LPC Approves Underground Garage at Riverside Apartments
The LPC voted 6-2 today to allow an underground parking garage at Riverside Apartments in Brooklyn Heights, “a group of eclectic style brick apartment houses with a central courtyard designed by Alfred White and built in 1890.” The original proposal called for the creation of a park space and a garage one story above grade….
The LPC voted 6-2 today to allow an underground parking garage at Riverside Apartments in Brooklyn Heights, “a group of eclectic style brick apartment houses with a central courtyard designed by Alfred White and built in 1890.” The original proposal called for the creation of a park space and a garage one story above grade. The proposal, says our tipster, “was criticized by the LPC at a hearing several months ago; several commissioners viewed it as inappropriate because it quantitatively ‘violated’ the open space. The new proposal brings the parking count down below a hundred and drops the garage to a single, below-ground level, leaving the original open space intact. The garden above the proposed garage is based on the principles that guided the original landscape plan and includes 21 new, mature-trees. The rendering speaks for itself and will hopefully communicate that the current proposal is a major qualitative improvement, appropriate to the district.” GMAP
I am also a young married professional who has resided in the Riverside Apartments for over a decade now. I have a very small apartment, under 450 square feet, that faces the BQE, and pay around 2,000 dollars a month. This is market value for a walk-up and by no means unfair to the landlord.
Let me also state with absolute authority there is no rent strike in the complex. Some apartments, but not all, have had their rent frozen because they filed a complaint about the illegal paving over of the garden over ten years ago(of which I am not one). They won and the landlord was ordered to restore the courtyard and garden to it’s previous state. The compliance of the landlord would have stopped the few rent freezes that exist. Instead the landlord has waged a long battle to turn the open space designed for human recreation into a dual use area for both cars and humans.
Being an active and contributing member of the community I am appalled how the residents are written off as a bunch of rent controlled misers. The tenants here at the Riverside Apartments are some of the most diverse tenants in Brooklyn Heights and come from all walks of life. We have everyone from Montague street store owners and city employees to college students and young professionals working in Manhattan. There are journalists, lawyers, fashion designers and architects.
The only thing I feel the landlord owes the tenants and community is to restore the courtyard to it’s original splendor. The automobile was the root of “progress” already when the BQE caused one third of it’s destruction, but the community has survived intact, barely. What a shame it would be if the automobile was once again a cause of further destruction to Alfred T White’s original intent for this structure.
Let us also remember the close to 500 parking spots across the street at one Brooklyn Bridge park.
I would also like to ask Sam and Inigo, can we build a garage in your backyard? I would rather park there.
How disgusting that so many people write off this building and the rights of its tenants because rents aren’t $5000/month. I happen to be a young professional who resides in this building, and there are many others like me, not to mention working couples with young children. We aren’t rent controlled. We aren’t cheating anyone. You’d really like to see us evicted so you have somewhere to park your car?
7 postings on this story. Why? Because it is about a lost-cause low-class rent-control complex that no one cares about.
Walk-up apartments for the working poor circa 1870. No thanx very much.
The garage would be the first good thing to happen on the site since White’s day.
This complex is fraught with problems. The landlord and the tenants deserve each other in old Yiddish sense. A pox on both. If they build the garage I will use it.
I moved into this building a few months ago and don’t know anything about the strike by rent control tenants. I do know, however, that the tenant next to me was evicted in April. The place has furniture but is deserted.
When was the last time any of the rent-control tenants in this complex paid their rent? I heard they have been on rent strike for five years.
well, you’d be wrong to take it that way, cause it ain’t him!
I take Lisa’s response to mean that the tipster WAS Ken Fisher!
you’re right–last part should have been edited out. my apologies.