Real Journalism written by people
At the TWU Local 100 headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery announced her impending retirement from politics on January 11 after a 35-year career in Albany, where she represented neighborhoods such as Red Hook, Gowanus, and Boerum Hill. A former daycare director, Montgomery entered a mostly white, mostly male legislative body – which would remain under continuous Republican […]
Most of the Department of City Planning’s proposed neighborhood rezonings – in Bushwick, in Inwood, on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx – are falling apart. What’s to blame? Bill de Blasio, who’s based his housing plan on upzoning transit-rich corridors to promote the development of market-rate residential units and – through Mandatory Inclusionary Housing – a smaller percentage of affordable […]
On January 29, the Department of Design and Construction (DDC) hosted the first Red Hook Coastal Resiliency (RHCR) community meeting at PS 676, kicking off a yearlong public engagement process that will culminate in the design of the neighborhood’s long-awaited flood protection system. Landscape architecture firm Grain Collective, alongside local partners RETI Center and Aesthetic Soul Community, will facilitate outreach […]
On January 10, the New York City Police Department released footage from an officer-involved shooting that took place in the Gowanus Houses on October 15, 2019. Plainclothesmen Henry Neumann and Matthew Schmalix interrupted a gunfight in progress between 30-year-old Nasheem Prioleau and an unnamed civilian on Baltic Street and fired 31 shots at Prioleau, who subsequently died at Brooklyn Hospital. […]
In January, the pump track at Harold Ickes Playground in northern Red Hook returned after an eight-month absence (and an article in last month’s Star-Revue about the mystery of its disappearance). The pump track is a lightweight installation of ramps and curves, intended to offer a temporary attraction for skateboarders and BMX riders in advance of the construction of a […]
A lawsuit against NYPD Sergeant Patrick Quigley that began with the 2012 shooting of Red Hook Houses resident Tyjuan Hill ended on September 26, 2019. The NYPD will not compensate Hill’s estate for the loss of his life at age 22. The deceased’s mother, Carol Hill, filed the civil suit seven years ago after a prostitution sting operation by the […]
In the fall of 2017, when Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and councilmen Carlos Menchaca and Brad Lander agreed (at the behest of teenage activists from the nonprofit Red Hook Initiative) to allocate $3 million to transform Red Hook’s Harold Ickes Playground from an unkempt concrete baseball diamond into a first-class skate park, the Department of Parks and Recreation took […]
Flood protection in Red Hook is still in the works, but don’t hold your breath. In May 2018, FEMA approved the Red Hook Integrated Flood Protection System Feasibility Study, a joint effort among the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency (MOR), the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), and consultants led by Dewberry. FEMA’s go-ahead marked the end of the first, […]
The NYPD’s 76th Precinct, the police station that serves South Brooklyn, holds a Community Council meeting on the first Wednesday of each month to update residents on recent incidents and local crime statistics. One regular feature of the meeting – the Cop of the Month award, delivered to one or more officers responsible for an exemplary deed – became a […]
On December 2, in the auditorium of PS 32, Community Board 6 (CB6) got to hear the latest on Gowanus Green, the long-delayed project that’ll convert 247,877 square feet of polluted land into a mixed-use development topping out at 28 stories, with housing, green space, and a public school. For a variety of reasons, a lot of Gowanus residents in […]
This fall, the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) announced the upcoming demolition and reconstruction of the Red Hook Library at 7 Wolcott Street. In October, architects David Leven and Stella Betts of the firm LEVENBETTS visited the branch to showcase their new design, which marks their third job for BPL, following their work on the Brooklyn Heights Interim Library and the […]
Last year, customers at the United States Postal Service’s Bush Terminal Station (900 3rd Avenue) – the only USPS location in northern Sunset Park – learned that their post office would soon close. More recently, however, a group of Sunset Park residents discovered that USPS’s plans may have changed. On August 15, 2018, the Postal Service held a meeting at […]
Robert Manning used to be a manufacturer in Sunset Park, and he’d like to be one again. As neighborhood groups fight to preserve and renew Brooklyn’s working waterfront amid a possible rezoning of Industry City, the New York City native hopes to make a case for his own longstanding proposal to create a textile manufacturing hub with the help of […]
