Posted Jun 10, 2013, 11:22 AM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 52,683
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http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...NION/306099979
Brooklyn would hit new heights with Domino Sugar development
Plans by SHoP architects and Field Operations would create a new vision.
By Steve Hindy
June 9, 2013
Quote:
The Williamsburg Savings Bank Building opened in downtown Brooklyn in 1929. It was a vision of a soaring Brooklyn, with a clock tower higher than London's Big Ben, a façade with elaborate limestone gargoyles and a breathtaking ground-floor rotunda with 63-foot ceilings, 40-foot windows and mosaics that rivaled the Byzantines'. But the 512-foot tower sat there lonely for 81 years, and in my household was known as the "tower of pain" because so many tenants were dentists and oral surgeons.
Now, tall apartment towers are rising along the Flatbush Avenue corridor, and I hear people complaining the newcomers have no character, that they could be in Jersey City or Dallas. There are similar complaints about the waterfront development in Williamsburg.
For some reason, some people seem to think no one should build higher than the Williamsburg Savings Bank Building, now a residential building known as 1 Hanson Place. But I am asking: Why should Brooklyn be limited to a vision that was realized in 1929?
The City Planning Commission is now weighing Jed Walentas' proposal for a bold redo of the plan to develop the Domino Sugar factory site in Williamsburg with an exciting series of buildings that would create a new vision of a 21st-century Brooklyn. Designed by SHoP architects and landscape architecture firm Field Operations, the 11-acre site would include a 598-foot tower and three smaller buildings, two shaped like big rectangular doughnuts and a third that evokes the step pyramid in Egypt, at least to my eye.
The new design would replace a ho-hum vision that reminds me of the mental hospital on Randall's Island visible from the Triborough, now Robert F. Kennedy, Bridge.
Manhattan is Manhattan. Its crowning glories are 1 World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. I haven't been to the Far East, but friends tell me the skylines of Shanghai and Jakarta make Manhattan look like a quaint 20th-century city.
Brooklyn is not Manhattan. Why can't Brooklyn be different? Why can't Brooklyn be a 21st-century city?
Walentas' vision changes the Domino plan from a residential development to a mixed-use development, making space for the many tech and culinary startups that are clamoring for more commercial and industrial space in the city. That means jobs as well as affordable housing.
By going higher, it opens up much more space for the people of Williamsburg, one of the most park-starved neighborhoods in the city.
Bruce Ratner was the last developer to try to sell Brooklyn a new vision. His Frank Gehry-designed Atlantic Yards faded after opponents fought it from every possible angle for almost a decade. SHoP's Barclays Arena is a wonderful addition to downtown Brooklyn. Most arenas and stadiums around the country look like airplane hangars with signs. I hope the Planning Commission allows the Domino project to proceed. Brooklyn is ready to soar.
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