The creator of Brooklyn Night Bazaar has backed out of his plan to bring a late-night, flea market–style festival and concert series to the banks of the Gowanus Canal this summer amid opposition by some Carroll Gardeners neighbors.
Market impresario Aaron Broudo was ready to sign a contract with concrete titan John Quadrozzi Jr. that would allow him to convert an industrial site on Huntington Street into a bustling shopping and entertainment space that would run every Friday and Saturday night from June through September, but abruptly scrapped the proposal after an online petition protested the market over concerns of nighttime noise.
“We are pursuing a different location for this summer,” said Broudo, who did not disclose any other information.
In a recent e-mail urging residents to sign the Change.org petition against the flea market, which has since been taken offline, the Coalition for Carroll Gardens wrote that thousands of bazaar patrons would “spill out on your doorstep all night long, drinking, yelling and looking for fun, leaving their trash and sleepless nights on their trail.”
“If we want any control, we have to make noise now. If not our summer is over before it began,” the Coalition wrote in the April 9 e-mail.
Broudo’s bazaar, inspired by popular night markets found in Asian cities, would have run from 6 pm through midnight and boasted an array of food vendors, merchants, a beer and wine garden, mini golf, table tennis, a rock climbing wall, petanque, Chinese tea, and live music performed in a dome-like tent on the city-block-sized lot between Smith Street and the canal that could hold up to 1,000 shoppers.
Broudo, who has hosted past marketplaces at a warehouse in Williamsburg and at the Dekalb Market Downtown, would have installed ample bicycle parking and hired security and staff to clean up the streets around the site nightly.
“You can ask anyone that has been to our events that they do not result in drunk revelers,” he said. “Rather it’s an arts and crafts market where people are strolling around shopping while interacting with local shoppers. Having a glass of wine or beer adds to the fun, but it’s very civilized.”
It’s not the first time one of Broudo’s pop-up flea markets has caused an outcry.
Greenpoint residents and politicians halted his proposed bazaar from coming to that neighborhood’s waterfront two years ago.
Reach reporter Natalie Musumeci at nmusumeci@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-4505. Follow her at twitter.com/souleddout.
