City Keeps Jail Alive
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SATURDAY • JULY 10, 2004 Including Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Paper, Downtown News, DUMBO Paper and Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Paper Brooklyn’s REAL newspapers Published every Saturday — online all the time — by Brooklyn Paper Publications Inc, 55 Washington St, Suite 624, Brooklyn NY 11201. Phone 718-834-9350 • www.BrooklynPapers.com • © 2004 Brooklyn Paper Publications • 18 pages • Vol. 27, No. 27 BWN • Saturday, July 10, 2004 • FREE CITY KEEPSJAIL ALIVE $18 million for shuttered Atlantic Avenue big house By Deborah Kolben The Brooklyn Papers The city will sink another $18 million into the closed Brooklyn House of Deten- EXCLUSIVE tion over the next year and community 4TH FLARES groups and elected officials are outraged. ‘We anticipate a The 10-story prison, once home to 800 in- Independence Day fireworks explode mates, has been empty since last summer, when need to occupy the the mayor ordered the Department of Correction along the East River in this view looking out as a cost-cutting measure. building again’ north from Red Hook, where thousands Apparently dashing community hopes that the building would soon be put to an alternate use, — Correction Department spokesman gathered to see one of the biggest dis- Correction Department spokesman Thomas An- plays in years. tenen told The Brooklyn Papers this week, “We nity expected the work to stop. anticipate we will have a need to occupy the “They already put in $30 million so far and building again.” now they’re going to put $18 million more? It’s a To that end, the city budget for Fiscal Year blight on Atlantic Avenue and a blight on our 2005, which began this month, includes $18.4 neighborhood,” said Sandy Balboza, president of million in renovations for the House of D, as the the Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association. prison has come to be known. “They just keep spending money,” she said. “It’s a bad spend,” Borough President Marty Balboza said the building helped create a dead Markowitz told The Papers. “That money could zone along Atlantic Avenue between Boerum be used to reopen firehouses and for other great Place and Smith Street known as “the gap” for its needs that we have.” Markowitz would prefer to sparse and forbidding atmosphere. The strip fea- see housing developed on the site. tures little more than gas stations and bail bonds- Boerum Hill community leaders had hailed the men, while on either side of the gap is an eclectic detention center’s closing last year as a step toward array off retail stores, restaurants and bars. reclaiming a desolate stretch of otherwise burgeon- But slowly the gap is beginning to close, with ing Atlantic Avenue, and they anticipated that the plans to convert a Mobil gas station into an apart- structure would be torndown and replaced with re- ment building, a residential development rising on tail and residential units. But the city’s decision to the site of what used to be a municipal parking Callan / Tom sink millions of dollars more into renovating the garage at Atlantic Avenue and Court Street, and a shuttered prison left them livid. boutique hotel and condo development planned for Renovations to the 47-year-old prison have the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street. been going on for the past six years, but when the Balboza says the jail is one of the last remain- city cleared out the facility last June, the commu- See JAIL on page 4 Papers The Brooklyn ‘Cruise ships a ploy’ Nadler: No guarantee liners will come to Brooklyn By Deborah Kolben cruise industry to come to Brooklyn. had any thought of bringing the pacity,” said Bloomberg spokes- and Neil Sloane “When they started saying they cruise lines here and I don’t know woman Jennifer Falk. The Brooklyn Papers EXCLUSIVE wanted to use [the piers] for cruise why,” the congressman said. Falk added that the cruise lines lines, we were a little suspicious be- A mayoral spokeswoman ac- would not have entered into an agree- The mayor is using a promise lantic Avenue in Cobble Hill and Pioneer Street in Red Hook — ac- cause they don’t have an agreement knowledged this week that there is no ment with the city without a com- of cruise ships coming to the Red with cruise lines to use it,” said written commitment from the cruise mitment to build a Brooklyn dock. Hook piers as a ploy to squeeze cused key officials of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administra- Nadler. lines to dock in Brooklyn, but said “Nobody has an exclusive agree- out the borough’s last working tion of being disingenuous in nego- “I’m very concerned with what’s they have a verbal agreement to use ment, but the cruise lines are commit- container port, a Brooklyn con- tiations with both the public and the going on with the Economic Devel- the Brooklyn dock as a spillover ted to coming to Pier 12,” said EDC gressman charged this week. current operators of the piers over opment Corporation,” he said, re- when the Manhattan docks are full. spokesman Michael Sherman. In a conversation with The the future use of the waterfront. ferring to the agency, largely con- “Both cruise lines have verbally Asked for copies of the letters-of- Brooklyn Papers in the newspaper’s Despite touting Piers 10-12 as a trolled by the mayor, that will committed to using Brooklyn to intent signed between the Carnival DUMBO offices, Rep. Jerrold determine the uses of those piers. handle the overflow of ships when and Norwegian cruise lines and the cruise ship port, the Bloomberg ad- city on April 19, when the mayor an- Nadler, whose district includes ministration, Nadler charges, does not “They had a fixed plan to get rid the passenger ship terminal on the / Greg Mango / Greg Piers 6-12 — roughly between At- have a written commitment from the of container operations before they West Side of Manhattan reaches ca- See CRUISES on page 6 The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn Coming to America Mom’s cry: The agony of victory! By Lisa J. Curtis America’s champion gurgitator, Sonya Thomas, shoves in last GO Brooklyn Editor bite as Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi downs his world-record The patriotic spirit of July Fourth continues 53rd hot dog during Nathan’s contest in Coney Island on Sunday. Saturday, July 10, at 8 pm, with “Ellis Island: The Make street Dream of America,” a multimedia program featuring THIS WEEKEND the Brooklyn Philharmonic performing live at the Prospect Park Bandshell against a backdrop of pro- jected images from the Ellis Island Archive. safer for kids “Peter Boyer is the composer and conductor and master- Slope GOPer mind behind this whole combination of text, music and im- By Jotham Sederstrom age,” said Theodore Wiprud, director of operations, education The Brooklyn Papers and community engagement for the Brooklyn Philharmonic. “And this program is very much in the Brooklyn Philharmon- The mother of a 4-year-old boy who was run over ic’s tradition of bringing inspiring new work to the people of and killed by a truck as he and his sister crossed eyes Bloomie Brooklyn.” Boyer will make his New York City conducting Hamilton Avenue spoke out this week against the debut at this performance. traffic she says is overrunning Red Hook. “It’s a slide show of Ellis Island and immigrants coming Sherry Laney, whose son Travis Bussey was killed By Deborah Kolben lican,” Shaw hardly appears to be through Ellis Island, which accompanies narration taken from while crossing Hamilton Avenue at Court Street on June The Brooklyn Papers one himself. oral histories of seven immigrants,” said Wiprud. One of the 25, told The Brook- The 29-year-old banker is a concert’s narrators, Barry Bostwick, played a New York mayor lyn Papers that safe- He may be half his age and registered member of the Grand on the sitcom “Spin City” for six years (he’s still beloved by with pockets not nearly as ty measures need to Old Party but he is also a card- many for his performance as Brad in the cult classic “Rocky be implemented at EXCLUSIVE deep, but Park Sloper Steve carrying member of the Park Horror Picture Show”). Joining Bostwick will be Barbara Barrie the intersection and other streets before another life is lost. Shaw believes he can defeat Slope Food Co-op, where he [“One Potato, Two Potato” (1962), “Breaking Away” (1979)] “Hamilton Avenue needs crossing guards,” said Laney. Mayor Michael Bloomberg in works his mandatory 2.5 hours who replaces previously announced actress Blair Brown. “There’s too many kids from the buildings playing out next year’s primary. every month. “Ellis Island: The Dream of America,” is part of the there and it’s too dangerous for the kids. The intersection The Republican investment Just recently Shaw was stock- Celebrate Brooklyn performing arts series at the is too confusing.” banker has officially launched his ing organic vegetables when bandshell, Prospect Park West and Ninth Department of Transportation officials said this week mayoral campaign with a Web somebody stopped and asked him Street. Suggested admission is $3. For more that any new safety measures would take up to two site and is taking the incumbent to about his “Steve Shaw for May- information about Celebrate Brooklyn, months before being put in place. Tom Cocola, a task over taxes. or” button. call (718) 855-7882 ext. 45 or visit spokesman for the agency, said that an intersection con- www.celebratebrooklyn.org. But while he accuses Bloom- “That’s me,” he explained to a Courtesy of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum trol unit began studying the area following the tragedy.