Contextual Design Only

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I love Brooklyn and I love our Brownstone neighborhoods. They are worth protecting for future generations. My husband is very engaged at the moment to try to downzone our entire neighborhood in order to protect its unique character. Consisting of mostly two or three story buildings made of either brick or brownstone, it it hard to keep developers from coming in and squeezing a 6 or eight story monster in between a row of old townhouses. Downzoning is a first step to reign in such abuses.. Landmarking the entire district will hopefully follow, but that takes so much longer and involves so much work that it is easier to use the downzoning option to get protection quickly.
So imagine my profound satisfaction to hear that our Community Board's Land Use Committee is on the same page. Just this week, they rejected a townhouse design which would have clashed with "old Brooklyn." It is nice to know that it is still important to design within a context. Modern is not always bad, but builders need to know that they cannot impose their individual design without any regard for what has been standing there for a hundred years. Maybe there is hope for my little nabe after all. Yeah!



03/23/2007 Carroll Gardens Cobble Hill Courrier
Raspberry for tony townhouses - Land Use Committee doesn’t welcome Columbia St. plan
By Gary Buiso
Will modern townhouses be coming to Columbia Street?
Maybe Brooklyn just isn’t ready for the “Guggenheim” just yet.
Community Board 6 last week turned away a variance request seeking approval to construct three modern townhouses on a vacant lot, a proposal the applicant compared to the iconic Manhattan museum.
The type of buildings proposed at the location, 300, 302, and 304 Columbia Street, would forever alter the “essential character of the neighborhood,” according to Jerry Armer, the chairman of the board’s Land Use Committee, which also rejected the proposal.
“It is totally out of context,” he said.
A particularly galling element of the proposed two-unit townhouses, Armer noted, was the use of a metal roof, which would contrast significantly with its more staid brick neighbors.
At its monthly meeting, the community board voted 34-1 with two abstentions to reject the application.
The board’s vote is strictly advisory. Official say on the matter comes by way of the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals.
Developer Marshall Sohne said he was baffled by the community board’s opinion.
“I was sort of taken back by the comments,” he said.
“When you come with a two-story structure and there is still opposition, you feel pretty much like, ‘Why bother?’” he said.
Sohne, who has developed properties in Costa Rica, Manhattan and Brooklyn, said he is used to different types of opposition, but he certainly wasn’t expecting it here. “I’m not putting up an apartment building,” he said.
“We will take this under consideration. If necessary, we will make modifications,” he continued.
For now, he said, the project will move on to the BSA, as is.
The nature of the proposed use, which is contrary to the lots’ current manufacturing zoning, was not an issue for committee members, Armer said. There are plenty of neighboring residential uses, he noted.
In this case, looks do matter, Armer said.
“It’s just the design,” he said.
“It’s not that the committee is against modern, it’s that the committee wants some elements of the existing Columbia Street stock,” incorporated in the design,” he continued.
“The things we look at are materials: brick, limestone, brownstone.”
“The idea of having metal around, back and down the side is foreign to that district,” he added.
Sohne wasn’t convinced. “To compare what is there now…there are pretty much some crumbling buildings, barbed wire, and used car lots,” he said.
Board member Pauline Blake said the attorney for Sohne was “incensed” with the committee’s reaction to the design, which is felt could one day be looked at as “the Guggenheim of Brooklyn