PAGE PAGE List your apartment or house FREE EIGHT Body found in P’Park THREE INSIDE BROOKLYN’S WEEKLY NEWSPAPER Including The Downtown News, Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Paper and Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Paper Brooklyn foods feed TV show Published weekly by Brooklyn Paper Publications Inc, 26 Court St., Brooklyn 11242 Phone 718-834-9350 AD fax 718-834-1713 • NEWS fax 718-834-9278 © 2003 Brooklyn Paper Publications • 14 pages including GO BROOKLYN • Vol.26, No. 16 AWP • April 21, 2003 • FREE BUNKER BUSTED City’s short list of ‘bogus’ sites leads to D’town Office of Emergency Mgt. By Patrick Gallahue / Tom Callan / Tom The Brooklyn Papers EXCLUSIVE If opponents thought Downtown Brooklyn was a bad place for the city’s Mayor: Budget cuts emergency command center, they Red Cross site, included the Brooklyn should see the alternatives. Army Terminal, on 58th Street at Second The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn How about a jail? Or perhaps the Avenue in Sunset Park; the Park Slope can close down zoo city’s largest park? Maybe even a Ro- Armory, on Eighth Avenue at 14th Street; The Brooklyn Papers home to nearly 400 animals in- manesque abbey? 30 Main St. in DUMBO; and the Brook- cluding the Asiatic Horned Frogs, lyn Navy Yard. The prairie dogs and hama- It’s no joke. Beautiful Tree Nymphs and Cot- The sites were ultimately rejected for dryas baboons of Prospect Park Just ducky A document obtained by The Brook- ton-topped Tamarins and Califor- lyn Papers reveals that the city’s Office a variety of reasons such as “not suffi- will soon be looking for a new Could winter finally be behind us? Just a cient space,” “flood zone” or in some city to call home if Mayor nia seals hosts nearly 250,000 vis- of Emergency Management claims to itors each year. few days after Brooklyn was hit with a late- have explored space in some very curi- cases, impracticality. All except the Red Michael Bloomberg has his say. season snowstorm, signs of spring have fi- Cross building, that is. In the newest round of budget “This is not a budgetary exer- ous locations, such as Central Park, the cise — this is the lives of 211 peo- nally emerged, with temperatures ap- Cloisters and Rikers Island, among oth- “It looks like the due diligence they cuts, Bloomberg has proposed ple, the displacement of thousands proaching 80 on Tuesday. At top are the ers before settling on a former Red Cross did to find other sites for this bunker locking the gates of the Prospect of animals, and the dismantling of new ducklings, hatching their way to life in building in Downtown Brooklyn. could have been done on someone’s Park and Queens zoos, closures that will save the city approxi- the world’s largest and most dis- Keyspan’s windows on the Metrotech Other sites that were looked at in lunch hour,” said Downtown-Brooklyn Heights Councilman David Yassky. mately $8 million, less than 1 per- tinguished network of urban campus, Downtown. At left, Ariel Inker Brooklyn, according to the document, which was produced in an effort to quell OEM has been very clear since it be- cent of the needed $1 billion. wildlife parks,” said Dr. Steven works on making matzoh at the Chai Club the complaints of elected officials that gan its search for a permanent facility to The 12-acre Prospect Park Zoo, See PARK ZOO on page 8 of the C-BAY Sunday Hebrew school at the agency had focused its search on the See BUNKER on page 5 Congregation B’nai Avraham in Brooklyn Heights. Below, Brooklyn Bishop Thomas Daily celebrates Palm Sunday Mass out- side the St. James Cathedral on Jay Street, Downtown. Papers The Brooklyn A new Downtown Bloomberg calls for expansion of district By Patrick Gallahue higher than the Williamsburg The Brooklyn Papers bank tower — as well as res- idential developments and There will be new tower- the creation of two parks nes- ing structures joining the tled among the structures. 512-foot-tall Williamsburg The April 14 press confer- Savings Bank building in ence was held at 1 Metrotech the Downtown Brooklyn Center. skyline, if Mayor Michael City Planning Director Bloomberg has his way. Amanda Burden said the plan Deputy Mayor Dan Doc- would not place limits on the toroff and several city com- height of office buildings and missioners on Monday re- said, “I don’t think we’re vealed the mayor’s extensive holding the savings bank as / Tom Callan / Tom plan for a new Downtown sacred.” Brooklyn that would include To that, Councilman zoning changes to allow for James Davis, briefly stepped high-rise office buildings, up to the podium to add, possibly breaking the unwrit- “We’re going to discuss these ten principle of not building Artist’s rendering of Adams Street leading toward the Brooklyn Bridge in mayor’s plan. The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn See D’TOWN on page 8 Gov pushes tough DWI law Parents: Klein’s plan By Deborah Kolben her sister Dilcia Pena, 16, Herrera’s and not just drunk driving. said Xaverian President Sal Ferrera. The Brooklyn Papers 4-year old son, Andy, and Herrera’s “If getting into a car, putting the “It devalues the worth of Monahan’s unborn child, who were mowed key into the ignition and pressing life and sends a message that the sys- Looking to promote his legisla- should include us down on Fourth Avenue in 2001 by a down on the gas pedal while drunk tem can work in favor of somebody tion calling for stiffer sentences in drunken off-duty police officer. isn’t negligent, then I don’t know who knows how to manipulate it.” cases of drunk-driving, Gov. By Deborah Kolben Pataki’s visit came on the heels of what is,” said DeBlasio. Thompson had a blood-alcohol The Brooklyn Papers George Pataki came to Brooklyn the sentencing of a Sunset Park man Sean Thompson, 25, pleaded level of .14, but sources said it would this week to visit with DWI vic- who received just six-months in jail guilty to charges of vehicular have been difficult for prosecutors to If Schools Chancellor Joel Klein tims’ families. for a drunk driving accident in which manslaughter in the second degree, prove criminal negligence. thought it was going to be easy to Pataki was joined Friday by mem- he killed a Xaverian High School stu- manslaughter in the second degree, But that will soon change, if the sell western Brooklyn parents on the bers of the Pena and Herrera families, dent in Windsor Terrace early last and driving while intoxicated in the governor has anything to say about it. reorganized school system, he got a whose relatives were killed by a year. hit-and-run of Dennis Monahan, 17, The Pena-Herrera bill would re- quick dose of reality Thursday night. drunken off-duty cop in Sunset Park Standing on the steps of Brooklyn a senior at Bay Ridge’s Xaverian. move the element of criminal negli- About 200 angry parents and two years ago, at the East New York Supreme Court Downtown on April Thompson was sentenced to just six gence from the crime of second-degree school teachers lobbed questions and home of two women who were 4, along with state Sen. Carl Andrews months in jail and five years of proba- vehicular manslaughter and would call critiques at Klein and the two new re- struck and killed by a drunk driver and members of the victim’s family, tion. He was also ordered to move for consecutive sentencing. gional superintendents who will be in while trying to cross Atlantic Avenue Councilman Bill DeBlasio called for from Windsor Terrace, where he lives That legislation was fueled by the charge of public schools from Brook- with their young sons. support of Pataki’s legislation. just blocks from the victim’s family. circumstances of the case in which for- lyn Heights down to Bay Ridge at a Pataki drafted the Pena-Herrera Under current state law, prosecu- “That this man only gets six mer police officer Joel Gray killed the public meeting at the William Grady bill in honor of Maria Herrera, 23, tors must prove criminal negligence, months punishment is a true crime,” See DWI LAW on page 8 Career and Technical Education High School in Brighton Beach. Klein called the meeting a “home- coming,” because he attended Ben- sonhurst’s PS 205 as a child, but he was met Thursday by parents furious that they will be left out in the cold ‘53 meets ’03 in once the current school districts and school boards are absorbed into the broader instructional leadership divi- sions this summer. Tech swim meet “I know that change is difficult,” said Klein, who told parents that the By Deborah Kolben traded tales of triple bypass surgery. success of their schools nevertheless The Brooklyn Papers It was an emotional 50th reunion for hinged on their support. the almost 30 team members. The last Klein also stressed that change was In a meet that promised for many time they had seen one another the essential at a time when 70 percent of to be their last, the 1953 city champi- subway cost a dime. eighth-grade students in public school on Brooklyn Technical High School “I can’t believe that’s Bob Jung,” tested below grade level in math and swim team returned to their alma said Alex Rosner, 67, a Holocaust sur- reading and only 50 percent of stu- mater in Fort Greene Friday to take vivor, his eyes filling with tears when dents finished high school in four on the girls and boys swim teams of his old teammate walked into the years.