(picture credit: Scarano Architects)I am not a builder, nor am I an architect. Obviously! I am just a Brooklyn blogger. Precisely, a Carroll Gardens Blogger and resident. In other words, someone who is keenly interested in what will be rising on the big lot at 360 Smith Street.
However, that seems to be top secret information. The developer, Bill Stein, was "gracious" enough to attend a Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Meeting on September 10. The purpose was to assure the community that the building was being redesigned and that the rendering on his architectual firm's web site was never the finished design.
So, pardon me for asking: why would the same drawing still appear on Scarano's web site, unchanged, unaltered from its original version?
Now if I were Stein, developer of a highly controversial 70 foot building, (the tallest of the neighborhood,) employer of certainly the most controversial architect in Brooklyn, I think I would ask him to remove the rendering from his web site, no?
At the September meeting, we were assured by Mr. Stein that he had heard the community and that he was in the process of revising the design so that it would better integrate into the low-rise neighborhood. The big surprise of the evening was that he showed up not with plans and big architectual drawings of the redesign, but with a small drawing not bigger than 11"x 14," which he protectively showed around under the condition that no one take a picture.
This, the community was told, was not the final design either.
So what is the final design? Is it more like the one he showed around at the meeting or the one still posted on Scarano's web site? And why all this secrecy? Why not just show the plans to the community? What is there to hide?
It is important to us, the residents, to know what he is planning for the site.
He is imposing major changes on our neighborhood and that makes him responsible for at least building something that fits contextually into a brownstone neighborhood. Lets make sure that his project is a reflection of Carroll Gardens and not a reflection of his own ego!
Related Reading:
Scarano Sleeze Factor
Mr.Stein's show-and-tell in Carroll Gardens
De Blasio Show Coming To a Street Corner Near You
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