Councilman Bill DeBlasio vowed to stop one of the borough’s most prolific architects this week, charging designer Robert Scarano with endangering the safety and aesthetic character of Brooklyn’s neighborhoods.
“It’s become clear to me that he’s dangerous and that he needs to be confronted and stopped,” said DeBlasio, who journeyed from his Carroll Gardens distict to a Downtown press conference this week.
DeBlasio asked the Department of Buildings to halt construction on a whopping 350 projects designed by the DUMBO-based architect while the state Education Department investigates him for professional misconduct.
Scarano declined to comment on DeBlasio’s demand, which stemmed from concern in Carroll Gardens about a six-story, Scarano-designed apartment building slated to rise on the corner of Second Place and Smith Street.
But some opponents of the 60-foot building — which conforms to existing zoning — worried that DeBlasio’s bombast would actually get in the way of a larger effort against what they view as out-of-scale development.
“The zoning code, not the architect, is the issue,” said Triada Samara, a member of Carroll Gardens Coalition for Respectful Development. “Our concerns are traffic, the number of new residents the people would bring and the density and scale of the project.
“This may be a waste of extremely valuable time,” she added.
But DeBlasio said that the battle against the architect is the first step in forcing developers to comply with neighborhood desires.
