it. 

The plans are then sent to the City Planning Commission (CPC) for a 60-day review. This decision is binding; the plan dies if the CPC rejects it. 

If the plan is approved by the CPC, it then goes to the City Council for a 50-day review. “Member deference” is customary— that is, the City councilmember whose district the plans concern has the final say. In this case, that councilmember is Lincoln Restler. 

Finally, the mayor has the option to veto the council’s approval. If he does not, then the project is approved. 

The January 20th public hearing begins at 6:00pm in the auditorium of the Polish and Slavic Center at 176 Java St. The public will get one minute to read their testimonies. It might make sense to arrive early— if the January 8 meeting was any indication, the hearing on the 20th will be quite the spectacle. 

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An Elegy for Oakland Street

GEOFFREY COBB

Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past”

gcobb91839@Aol.com

One of the first things that our new Mayor Zohran Mamdani did was to come to Greenpoint and address the controversy surrounding McGuinness Boulevard, the four- lane traffic artery that divides the neighborhood and many local resi- dents. Before we address the present controversy let’s take a look at the history of the boulevard. Once, Mc- Guinness Boulevard was not a four- lane speedway at all/ It was once quaint Oakland Street; a charming cobblestoned street lined by pretty, wood-frame 19th-century homes typical of our historic district.

It is hard to conceive the mindset that wanted to destroy such a lovely street and replace it with a soulless four-lane highway, but in the late 1950s automobiles were seen as the future of transportation and the city was ready to carve up Greenpoint for motorists. Robert Moses, the in- famous power broker, had his sights on our area. Moses, who arguably had the greatest influence on New York’s infrastructure of any person who ever lived, wanted to destroy Oakland Street. The destruction of Oakland Street was only a small piece in the grand scheme of Rob- ert Moses who built the BQE, the Tri-borough Bridge, and the Cross-

Bronx Expressway. Moses wanted a city for motorists and tens of thou- sands of homes across the city fell victim to his projects.

Oakland Street was, sadly, the only north-south street, other than Manhattan Ave. that stretched to Newtown Creek. In the late 1950s the city determined that the rick- ety old Vernon Blvd. Bridge, which Greenpointers called the Manhattan Avenue Bridge, should be replaced. The north end of Oakland Street be- came the logical place to build a new bridge of the creek, and they built the Pulaski Bridge to funnel traffic between the Brooklyn Queens Ex- pressway in Brooklyn and Long Is- land City.

When the new bridge first opened, Oakland Street was widened, but only as far south as Greenpoint Ave- nue – and gas stations to service the heavy car and truck traffic quickly appeared. The narrow section of Oakland Street remaining beyond Greenpoint Avenue survived, but created traffic jams, dooming the quaint cobblestone street and its pretty houses.

All of the houses on the east side of Oakland Street and all the houses from Driggs Ave to the BQE were condemned by the City to create the new grand boulevard. Some residents tried to fight and save their homes, but their utilities were cut off, and they grudgingly accepted com- pensation for their beloved homes. Amazingly though, most people did not protest. They regarded losing their homes and the cobblestoned street as the price to pay for progress. The only defiance by the community was a proposal for more gas stations on the boulevard south of Meserole Av- enue. The commu- nity killed the idea and that is the only reason new hous- ing was built on the thoroughfare at all.

In 1964, Sal- vatore Tortorici pressed his local alderman, Joe Shar- key to rename the new boulevard in honor of the great- est politician in lo- cal history: Peter J. McGuiness, who had passed away in 1948. The City Council passed the name change unani- mously and Oak- land Street was re- named McGuinness Boulevard.

Many local residents have complained about the way motorists drive along the boulevard. The four wide lanes encouraged aggressive driving, illegal passing, and excessive speeding—conditions that routinely lead to serious motor vehicle collisions. Hundreds of pedestrians have been hit on McGuinness Boulevard, with over 200 fatalities since 1956, including 11 pedestrians or cyclists killed between 1995 and 2021.

Activists in the community pushed for the transformation of McGuinness into a two-lane, pedestrian friendly artery with bike lanes. Wealthy production company own- ers Gina and Tony Argento funded a movement to block the changes to the boulevard. After the redesign began in 2023, the Adams admin- istration abruptly switched course, throwing its support behind a re- vised plan for the northern section of the road that critics called wa- tered down and insufficient.

In August, the Manhattan district attorney charged Ingrid Lewis-Mar- tin, a top aide to Mr. Adams, with conspiring to kill the original pro- posal, in exchange for a relatively small sum of money and a speaking role on a television series owned by the Argento siblings. Ms. Lewis-Martin pleaded not guilty, as did the production company’s owners, Gina and Anthony Argento, who were also charged.

Last week, Mayor Mamdani, surrounded by supporters with signs bearing the names of crash victims on the boulevard, said he would finish the original, full plan for the roadway as soon as weather permit- ted, and that he would not be “bowed by big-money interests.” “Thanks to so many who went out and pounded the pavement, that pavement now will change,” he said. Some residents fear that the changes to the boulevard will lead to increased auto traffic on the streets running parallel to the boulevard. One thing though is certain, the boulevard will soon change into a narrower, more pedes- trian and cyclist friendly artery.