Giambusso Gowanus Questions

(To be asked of Professors Richard Plunz, Architecture and Patricia Culligan, Civil Engineering, of Columbia and authors of Eco Gowanus: Urban Remediation by Design).

1. How have designs for Public Place compared with your own ideas and findings for the needs of the area?
2. Who or what stands essentially in the way of implementing your recommendations? Political will? Money?
3. Discuss briefly your research methods? Did you examine tax records, old titles, designs?
4. What are some of the immediate risks of living above and amidst this particular site?
5. Where else in the U.S. have your ideas of green industrial infrastructure been implemented?

Giambusso Memo

Building Battles:

OVERVIEW:

I am attempting to examine the political battles that go into building and development. I hope to examine specific sites and demonstrate how the pressures of City Council, Congress, developers, community groups etc, shape building safety. I would like to look at a development that has been finished, one that is being constructed and ne that is in the planning stages.

I am looking specifically to examine how the race to develop may be having a deleterious effect on building safety. Politicians and developers are often involved in projects that garner government funds (affordable housing, brownfield development) making enterprises more lucrative for builders.

The question I hope to raise is how safe are these projects, what are the standards and what have been the real-life consequences of projects that perhaps moved too quickly for political economic expediency while ignoring safety standards.


FIRST SITE: Gowanus Canal, “Public Place”
Lede(?)

Along the trendy restaurants of Cobble Hill and the nouveau-chic bars of Park Slope, underneath the lacquered hardwood walkups, where hipsters, yuppies and trustafarians, meet, live, and raise their young, between two lands conquered by the inexorable armies of gentrification, there runs a river of poison--a mile and half of putrid waterway that once served the factories and chemical plants lining its banks.

For over a century the Gowanus Canal has acted as an industrial sewer, suffering the runoff of tanneries, machine shops, and factories churning soap, paint, ink, and sulfur. The waterway, which connects Upper New York Bay to the neighborhoods of Red Hook, South Brooklyn, and Park Slope, runs along a flood basin of toxicity.

In the eyes of politicians, the banks of the Gowanus are a fertile ground for green spaces and affordable housing. In the eyes of developers, the Gowanus valley is a gold prospect promising government funding and quick profits. For the starry-eyed denizens of the outlying neighborhoods, the land along the Gowanus is another chance to recreate the city’s landscape in their own image--complete with coffee shops, dog runs, and tree lined walkways through which to push the seemingly endless stream of baby carriages that follows the march of young urban affluence.

In the fever to develop this infamous stretch, though, some in the community have raised the unwelcome flag of caution and warned that we may not know exactly what has been created underneath these banks. There is skepticism that a layer of sod and some shrubberies may only mask the feet of sledge and chemical waste that have built up over the last one hundred years. Some warn that the consequences of living among these noxious deposits may be dire…

SECOND SITE: Atlantic Yards

THIRD SITE:


LINKS:

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=5&id=18585

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=18300

http://www.gowanus.org/gowanus.htm

http://www.waterfrontmuseum.org/dredgers/links/voice.html

http://www.gowanusartists.com/home.html

http://www.plannyc.org/project-75-Gowanus-Development

CONTACT:

Jessica Pozzuoli: Television Producer, Environmental Activist, Urban Planner
Sarah Ryley: Reporter, Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Bill deBlasio, NYCity Council
David Yassky, NYC Council
Jim Brennan, NYS Assembly
Nydia Velazquez, U.S. House of Reps, 11th District. (The fightin 11th!)
Toll Brothers Development Co.
A.J. Carter, press person at the Empire State Development Corporation
Bob Zuckerman, GCCDC
Patricia Culligan, Professor Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University
NYC D of Buildings
DEP
Seth Donlin, spokesman, Department of Housing Preservation and Development (NYC DHPD)
Bette Stoltz, executive director of the South Brooklyn Local Development Corporation (SBLDC)

TO DO:

GOWANUS
• Get a copy of Culligan’s report/conduct interviews to learn what clean up methods are used in brownfields.
• Also from Culligan, where else have cleanup methods been used and what have been the consequences.
• Contact policymakers, agencies, advocates to determine who is pro, who is against Public Place (GCCDC, SBLDC, EDC, NYS DEP, HPD, D of B, Yassky, Brennan, Velazquez)
• Determine how much Public Place will cost: cleanup, design, construction commercial rent, residential rent, government funding
• Visit other Toll Brothers sites. Do they usually flip brown fields? What do residents say of their developments what is their reputation, who are the architects?
• Visit sites listed in Culligan’s report

Daily Eagle

Two recent, interesting articles from the Broolyn Daily Eagle:

safety legislation:

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=18200

and toxic legacies , Brooklyn-style:

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=18300