All Quiet At 100 Luquer Street After A Stop Work Order, Then Another And A Fine

As seen from Luquer Street

As seen from Nelson Street

It was time to check in on 100 Luquer Street, the 11-story finger building designed by architect Karl Fischer. No visible progress seems to have been made since I last took photos back in July. For a while now, the construction site has been locked up and no one has been working.
When I came home, I checked the Department of Buildings web site and was not surprised to find out that the project has been slapped with a partial stop-work order on July 7 for not having "a licensed rigger on site." Then, on August 28th, another one was issued for failure to comply to the first stop work order.
There is also an outstanding $5,000 fine which is now due.

In the meantime, this monstrosity is looming over the neighborhood, with half its glass façade missing.

Any comments, dear reader?


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'Looming Tower' Of Carroll Gardens At Luquer Street Gets More Windows

May 6th 2009

May 6th 2009

July 4th 2009

July 4th 2009

It has been slow going at 100 Luquer Street, but recently, more windows have been installed at the Carroll Gardens Finger. Unfortunately, they don't do much to improve the appearance of this Karl Fisher-designed monstrosity. As I stated before, this tower has more glass than class.
The 11-story tower could not be more out of context in this brownstone neighborhood.

Too bad the project slipped through before the proposed Carroll Gardens Down-Zoning which will put an end to such high-rise developments.
The proposed contextual re-zoning is currently going through the Uniform Land Use Review Process ( U.L.U.P.). It can't happen fast enough!

Unfortunately, Carroll Gardeners will have to deal with Mr. Fisher's looming finger forever.

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Not Much Progress At The 'Looming Tower' Of Carroll Gardens

*Construction at the Clarett site at 340 Court Street has been stopped
*Developer Bill Stein of 360 Smith Street has not resumed his Oliver House though the Board Of Standards And Appeals exempted his project from the Wide Street Text Amendment
*The Toll Brothers are "threatening" to walk away from their Gowanus Canal project should the EPA declare the canal a Superfund site

but...

the Karl Fisher-designed 'finger' at 100 Luquer Street rose to 11 stories on the fringes of the neighborhood.
And what an eyesore it is. The building towers over the neighboring townhouses like a bad joke.
Construction has been going on for quite a while. Though a few sides of the building look mostly completed, the back is still wide open. Frankly, it doesn't look as though there has been much progress since I last wrote about it back in December '08.

If this isn't a poster child for down-zoning and land-marking, I don't know what is!



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100 Luquer Developer Looking Down On Carroll Gardens

Oh, why do I do this to myself? I knew I was going to be depressed after checking the Carroll Gardens Finger at 100 Luquer Street, but I just needed to see how the building had progressed since the last time I had walked by. Maybe secretly, I hoped that it did not look quite as bad as I had imagined, now that the glass façade has been put on. But no. All that glass didn't give this tower any class. I felt rather low as I stood in front of the 11 story Karl Fisher-designed building.

The Carroll Gardens "Finger" has amassed 44 Complaints and 14 DOB Violations of which 9 have still to be resolved. Damn. But the biggest violation is the sheer size of this generic glass tower. It stands disconnected from the surrounding brownstone neighborhood, a monument to the greed and folly of the past few years.
Lets hope for saner times.

100 Luquer Developer Looking Down On Carroll Gardens

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