Don’t Let The Stevedore Hit You On The Way Out

Waterfront development may be pushing out, um, waterfront development in Red Hook:

Dozens of longshoremen swarmed across the blue-hulled Zim Charleston on Tuesday at the Red Hook container port, unloading 1,150 containers of food, clothing and furniture from India that are bound for Long Island, New York City and New Jersey.

It was the first of what Zim, one of the world’s largest container carriers, says will be a weekly service bringing 90,000 containers a year to Pier 10, more than doubling the current volume and adding an estimated 152 new jobs.

But by next April, the city and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are hoping to close the container port and the last remnants of Brooklyn’s once-bustling cargo piers, while evicting the operator, American Stevedoring. They say the freight can be better handled at ports in New Jersey, or at Howland Hook on Staten Island.

The city is also interested in residential projects and other maritime uses on the waterfront that could generate thousands of jobs, like the newly opened cruise ship terminal on Pier 12 in Red Hook.

Although the Bloomberg administration says it would consider creating a container port in the future, the City Council will vote today on the administration’s plan to turn part of the only alternative location — the long-dormant South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park — into a parking lot.

Critics like Councilman David Yassky of Brooklyn, and Representative Jerrold Nadler said the city’s plan to close the Brooklyn port is both wrong and shortsighted. They say that both the business and the well-paying waterfront jobs could be lost forever. And, they say, both New York and New Jersey need every inch of space to handle the rapidly escalating volume of goods.

“Shipping creates excellent-paying jobs for people who don’t compete in the high-tech economy,” Mr. Yassky said, “and it keeps trucks off the roads.”

But Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff counters that Red Hook is not sustainable because of its small size and lack of rail and highway access.

“Our single most important priority is providing jobs for New Yorkers,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “We also consider it an important priority to preserve and enhance jobs for dockworkers. That does not mean we have to achieve that by retaining the current uses or current tenants on the piers.”

While It May Appear Unprofessional, It Was Hardly The Worst Thing In The World, Or, “Protect & Lob”

Apparently citizens don’t find on-duty egg fights very funny:

Sgt. Salvatore R. Carola, 38, was punished after the Internal Affairs Bureau got a videotape from an East Flatbush resident who witnessed the Father’s Day shenanigans.

Sources said Carola, an 11-year veteran, was in charge of some two dozen rookies taking part in a citywide program to flood high-crime areas with extra cops.

But first, they decided to have a little fun. For 10 to 15 minutes, Carola and the rookies, all in uniform, hurled water balloons at each other and pelted NYPD vans with eggs.

No one was hurt and no property was damaged, but one annoyed citizen recorded the “fun” and turned over the videotape.

The timing of the horsePlay, on Nostrand Avenue near Farragut Road, could not have been worse. It came after a five-hour period that saw 10 people shot or stabbed in the precinct.

One veteran police supervisor said, “This was an incident of some cops letting off some steam while they were dealing with the stress of keeping the public safe.

“It wasn’t dangerous and, while it may appear unprofessional, it was hardly the worst thing in the world.”

Location, Location, Location: Gravesend!

The Times explains how someone actually paid $11 million for a house in Gravesend, Brooklyn:

The multimillion-dollar teardown is generally considered a suburban phenomenon, a peculiar indulgence of the well-heeled in places of grassy splendor, like Greenwich or Great Neck. But there is a quiet, out-of-the-way section of the Gravesend neighborhood in Brooklyn where it has become commonplace for houses to trade for millions of dollars, only to be torn down and replaced with ever more luxurious mansions.

The most eye-popping transaction, the one that still has real estate brokers and appraisers scratching their heads, occurred in 2003 at 450 Avenue S at the corner of East Fourth Street, where a 3,600-square-foot house on a double lot sold for $11 million, according to a deed filed with the city.

Brokers and appraisers said it might be the highest price ever paid for a house in the borough, easily surpassing the $8.5 million paid last year for a brownstone overlooking the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, the neighborhood that is normally considered the ne plus ultra of Brooklyn real estate.

Notwithstanding its high price, the house on Avenue S was torn down last year, and a 10,400-square-foot two-story mansion is going up in its place, at an additional cost of several million dollars. Like the old house, the new one has an orange tile roof — the neighborhood’s signature motif — as well as four bedrooms, five bathrooms, three half baths, a barrel-vaulted ceiling in the master bedroom, a grand double-height domed entryway and a finished basement with an exercise room and a theater.

Keep in mind that a 10,400 square-foot house translates into thirteen 800-square-foot apartments.

But beyond the tasteful grand double-height domed entryways, this case exemplifies the oft-heard maxim “location, location, location”:

In fact, it is a very particular part of Brooklyn, one where some of the wealthiest members of an extremely tight-knit enclave of Syrian Jews compete with one another for properties on a few coveted blocks of large homes around Avenues S, T and U, between the area’s main synagogues on Ocean Parkway and its most prestigious yeshiva on McDonald Avenue.

Because devout Jews are barred from driving on the Sabbath, houses within walking distance of a synagogue carry a premium. And while that has had an impact on real estate values in other Brooklyn neighborhoods, the effect could hardly be more extreme than it is in Gravesend, where house prices have risen to astonishing heights.

“This market is not dictated by interest rates or the price of real estate as a whole,” said Frank Lupi, the president of Wolf Properties, a real estate agency in Gravesend. “The houses over here, they sell very quickly, and you’re almost naming your price at this point.”

The Sad Thing Is That It Was Probably A Carefully Crafted Statement

Expect mellifluously alliterative outrage from Al Sharpton after this “slip of the tongue”:

City Councilman David Yassky, locked in a racially charged congressional race, was all smiles yesterday as Mayor Bloomberg introduced him as “Congressman Yassky.”

Speaking at the first groundbreaking to come from last year’s Williamsburg-Greenpoint re-zoning, the mayor praised Yassky — but press secretary Stu Loeser insisted there was no endorsement, just “a slip of the tongue.”

Recipe For Hitting The Front Page Of The Sunday Times: Just Add Sharpton

The, er, colorful race in Brooklyn’s 11th Congressional District hits the front page of the Sunday Times:

For the last four decades, the predominantly black population of central Brooklyn has been represented in Washington by one of its own, a tradition that dates to the 1968 victory of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress.

But now, in a district whose boundaries were drawn to strengthen black voting power, residents are locked in a wrenching, racially charged debate over a white politician’s campaign for Congress.

. . .

As the forces of immigration and gentrification have altered the demographics of these communities, ethnic and racial blocs that once promoted their own candidates have fractured, with voters now choosing among politicians of various backgrounds.

Nowhere is the phenomenon more stark than in the contest for the 11th Congressional District, where American- and Caribbean-born blacks vie for power and a steady influx of whites has heightened the worry that blacks will be displaced, from their neighborhoods and from the political hierarchy. It is a fear that Mr. Yassky’s candidacy has intensified, so much so that a group of black and Hispanic politicians are discussing ways to make sure he loses.

The Times, while tiptoeing around some of the more, er, colorful (dammit, that word again!) parts of the story*, still snags a couple beauts from so-called “nonblacks”:

As [Yassky] campaigned that same Saturday in Ditmas Park, a part of Flatbush where home values have been rapidly rising, some nonblack voters expressed qualms about his candidacy. One white couple told Mr. Yassky that they planned to vote for Chris Owens. And at a greenmarket, Joe Wong, 29, an Asian-American, said that he, too, was leaning toward Mr. Owens because he opposed the Atlantic Yards development and because he had reservations about voting for a nonblack candidate.

“I’m not totally sold on that, but it’s just the fact that it was created as a majority-minority district and the fact that blacks are underrepresented in the Congress as it stands,” Mr. Wong said, adding that he did not support efforts to push Mr. Yassky out of the race.

“I’m not saying he wouldn’t do a good job representing the district and the minorities that are in the district,” he said, “it’s just I haven’t made up my mind whether or not that’s a good enough reason for me to vote for someone or not.”

Emphasis added because, well, isn’t how well someone represents a district sort of the idea in the first place?

*What, no Charles Barron openly questioning the existence of Barack Obama?