Brooklyn's Top 50 Most Influential No. 41 - 50

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Every day this week, we’re going to count down Brooklyn’s Top 50* most influential people in shaping Brooklyn neighborhoods — by building new structures, preserving older ones, influencing property values and quality of life, speaking for thousands, or changing the course of developments, for example. Instead of listing everyone from Bloomberg to Bernanke, we mostly stuck with locals. Surprisingly still, by broadening our definition of influence beyond quantitative factors like real estate holdings and constituency, the toughest task was keeping the list down to only 50 (*so we cheated, there’s actually more like 65 people on the list, and it was still hard). Ranking them in order was also tough, so please take the whole exercise with a grain of salt and sense of humor. In some cases we considered the type of entity the person represents, the potential impact of the project he or she is working on, and the extent of influence over time, distance and the number of Brooklynites affected. By all means, feel free to give us your two cents in the comments section. By the end of this week, we could have 200 people on the list!

41 and 42. Developers Louis Greco, Jr. and Mario Procida teamed up in 2006 to form SDS Procida, developers of the glassy Richard Meier concoction On Prospect Park, Be@Schermerhorn, and two other sold-out projects, totaling 449 units in the borough. The Brooklyn Public Library had to give up its unofficial address One Grand Army Plaza when SDS Procida formally applied to have the aspiring moniker attached to On Prospect Park. It has turned out to be somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the building has some of the top sales in Brooklyn.

43. One insider we spoke to called JP Day Realty, owned by real estate heir Larry Wohl, “the Downtown [Brooklyn] landlord that has done the least to maintain its prewar office buildings.” Once owner of the majestic 16 Court Street before it was purchased (and renovated) by SLGreen, Wohl is still hanging on to four other Downtown office buildings. His 186 Joralemon Street is undergoing a gut renovation, while 186 Remsen Street continues to languish on the market, reportedly in pretty rough shape.

44. Community Board district managers handle a million things that have a direct, daily impact on the lives of residents, with varying degrees of deference from the city; they also play big roles behind the scenes in building support or opposition to local initiatives. Some recent moves include the effort by both District 2 Manager Robert Perris and District 6 Manager Craig Hammerman to curtail the nightly torture bars wage on neighbors, and District 7 Manager Jeremy Laufer’s push for a rezoning of Sunset Park.

45. David Maundrell founded Williamsburg-based aptsandlofts.com six years ago and has already become the Goliath of that market by providing a young and edgy alternative to the city’s old-timer firms. He has contracts to represent 150 new developments, primarily in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights and Dumbo. He said he is considering opening an office in Manhattan, and turned down a buyout offer from one of the city’s top three firms (we know which one but can’t tell). He also announced last week the, along with a partner, was launching a new new mortgage outfit called Union Square Mortgage Company.

46. Buddy Scotto, founder of the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation and the Carroll Gardens Association, has since the 1960s used his political connections to win everything from canal cleanup money to the late Brooke Astor’s support for a land-use study. Unabashedly pro-development, he’s losing favor among the new neighborhood guard. Early this year, the neighborhood association stopped holding its meetings at his funeral home, in part because he had become too controversial a figure.

47. Henry Radusky of Bricolage Designs is the third most prolific architect in the city with 893 buildings approved over the past 7 years, many of which the Village Voice said “clot the Brooklyn landscape.” His signature maneuver: creating “faculty housing” so he can build twice the standard size, much to the ire of neighbors.

48. Prolific restauranteur Jim Mamary first planted his stake in Brooklyn in 1997, when he opened Patios on Smith Street. He has since opened more than a dozen restaurants in the borough, often in neighborhoods on the cusp of change, like Enduros in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, widely considered a game-changer for the Lincoln Road strip, and Pomme de Terre, a French bistro in Ditmas Park. Not all of his projects are met with equal praise: While PLG is generally delighted over his plans for a new Southern BBQ joint, there’s opposition to his oyster bar on Hoyt Street.

49. In the frenzied pace of Downtown Brooklyn redevelopment, where more than 50 large projects are underway, it could be easy to forget area old-timers, many who are minorities, immigrants, low-income, and have lost their businesses, jobs and homes in the name of progress. Fortunately, Ilana Berger, executive director of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), is keeping track, sometimes negotiating directly with developers and public agencies on behalf of her clients, other times hitting the streets. The group’s reports on displacement seem to be the only ones being conducted in the area.

50. Developer Bruce Ratner’s choice of legendary starchitect Frank Gehry to design Atlantic Yards helped galvanize support for the massive project, versus if he had chosen a blander designer, as stunning architecture can have an elevating effect on a community. But Gehry’s vision has also be hotly criticized as offensive to the surrounding brownstone neighborhoods. No matter, Atlantic Yards hasn’t be built yet, and Gehry was recently ousted from BAM’s Theater for a New Audience design team. If he ever does get something built here, he’ll be in the top 20 for sure.