BROOKLYN’S REAL NEWSPAPERS Including The Bensonhurst 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 • © 2005 Brooklyn Paper Publications • 16 pages •Vol.28, No. 8 BRZ •Saturday, February 19, 2005 • FREE BKLYN DIOCESE ON CLOSINGS BACKROOM DEALS DIDN’T DOOM SCHOOLS By Jotham Sederstrom Instead, DeRosa said, the closings as a space to be leased for public The Brooklyn Papers were prompted by shrinking enroll- school use, he said that individual ment over the last five years. parishes would decide, “in conjunc- The Roman Catholic Diocese The diocese shocked parents and tion with the diocese,” how best to use of Brooklyn this week denied schoolchildren by announcing on Ash the other vacated properties. He said reports that the city had been in Wednesday the shuttering of 17 that uses could include bible classes, months-long discussions to lease Brooklyn Catholic schools at the end continuing education, or any number diocese school buildings that will of this semester, including some in of other groups, including Alcoholics close for good this summer. Bensonhurst, Carroll Gardens and Anonymous. Diocesan spokesman Frank De- Park Slope. Asked whether some of the schools Rosa told The Bay Ridge Paper that Among the schools to close in might be sold for private residential while negotiations with the city De- Brooklyn are: Saint Finbar’s, at 1825 use, DeRosa said, “I couldn’t say any- partment of Education are ongoing for Bath Ave., in Bath Beach; Sacred thing unequivocally at this point. I re- / Tom Callan / Tom a school building that closed last sum- Hearts and St. Stephen’s, at 135 Sum- ally don’t know. I don’t know if we’re mer in Ozone Park, Queens, 26 others mit St., in Carroll Gardens; and St. at the point of discussing that. It’s only expected to close this year were never Thomas Aquinas, at 211 Eighth St., in a week old after all.” discussed. Park Slope. Despite DeRosa’s contention that “No, absolutely not,” said DeRosa, DeRosa said 11 others will either the use of the schools had not been The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn in a bid to quash speculation that a merge or be integrated into one of discussed, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pending deal with the city may have four existing schools, two in East Flat- said otherwise this week. He also precipitated the school closing at the bush, and one each in Williamsburg brought up the issue on the Feb. 11 end of this academic year. The city’s and Midwood. edition of his weekly radio show. Sixty grand for Marty public schools are grappling with ma- Although DeRosa acknowledged “I’m optimistic that we will be able jor space shortages. that the Ozone Park school was cited See CATHOLIC SCHOOLS on page 2 Borough President Marty Markowitz gets help cutting his 60th-birthday cake from his wife, Jamie, during birthday bash at the Jade Plaza Restaurant on Eighth Avenue and 60th Street in Sunset Park on Valentines’s Day. The benefit, which also celebrated Chinese New Year, raised enough money for 68 camp scholarships through Markowitz’s Camp Brooklyn program for under-privileged children. Ridge High court will hear High ‘eminent’ case Tues. reunites By Matt Apuzzo Ratner’s plan, too, calls for the state’s use be taking this case where it’s going,” said By Jotham Sederstrom Associated Press of eminent domain, to condemn 11 acres of Matthew Dery, who lives in one of four hous- The Brooklyn Papers private property. es on a compound his family has owned since NEW LONDON, Conn. — Fifteen The Fort Trumbull residents come from a 1901. “It’s a case of the rich eating the poor. Drawn together each month to dis- houses are all that remain of Fort Trum- variety of backgrounds — there’s an elderly Sometimes the poor are difficult to digest.” cuss the contents of their biannual bul- bull, a once vibrant immigrant neighbor- Italian immigrant, a mechanic, a flooring sup- Leading the charge is Susette Kelo, a 47- Callan / Tom letin, annual luncheon and news of old hood on the southeastern Connecticut plier, a school audio-video worker and a for- year-old nurse and mother of five boys who friends, members of the Bay Ridge shore. For years, bulldozers have been mer deli owner. bought her apricot-colored home in 1997. With High School Alumnae Association often leveling houses to make way for a city’s “It’s quite an amalgamation of people to a decorative outhouse in the front yard and find themselves marveling at the whole- high hopes: a hotel and convention center, wind chimes made of silverware, her house sale change that occurred following doesn’t fit in the city’s development plans. office space and upscale condominiums. Papers The Brooklyn their alma mater’s demise. The homes, surrounded now by swaths of PAGE 7 “They have over 90 acres now,” Kelo said. “It’s more than enough room to build The senior garden in front of their old rutted grass and gravel, stand in defiance to building on 67th Street at Fourth Avenue has the project. Refusing to sell or leave, seven on. We never said they can’t build. We just said, ‘We want to stay.’” Hail to the chief vanished, replaced instead by classroom families will go before the U.S. Supreme trailers at the High School of Telecommuni- Court this Tuesday, Feb. 22, arguing their City officials say that’s impossible. New commander Col. Tracey Nicholson, the first woman to cation Arts and Technology, which replaced city has no right to take property solely in the “They just would not be compatible with lead the Fort Hamilton Army Base, is pictured during as- Bay Ridge High. The 700-seat upper audito- name of economic development. all the other uses,” said Edward O’Connell, sumption of command ceremonies at the fort on Tuesday. The high court’s decision is expected to an attorney representing the New London See RIDGE HIGH on page 2 have an impact on Brooklyn developer Bruce Development Corporation, the quasi-public Ratner’s plan to build Atlantic Yards, a nine- agency behind the redevelopment effort. square-block mixed-use development in He points to Byron Athenian’s low-slung Prospect Heights that includes plans for a pro- ‘Sideways’ a hit for black house as an example: “You’re going fessional basketball arena and 17 commercial to put up a $20 million hotel next to that?” and residential high-rises emanating from the Heights actor O’Connell said. intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. See EMINENT on page 12 Cops nab suspect as ‘friendly’ Ridge rapist Poet laureate needs kidney By Jotham Sederstrom newspapers last week. woman near Third Avenue and 79th The Brooklyn Papers Thomas, who also goes by the names Street and dragged her down a cellar Christian Harris and Isaiah Mitchell, stairwell where a bed had been set up. By Jotham Sederstrom Sinai Medical Center donor list. I feel absolutely terrible,” said Siegelman, Police this week arrested a man The Brooklyn Papers Siegelman, who has unearthed beauty in who turned 60 on Thursday. was charged with rape, sodomy, robbery Police said the man raped and some of the borough’s most unlikely places, “You’re weakened, you’re nauseated, you who they say raped and mugged and unlawful imprisonment, according sodomized her before fleeing with her Brooklyn’s poet laureate is in dire need could face up to five more years on a crowd- have no appetite. There’s a whole slew of two Brooklyn woman — one in to a criminal complaint filed with the jewelry. of a kidney transplant. ed donor list. Siegelman was told by his doc- things. Bay Ridge and another in East Kings County District Attorney’s office. More than a month later, on Jan. Ken Siegelman, whom Borough President tors that patients can wait for up to a decade “The poetry, though, keeps the focus off Flatbush — after striking up con- The first incident, on Dec. 18, hap- 30, cops say Thomas struck again, this Marty Markowitz appointed in 2002 as before reaching the top of that list. what I have.” versations with them. pened around 5 am, when the man en- time in East Flatbush, where he al- Brooklyn’s third poet laureate, told The Although he was placed on dialysis less The author of nine books of poetry, Siegelman Cops arrested Lamar Thomas, 20, gaged a woman in her 20s in conver- legedly attacked a woman in her 20s Brooklyn Papers this week that since being than two years ago, a painful process in frequently returns to his home borough in his near the corner of Saratoga Avenue sation on a train platform in Times when he said he was a new neighbor diagnosed with end-stage renal disease four which the blood is cleaned of waste, the work, particularly in poems with titles like “Ger- and Decatur Street in Bedford- Square. Police say he cajoled her into locked out of his home. He used the years ago his health has rapidly diminished. thrice weekly treatments, say doctors, usually ritsen Beach” and “Flatland School.” In “Ben- Stuyvesant at 10 am on Feb. 15, six taking the long train ride into Bay phone to call a locksmith and then left Because of various difficulties, including remain effective for no more than 10 years, sonhurst,” he writes, “The seismic thunder of the days after releasing his name and pho- Ridge, where he said he had friends.