When a storm surge slammed into Aimann Youssef’s house on Midland Avenue in Staten Island during Hurricane Sandy, he was devastated. Nearly three years later, the 45-year-old Syrian immigrant is taking steps to rebuild his house at 481 Midland Avenue, even if he can barely afford it. Tribeca-based AB Architekten, headed by Alex Blakely, created a simple, modern design for the two-family home.
As the de Blasio administration walks back its plan to redevelop the auto shops and junkyards in Willets Point, community groups next door in Flushing are fighting their own battle over the city’s plan to upzone a short, heavily polluted swath of industrial waterfront near the end of the 7 train.
When the Fulton Transit Center opened last November, glowing reviews celebrated its 53-foot-wide oculus while lamenting its $1.4 billion price tag, which had doubled since the project’s inception several years before. Now, spokespeople from Westfield and the MTA tell YIMBY that retail will begin opening in the fall and continue through 2016. There will be about 20 stores ranging from retail and service providers to eateries and full service restaurants.
When WeWork announced its plans to anchor a 675,000-square-foot office building on a vacant dry dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a few critics came out of the woodwork to lament the yard’s gradually disappearing industrial tenants, like modular housing builder Capsys.
Last night, a collection of Bushwick community activists, union members and neighbors sweated it out on folding chairs at a church on George Street to figure out how they would hold Rabsky Group—the developer of part of the Rheingold Brewery site—to the previous owner’s agreement to provide affordable units and funding for neighborhood schools and parks.
