Musical robots invade Gowanus P.7 Brooklyn’s Real Newspaper BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 834–9350 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2007 BROOKLYN HEIGHTS–DOWNTOWN EDITION AWP/16 pages • Vol. 30, No. 44 • Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007 • FREE INCLUDING DUMBO DOWNTOWN MOVIN’ UP Skyscrapers tower over same old infrastructure By Dana Rubinstein The Brooklyn Paper Downtown Brooklyn’s biggest booster MIT News Office said this week that the development the area will experience in the next five years — adding more than 14,000 apartments, 1,800 hotel rooms and 1.6 million square feet of office space — is happening faster than some of the neighborhood’s basic in- frastructure can handle. GEHRY SUED! But Downtown Brooklyn Partnership President Joe Chan, who showed off the Cracks at MIT cast doubt on ‘Miss Brooklyn’ glitzy new face of the borough’s gateway in an Ian McKellen-narrated video presenta- tion last week, said he and his staff were on By Gersh Kuntzman complex in Prospect Heights, is so rid- opened in spring, 2004. Globe that the fault was in Gehry’s top of it. The Brooklyn Paper dled with cracks that mold has formed But its janitors were never fans. flawed plans, not in Skanska’s execu- “There’s a need for ongoing attention and and drainage is backing up inside. Almost immediately, according to tion of them. problem solving to Massachusetts Institute of Technolo- “Gehry breached its duties by pro- the suit, the center’s outdoor amphithe- “This is not a construction issue, gy has sued Frank Gehry — the vision- happen,” said Chan. viding deficient design services and ater began to crack due to drainage never has been,” said Paul Hewins, “And that’s some- ary behind Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic drawings,” says the suit, which seeks problems. And snow and ice slid dan- Skanska executive vice president. He Yards — claiming that his three-year- thing that we are, damages and reimbursement of the gerously down the angled roofs and told the Globe that Gehry rejected and will be, focus- old building on the Cambridge campus $1.5 million that the institution of high- piled up in ways that blocked emer- Skanska’s formal request to create a de- is cracking apart. ing on.” er learning spent to repair the damage. gency exits. sign that included soft joints and a Those words The suit, which seeks unspecified / Rosenberg Julie Gehry Partners, the architect’s Los Mold grew on the exterior and there drainage system in the amphitheater, should come as damages, was filed last week in a Angeles-based firm, was paid $15 mil- were regular leaks in the roof, the suit and “we were told to proceed with the some comfort to original design.” Boston civil court. It charges that lion for the Stata Center design. The in- continued. anyone who was As a result, Hewins said, Skanska Gehry’s $300-million Stata Center (pic- novative building, which Gehry once The suit also named Skanska Con- taken aback by the spent “a few hundred thousand dollars” tured), with a ziggurat design similar to said “looks like a party of drunken ro- struction, the New Jersey-based firm sheer magnitude of fixing the problem. Paper The Brooklyn his plans for the “Miss Brooklyn” tow- bots got together to celebrate,” has been that actually built the Stata Center. But the numbers pre- er at the gateway to the Atlantic Yards hailed by critics and its users since it a Skanska executive told the Boston See GEHRY on page 6 sented in last week’s video: By 2012, the Partnership anticipates 23 million square feet of new development in and around Downtown, including the 8.7-million- square-foot Atlantic Yards project. So much development, so little talk of how to handle its repercussions — the new Canadian birds invade Brooklyn train passengers, new pedestrians, new driv- ers, and all those toilet flushes, said Brad By Carrie Laben things to which they pose a ma- ies. But when the spruce and cally spend the winter living it Lander, the director of the Pratt Center for for The Brooklyn Paper jor threat are invertebrates. fir seeds on which they rely up at bird feeders, and may Community Development. Red-breasted nuthatches are are scarce, they become linger well into the spring. “The video contains nothing about how There are invaders pouring small, squat birds with chisel- refugees — and large numbers So Brooklyn residents growth will work for residents of Brooklyn across the Canadian border, shaped bills, known by their of birds search for the land of might as well get used to this and how infrastructure issues will be ad- and Homeland Security is do- red and gray color scheme and opportunity. latest invasion, at least for the dressed,” he said. ing nothing to stop them. black eye mask. With little Keen-eyed birdwatchers next six months. If you see Indeed, policy wonks warn that such In fact, there could be one fear of humans, they are have already spotted the something, it’s no use to say seismic shifts in the borough’s central busi- lurking outside your window known to perch within yards nuthatches in Prospect Park in something, except perhaps to ness district will, at best, hamper, and at right now, looking in with a of observers while devouring August, according to the Cor- your local bird club. worst overwhelm, basic services. dark and beady eye. insects and spiders. nell Laboratory of Ornitholo- Just be grateful that this isn’t “It’s really going to be very difficult [for Partnership Brooklyn Downtown Fortunately, they are about In good times, these birds gy’s eBird report. an irruption year for gyrfalcons subways] to be able to accommodate that Flatbush Avenue is booming, and Downtown Brook- four inches long and weigh half make their homes in forests in Once they’ve joined forces or snowy owls. Those jerks can growth,” said Rae Zimmerman, director of lyn Partnership President Joe Chan (inset) says he’ll an ounce — and the only living Canada and high in the Rock- with the locals, they will typi- wound a Yorkshire Terrier! Steve Nanzz Steve See CHAN PLAN on page 6 push the city for improved infrastructure to handle it. Sitt out at Coney Island hotel, theme park and retail attraction. The ment sector, much of which Sitt now owns, Mayor plans to city just doesn’t want Sitt to build it. would be taken over by the city and rezoned “We [want] a developer who has real to allow for a hotel alongside the rides. world-class experience,” said Deputy May- “We talked to some leading amusement buy out Joe or Dan Doctoroff after the briefing. developers around the world,” said Docto- By Dana Rubinstein “It’s a very different business building a roff. “There is definitely interest.” shopping center than building an amuse- A second area — with no Boardwalk The Brooklyn Paper ment area,” added Doctoroff, referring to frontage and bounded by West 20th Street, Mayor Bloomberg on Thursday brushed Sitt’s experience in building malls. “[He] Mermaid, Surf and Stillwell avenues — aside developer Joe Sitt’s plan to turn Coney will be offered the opportunity to swap his would be rezoned to lure developers into Island into a Las Vegas-style playground on property for another parcel or for cash.” building 1,800 new apartments and 100,000 / Rosenberg Julie the Boardwalk — while proposing his own, That could cost the city hundreds of mil- square feet of retail space. remarkably similar plan. lions, a source close to Sitt said. The third sector, bounded by the Board- During a Brooklyn Chamber of Com- The announcement came four years after walk, West 19th and West 24th streets and merce luncheon at Gargiulo’s restaurant, the the city created the Coney Island Develop- Surf Avenue, much of which is currently mayor presented the city’s new vision for the ment Corporation to draw up a master plan mapped as parkland, would be de-mapped Paper The Brooklyn 19 blocks in and around the historic “Peo- the neighborhood. In those years, Sitt’s Thor (pending Albany approval) to stimulate the / Bachner Jeff ple’s Playground.” But for the 47 acres Equities has been buying up plots of the private construction of 2,700 apartments and bounded by West 20th and West Eighth amusement district between West Eighth 360,000 square feet of retail space. City on the run streets, Surf and Mermaid avenues, and the and West 15th streets. Sitt, for his part, said in a statement that he Marathon runners made their annual pilgrimage up Fourth Avenue (left) Boardwalk, Bloomberg’s vision mirrored The city’s proposal outlines three distinct was “disappointed” but optimistic that a deal from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Park Slope, where Trixie Willems Sitt’s plan to build a glamorous, $1.5-billion sectors within Coney Island. The amuse- can be reached between him and the city. and her mom, Cheryl, greeted them with open palms. The Brooklyn Paper The Brooklyn Bad art from good drunks ome of the greatest works of cabinet, in which case someone should modern art have been derided by THE BROOKLYN call ACS, not MOMA). And that’s because great drunken art Sthe simplistic put-down, “My kid By Gersh could do that.” ANGLE Kuntzman often has an element of crassness, said So it’s refreshing to finally attend Teraberry, who is not just a legend in an art opening where no one’s kid art exhibit in town, the Museum of the drunken art world, but also the could have done anything of the kind.