By Adam F. Hutton
Downtown plan: Bruce Ratner is planning to build the city’s tallest residential tower — a whopping 1,000-foot-tall skyscraper that would dwarf the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank building. Then again, maybe he isn’t. “No comment,” the Atlantic Yards developer told The Brooklyn Paper at the annual Metrotech Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Wednesday.
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Editorial: The Brooklyn Paper would love to be the loudest cheerleaders for Ratner’s City Tech tower, reportedly slated to be the tallest residential building in the city. But until public officials answer reasonable questions about this backroom deal, we will remain skeptical.
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By Dana Rubinstein
Atlantic Yards: Borough President Markowitz’s appointee to the city’s powerful Planning Commission violated ethical standards by investing in the controversial Atlantic Yards project and then voting on the project three weeks later.
Comment.
By Gersh Kuntzman
Atlantic Yards: Two hundred and three days after promising to appoint someone to oversee demolition and construction work at the Atlantic Yards project — and after three other people reportedly turned down the job — state officials have finally hired their long-awaited watchdog: former Giuliani staffer Forrest Taylor.
Comment.
By Mike McLaughlin
Customers at Sahadi’s, Brooklyn’s primary stop on the Near Eastern spice route, are still fuming that the grocer has replaced the classic glass jars with generic plastic containers in the nuts, dried fruits and candies section. “Everyone is talking about it,” said Charlie Sahadi, the second-generation owner.
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By Dana Rubinstein
Park Slope: The three homeless men who sparked a flurry of soul searching in Park Slope — and the ire of a local pastor — after refusing to moderate their drinking and noise-making have abandoned their long-time hangout on the steps of the Old First Reformed Church, but they have left a legacy behind.
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By Mike McLaughlin
Park Slope: The controversial idea of giving residents — and maybe no one else! — the right to park in their neighborhoods, seems to have been jumpstarted by the mayor’s congestion pricing plan to charge drivers to enter Manhattan below 86th Street.
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By GO Brooklyn
With eight nights to celebrate, you might think that Hanukkah would seem like it lasts forever. But with all of the events planned boroughwide, eight nights hardly seems to be enough time.
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Atlantic Yards: On the same day that news broke of his plan to build Brooklyn’s tallest building, Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner kicked off the holiday season on Wednesday at Metrotech in Downtown Brooklyn with the borough’s first major tree-lighting.
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By Joe Jordan
Bay Ridge: Calling Bay Ridge’s Christmas tree a “holiday tree” was just a mistake, said the woman who made it.
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By Mike McLaughlin
Carroll Gardens: A bunch of Berliners were in Red Hook earlier this month — and they liked what they saw.
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By Adam F. Hutton
Bridge ‘Park’: A long-awaited meeting on Monday night to discuss the recreational activities people want in Brooklyn Bridge Park quickly became a gripe session where residents — including DUMBO’s principle developer, David Walentas — complained that the development is being “rammed down” their throats.
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By Dana Rubinstein
Downtown: A Universal Studios–like film and TV complex will rise on the East River, turning the industrial Brooklyn Navy Yard into a Tinseltown East under a new city proposal.
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Cartoon: Our cartoonist’s take on the writers’ strike.
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Letters: The mailbag is full with letters about the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Mayor Bloomberg’s Coney Island plan, the death of bicycle rider Sam Hindy, and Brooklyn Heights’ favorite son, Norman Mailer.
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By Ariella Cohen
Brooklyn South: Our columnist discovers that the venerable D’Amico’s coffee shop on Court Street is considering a jump into Starbucks’ territory: flavored coffee.
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By Wendy Ponte
PS … I Love You: Our local baker does Brooklyn proud, winning a Food Network competition despite severe gastric distress (of course she was in distress, she was in North Carolina!).
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By Matthew Lysiak
Yellow Hooker: Curtis Sliwa — Guardian Angel, radio host, self-promoter — came to Bay Ridge to talk about his future, which may someday be inexorably linked to yours.
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By Tom Gilbert
Beside the Point: Our columnist gets an exclusive sit-down (or is that flyby?) with the new Red-tail hawk that’s taken up residence in McCarren Park.
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By Gersh Kuntzman
Downtown: Students at PS 8 are bucking the nationwide trend — and are reading.
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By Louise Crawford
Smartmom: Smartmom runs in the Turkey Trot — but why didn’t she tell the hubby and kids?
Comment.
By Joe Jordan
Bay Ridge: Not on my kid’s school’s block! That’s what local parents were saying about a huge adult video advertisement that was plastered on a storefront just a few doors up from two Bay Ridge elementary schools.
Comment.
By Susan Rosenthal Jay
Parenting: All the action for you and your kids!
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By Vinita Singla
Williamsburg: A controversial Williamsburg bar that has run up thousands of dollars in fines is about to be sold to a new owner who is vowing to clean up the joint’s act.
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By Michael Giardina
Bay Ridge: Two cops responding to a call of a woman in pain rushed to her Fifth Avenue apartment and got there just in time to deliver her baby boy on Tuesday morning.
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By Zachary Kolodin
Carroll Gardens: The oldest Italian church in Carroll Gardens — an old Italian neighborhood —Â is 125 years old. But how much longer can it hold on?
Comment.
By Joe Jordan
Bay Ridge: Somebody doesn’t like Councilman Domenic Recchia — and has taken it upon himself to “go negative” against the Bensonhurst Democrat even before it’s clear what higher office he’s seeking.
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By Loren Bonner
Bay Ridge: Three lawmakers have sued the state to demand that it keep the emergency room at Victory Memorial Hospital open, even if the rest of the medical center is forced to close down.
Comment.
By Tom Gilbert
Williamsburg: In a move with grave implications for the pigeon community, a Red-tailed hawk appears to be shopping for a new home in or around North Brooklyn’s hip McCarren Park.
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By Adam F. Hutton
Williamsburg: ExxonMobil officials blew off a City Council hearing on the company’s clean up of Greenpoint’s 30-million-gallon underground oil spill — and by doing so, the energy giant missed an opportunity to defend itself from accusations that it isn’t doing all it could to expedite the process.
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By Michael Giardina
Bay Ridge: Brooklyn’s bravest at Engine 284 and Ladder 149 in Dyker Heights are holding a fundraiser for one of their own, supporting a 17-year vet who came down with cancer after volunteering at Ground Zero.
Comment.
By Dana Rubinstein
Williamsburg: Thirty-thousand Hassidic Jews will party as only the Hassidim know how to under an enormous white tent in Brooklyn Bridge Park on Saturday, the largest party the condo-and-greenspace development has hosted yet. The festivities commemorate the arrival of European Jews to the Unites States after World War II.
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All the important meetings you should be going to.
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