A Combined Cycle Power Plant Grows in Brooklyn

The development justs keeps on running, this time over the misshapen heads of our hipster cousins in Williamsburg. Yep, the rezoning of the slightly difficult to reach northern corner of our fair borough is to be tturned into Battery Park City. Hooray! For rotund real estate developers! Yes, it was rather difficult to feel sympathetic for some of the amusingly-dressed crew on the steps of City Hall, but they have some valid arguments against the deal, mostly of the "that's a disgustingly ugly development you've got there, isn't it?" variety.

For those of you with a password, here's the New York Times on it, as well as NY Sun, if you're some kind of sick grumpy Republican that got confused at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel back to your homeland.

But, much more revealing, in the News, was this little gambit from Adam Perlmutter, lawyer for Chris Klein, who owns the The Park Tower Group, which fancies a gobble of the whole rancid waterfront:

""There's a huge risk" that the proposed TransGas power plant project on Kent Ave. and N. 12th St. will go forward should Council members reject the rezoning plan for the waterfront neighborhoods."

Cunning. Let us turn your neighborhood into some monstrous hybrid of Battery Park City and Metro Tech, or chance your kids sucking up carbon dioxide for the rest of their childhood. Real classy. Or , alternately, whimpers our still small voice of snark, you could just put up some somme buildings that someone would like to live around.

We've yet to meet anyone thrilled to be a resident of BPC, or even a canyon dweller around Wall Street. Yet still the developers throw them up, and still the city government swears blind that throwing them up is the only feasible plan for such sites, the only way to make up the costs of reclamation. The fact that the most sickeningly expensive areas of Manhattan are the areas dominated by townhouses doesn't register.

This, we're sure, is going to sound a tad hypocritical from someone who loves New York more than any pig, and even loves the skyline, and would be more than happy to work and shop in such an environment. But skyscrapers, up close, are nasty brutish bits of scuzz whose best purpose is as containers for cubicles. We didn't have much to report from Martin County, Florida, but limiting buildings to four stories has more than compensated for the ugliness of the buildings that some natives are keen to put up.

Here's our recommendation. For every floor you block the hipsters view with, you must throw one up in the neighborhoods that actually need developments. most of the stretch of Atlantic Avenue and vast tracts of Eastern Brooklyn, for starters. Same for you, Ratner. Piggybacking the efforts of people who make a considered effort to build up their Burgs is out.