Skip to main content

UPDATE: Gotham Org. Reveal Plans for Beth Hamedrash Hagadol

(Beth Hamedrash Hagodol in May, 2017 - days after it was burnt down)


      Last week, after almost two years, plans for the remains of Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue became public. The Gotham Organization, in partnership with the Chinese American Planning Council, who own the parking lot behind the synagogue and operate the Hong Ning Housing for the Elderly building (seen to the right of the synagogue in the photo above), revealed their dazzling new renderings for multiple glass high-rises at 60 Norfolk Street. 




    Two structures are proposed, a 30-story mixed-use building (the "Suffolk Building"), and a 16-story residence for seniors (the "Norfolk Building"), pledging up to 55% of the residential square-footage to affordable units. The Suffolk Building will house around 19,000sf of commercial real estate, as well as the new headquarters of the Chinese American Planning Council; and the Norfolk Building will provide almost 3,800sf of space for Beth Hamedrash Hagodol, to serve as a cultural heritage/research center and small synagogue –– with the express condition that BHH have the right to convert this space into office units at will.
      While multiple local news agencies have reported on these developments, only Bowery Boogie pointed out this option to turn over a site of Jewish heritage to office space, seemingly without restriction, as "rather curious". While this parcel of land was not a part of the original Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, and therefore was not included in the re-vamped Seward Park Mixed-Use Development Plan (also known as Essex Crossing), it seems clear to me that the development of the former Beth Hamedrash Hagodol synagogue in the wake of its destruction is another investment in the "mixed-use" remodeling of the Lower East Side. There is nothing curious about this to me –– in fact it may be one of the only transparent parts of this entire arrangement –– "mixed-use" development seems to me designed to appear like a dynamic approach to land-use when it is in fact only a sweet coating which allows for the massive re-zoning and re-appropriation of land. The priority here is obviously not maintaining a connection to the history of the oldest Russian Orthodox congregation in the United States, but securing a grasp on the swathes of luxury office and commercial real estate throughout the LES.
      This is clear in the other mysterious part of the Gotham Organizations' plan (officially "GO Broome Street Development"): the proposal describes an arrangement with the current owner of "Lot 95", the 5-story building on the corner of Suffolk and Grand, which will coordinate a "small commercial addition" alongside the development at the primary sites. This is a carefully orchestrated overhaul of the entire block if approved –– and they are only giving residents until March 8 to voice their concerns over these plans! If you live in the area and think that these plans should not only be more transparent, but earmark more if not all the residential space for affordable units, go to this website and send an email by clicking on the "comment" link.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Union of Orthodox Rabbis Building Bought and Emptied –– Artifacts Remain

      Wednesday afternoon, a childhood friend of mine –– whose family has been at their apartment on East Broadway since 1956 –– got in touch with me about what sounded like people clearing out the buildings next to his at 237 and 235 East Broadway (Sharis Adath Israel and the former home of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis respectively). When I arrived on the scene that same afternoon, the doors to 235 East Broadway were being shut and two Junklugger trucks were just pulling away from the curb, stacked with what looked like large amounts of furniture. East Broadway was littered with papers that had blown off the back of these trucks, and as I started to pick them up I saw that many of these documents represented records of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, correspondence in Hebrew and Yiddish, newspaper clippings, pages from religious books, all of which dating back decades. I called Junkluggers and asked if they would be able to intercept any of these documents before they...
2 comments
Read more

Former "Mayor of James Street" and Gangster-turned-Undertaker, 'Roxie' Vanella's Funeral Chapel Sells For $7.8M

          If you end up down on Madison and Saint James, near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, you've stepped into the area of the Lower East Side formerly known as the Fourth Ward. With Five Points just to its west, the Fourth Ward composed part of the East River shoreline and is generally folded in with the old Corlear's Hook neighborhood (also known as the "Hook", where once almost one hundred brothels were located and the term "hooker" was coined). This area of Lower Manhattan, around the time of Robert "Roxie" Vanella's birth in 1883, was largely occupied by ship-builders, dockyards, and the assorted tenement. The triangular block that Vanella's Funeral Chapel sits on also houses the former St. James School, noted as the only site of Alfred E. Smith's formal education (who was only ten years Vanella's senior), and neighbors the St. James Church, the second oldest Roman Catholic building in NYC and the home of the Ancien...
Post a Comment
Read more

UPDATE: Hells Angels Leave Third Street for Greener Pastures

      Two mornings ago, EV Grieve broke the news  that the Hells Angels appeared to have vacated their clubhouse on Third after 50 years –– all identifying marks had been removed or painted over, leaving only the "77" across the now completely black entryway. The group's sudden departure from a block and neighborhood it had called home since the late 60's has been met with a genuine mixed array of emotions and reactions. As the EV Grieve's article was shared across various Lower East Side pages on Facebook yesterday, numbers of people mourned this move as another symbol of the erasure of the neighborhood's culture, or the further capitulation to real-estate developers, while numbers of others implored commenters to explain why we should lament the loss of an organization with such a violent criminal past. A similar dynamic often arises within conversations around the Lower East Side's long and extensive history of gang activity, drug use, prostituti...
1 comment
Read more