Greenpoint
Lorven Pharmacy
Culture on the Cheap
Reader Comment du Jour: An Agent Speaks About 239 Banker Street
CitySlicker24 writes in regards to this post:
I am a real estate salesperson and I just started working for a broker that’s representing the property owner, leasing out the building’s top three floors as residential units. I had not heard anything about this building being illegal until a couple of my prospective clients cancelled on me, citing your website.
A couple of things I wanted to raise with you: Oasisnyc.com shows that this is zoned as an office building, not as a manufacturing facility, as your article claims. Also, you fail to mention that the building was issued a certificate of occupancy in 1930, permitting up to 225 occupants on the upper three floors, though you do allude to the fact that NYC Department of Finance has this building classified as a hotel.
Furthermore, an application for legalization under the NYC loft law is pending, and indeed the building has undergone modernization, including new windows, floors, and fire sprinklers installed throughout each unit. I was in the units two days ago and saw that there have been significant projects intended to make the building appropriate for dwelling use.
Obvioulsy your efforts to keep everybody informed are laudable, and now that this story has been brought to my attention, I have the legal duty, which I will uphold, to advise my prospective tenant clients that the building is zoned as a commercial space, that the legal status of the building has yet to be determined, since the DOB has not yet resolved the active complaints, and that an application for coverage under the loft law is pending. And I will try to get the company’s listing agent to bring these issues up with the owner and the city in order to find out whether I should even be dealing with this property at all.
While I disagree with some of Cityslicker’s analysis, for example:
- the building in question is permissible as a hotel per the Department of Buildings because it is located in an Industrial Business Zone and
- of course there’s the fact this building is not legally allowable as residential property in the first place but is being represented as such
I’ll be very interested to see where this leads.
To be continued…?
Southside Photo du Jour: Wythe Avenue
Filed under: 11211, Stuff That Makes Miss Heather Happy, Williamsburg, Williamsburg Brooklyn
Taken April 9, 2012.
Coming To Bedford Stuyvesant: Williamsburg Winery
During my peregrinations today I stopped by this store in the hope of getting a much needed snack. But alas it was not to be: a winery cometh to Bedford Stuyvesant and its name is Williamsburg. Given the current trend I prognosticate Clinton Hill will qualify as Williamsburg in 2014.
Williamsburg Winery
Open Date: t.b.a
686 Myrtle Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11205
Urban Artifact: Hart Street
In Bedford Stuyvesant they have dinosaurs— and they have middle fingers!
Spotted At 331 Greene Avenue: (Words Fail Me, Pictures Aren’t Much Better)
While I and my walking companion du jour, a really amazing man named Dennis*, took in these missives a number of passerby and even motorists paused to take note. As you can see this fellow (?) has a lot on his mind.
Damn.
*Who was recently the subject of a pretty good article in the New York Times’s City Room. Do give it a read!
From The New York Shitty Photo Pool: Face Of Recovery
Chris Arnade (who took the above photograph) writes:
Andre had just gotten Essence’s Easter photo taken and was walking home when I met them. Andre, 40, is a former addict who has been in recovery for 12 years. He started using drugs at age 12, and was soon smoking and dealing crack. He was sent to jail twice and spent almost 7 years incarcerated. “I lost communication with my kids, burned a lot of bridges, and almost lost my wife of 22 years.”
He went into detox four times, but it his wife and three kids who finally gave him cause to make it stick. “My kids didn’t ask to come here. For me to make them and not take care of them isn’t a good thing. You have a choice. Drugs don’t jump up in your body. You either pick it up or walk away. I have walked away.”
When I asked him how he wanted to be described he said, “I am loving and sincere. I never forget my struggles because that’s where I come from” Of her father, Essence, age 3, said, “He makes me laugh, always tickling me!”
NYS Flickr Pool
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