Development Watch: Infill at Lake Windsor

Dear Readers of the Brownstoner,

I have never read any of your blogs before I saw this article. However, I have been exposed to your opinions and ideas since the day I was born. Most of those ideas have been around long before all of you were born and have lead to the establishment of, among many other things, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and ultimately the eradication of more than half the Jewish race. I bring these examples to show the power of your ideas and their ultimate manifestation.

These ideas have also been described in “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand. In that novel, America’s architectural and cultural field is filled with buildings which imitate the Roman, Venetian or Colonial style and not a single architect dares design a building which is outside the styles set forth before or during the renaissance period. Being “Modern” is taboo and an original idea is a sin.

The hero of the book is an architect, Howard Roark, who designs buildings in his own style, a modernist. He does not use useless arches, columns, or anything else, unless the building requires it. He does not care of for breaking a taboo unless the effects of it can be proven.

The antagonist, the community, describes him as being insane and unfit to be an architect. They say that his buildings are atrocious because no one has never used them before and say that his buildings are not structurally safe. They deem his opinions and knowledge to be wrong and their opinion to be right just because their opinion is held by the masses. The masses don’t know architecture but read the opinions of news paper columnists (bloggers) and adopt them as correct because a newspaper wrote it. Property rights and the right to think is a sin.

Roark is trying to improve the lives of the community while the community is trying to destroy him and his work. He is trying to climb up the social ladder while trying to lift it The community is retain their place in it, even if they lower the ladder.

I bring up this book and its theme because it is a perfect corollary for this article. YOU, the readers of the Brownstoner, the community, are the antagonist who refuse to think and wish to destroy those who wish to create, the developer. You wish for every thing to remain the way it is and to never see growth, never see new ideas, never see improvements in your lives. You wish for park slope to remain as all old brownstones. What about all those new business and ideas (like brownstones) which brought life to Park Slope when it was an uninhabitable dump? Worst of all, you wish this to occur at no cost to you and at the cost of someone else.

Well, we the living, the capable, the producers and the achievers disagree with your opinions and the means to your goal. However, we will not interfere with you achieving your goals. If you wish to keep park slope the way it is, you are free to do so, buy all the vacant lots and stop development on YOUR lots. Follow through on your ideas with your work, your blood, your tears, your money and YOUR LIFE. However, you must not interfere with any one else’s rights property, to ideas and to create.

I am not associated with the developer of the project but give him my thanks. He is a hero to be acknowledged and respect. He has his rights and are vigorously defended them against the masses who wish to impose onto those rights and who wish for those rights to not exist (for the minority, they must exist for the masses).

They wish for another man to live solely for his neighbor’s happiness. They wish his neighbor to be his slave, while not calling him that. They wish for the evil which manifested into the holocaust.

To all those who oppose the developer and wish to intrude on his right, If not for the developer what would be at this site? A car repair shop? A Oil Company? An unlicensed garage? Better yet, if not for developers, who would have created your precious park slope, who would have created the house in which you live?

This lot is unique in its characteristics, it is long with a small frontage. A brownstone could not be erected because it was uneconomical, it would require the developer to take a loss. The land is clay and was a swamp. Those are bad for construction and this developer has chosen to take a risk and to build this project and to reap its gains or losses. He has acted based on his judgment of the land and his experience in construction. He has also acted with his own money and his livelihood.

If you are correct and this site will always flood, this project will be a total loss and the developer will be bankrupt. The project will be destroyed and you will have won the argument based by your judgment of the site. However, if the developer was correct, he will reap the benefits of his work and the community will lose nothing.

Of course there is the issue of the project looking bad. I don’t care if the project is going to be the ugliest building in the world (Maybe then it may win some kind of prize). The developer bough the land and is free to develop it according to his judgment. If you are not happy with that, or disagree with his judgment, you are free to impose yours onto the land, as soon as you BUY it.

To all those who wish to impose on your neighbor’s rights remember: First they came for the Christians, no one defended them. Then they came for the Jews, no one defended them. Then they came for the Muslins, no one defended them. Then they came for YOU and there was no one left to defend you.

I don’t care about this project,

whoever owns that shack is doing something to take advantage… there’s some kind of plywood structure going up in the back.

This is a Karl Fischer design.
They won their BSA decision based on hardship, part of which was due to “dewatering of the site” and partly due to the numerous stop work orders imposed after neighbors yards started to sink into the hole. They had to build a complicated drainage system before the foundation could go in and that prevented them from beating the downzoning.

The building does indeed take up the entire lot right up to the property lines along both Windor Place and Prospect Avenue. Parking is below the building accessible via a ramp and curbcut from 8th Avenue. There is no rear yard setback.

There is another developer who started work on the smaller lots you see on the map closest to 7th Avenue that will “street front” across from PS10 on Prospect Ave. They did the demo work but the site has not seen any action for a good part of a year.

You can check: http://imby.blogspot.com/search?q=1638

A number of south slope blocks have tehse so-called bridal paths, strips of property sandwiched behind the back yards of properties facing the side streets. Grumpy’s understanding is mine, too, that the plans call for extending the building well into the bridal path, and there may be parking behind the building. If action jackson is lurking, he would probably know.