Special delivery! The City has replaced our beleaguered mailbox on Cadman Plaza West (near the High Street subway station) with a new, state of the art, tamper resistant model that is shiny new. For now.

The Board of Elections is seeking registered Democrats in Downtown Brooklyn to be poll workers on Election Day Tuesday Nov. 6, 2018.

Poll Locations: 101 Clark Street Community Roomor 10 Clinton Street Community Room. You need to take a class to qualify.
The Board of Elections will pay you $100 to take the class and $200 for being a poll worker on Election Day. We need your help. Bring a friend if you like. The class is 4 hours and is held at 345 Adams Street. If you are interested please email me: [email protected]

Last year’s Halloween party for our kids was such a success that Board Member Mabel Del Rio has gathered her band of merry makers to make this years party even better. Volunteers are already hard at work on a master plan to turn our Community Room into a full blown Pumpkin Patch! Details on the event are coming soon but here’s a sneak peek at the preparations. Thanks to the Pumpkin Patch team of Blanca, Carmen, Charleen, Luis, Mabel and Toni.

City and state officials should never have let developers build their luxury condos and swanky hotel inside Brooklyn Bridge Park knowing that they would one day interfere with rebuilding the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway’s crumbling triple cantilever above it, according to a Brooklyn Heights pol who urged the city to consider every option possible before turning the beloved Promenade into a speedway for cars and trucks.

“The city and state together built out Brooklyn Bridge Park and so you have like the new Pier 1 development, the hotel and Pierhouse — kind of right past where the cantilever ends, also the berms — and all those things were built out over the last seven or eight years, and at the time a number of us were saying, ‘This is going to be a problem when they have to rebuild the BQE,’ ” Councilman Stephen Levin (D–Brooklyn Heights) said during an interview with WNYC on Thursday. “The city, the state, and federal government all deserve a fair amount of blame for letting deterioration happen as long as it has.”

Levin echoed his constituents’ pleas to nix the idea of building a six-lane highway on the Heights’s historic walkway during reconstruction of the 70-year-old triple cantilever as part of the city’s so-called “innovative approach,” and instead looked at laying down the asphalt on the nearly fully developed waterfront meadow’s multi-million-dollar berms.

“Using parts of Brooklyn Bridge Park, that would be a shame, but the berm area, if that’s needed to do this less impactfully to the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, it needs to be looked at,” said Levin, who took office in 2010, on the radio show. “I’d like to explore any and every option that might be available.”

Read full article here

On October 15th, the New York City Department of Transportation will place temporary concrete barriers along the south side of Prospect Street and close the south sidewalk on Prospect Street between Washington Street and Cadman Plaza West. This closure is required for the rehabilitation of the stone masonry walls at bridge approach and ramp at Prospect Street. The sidewalk closure will be in effect for about four months. Pedestrians are advised to use the opposite sidewalk and sidewalk crossing.
South Sidewalk Closed
Prospect Street between Washington Street and
Cadman Plaza West
October 15th – February 15th

The Famed Brooklyn Heights Promenade May Close for Years. Here’s Why:

It is 1,825 feet of unparalleled views of Manhattan and New York Harbor that is known around the world and has captivated generations of visitors and inspired tributes in films and TV shows. But what often gets lost in the moment is that the beloved Brooklyn Heights Promenade happens to sit atop a detested, yet vital highway, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, that is slowly falling apart. Now a 1.5-mile stretch of the expressway is so rickety it needs to be replaced. That means big changes are coming to the promenade. And that has set off near panic about the fate of a cherished jewel of New York. The pedestrian promenade is physically joined to the expressway, suspended over passing traffic below by an unusual triple-cantilever structure that is itself an engineering oddity. So what happens to one, by necessity, must happen to the other. But before anyone assumes the worst, let’s look at what’s on the table. Read full story here

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is calling for the swift replacement of the elevators within the Clark Street subway station after an outage trapped 17 commuters inside for nearly an hour Monday morning. “We cannot underestimate the level of trauma some passengers would feel to be stuck in an elevator for almost an hour,” said Adams. All the elevators in the station were replaced in 1995 and the MTA has budgeted to replace them again in its current five-year capital plan, Adams noted. The Clark Street station is particularly deep and is one of the few stations exclusively accessed by elevators. “We’ve heard from constituents that the elevators at Clark Street seem to be in a constant state of breaking down and in need of replacement,” Adams continued. “So we can only imagine if there was a medical emergency — that it took almost an hour — that is unacceptable for 17 people To have to endure something of this magnitude.” Adams penned a letter to the MTA, dated Tuesday, Oct. 2, calling on the authority to begin the elevator replacement before the end of the year and also immediately open the station’s emergency stairwell as an alternative for everyday use until the elevator is replaced. “While this incident would be deeply problematic in any set of circumstances, this particular instance and the existing state of at-risk infrastructure speak to an imminent public safety threat,” Adams wrote in the letter. Andrei Berman, an MTA spokesman, said in an email that the MTA is “beginning [the elevator] replacement in the next several months” but did not specify a date or comment to Adam’s request for opening the station stairwell.  – AM New York

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, NY — The Brooklyn Heights Promenade will have to shut down for several years regardless of how the city goes about replacing the highway underneath it, city officials told concerned locals Thursday. Department of Transportation officials presented dueling plans for overhauling the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from Atlantic Avenue to Sands Street at a packed public meeting in Downtown Brooklyn Thursday evening.

Both options involve removing and replacing the iconic promenade, which sits above two levels of highway at the top of a deteriorating triple-cantilever structure, said Tanvi Pandya, the DOT’s senior program manager for the project. “In many ways we’re facing a decision about which level of purgatory we want to be in,” Peter Bray, the executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, said at the meeting. The decades-old walkway would be closed for up to six years under the DOT’s preferred method: Erecting a six-lane highway at the same level as the promenade while the new permanent highway is built below at a cost of up to $3.6 billion.The temporary artery would be transformed into a new, wider promenade once construction is finished, Pandya said.

“We have to replace the promenade anyway, so this roadway’s essentially replacing the promenade first, using it temporarily as a roadway and then eventually putting it back where it belongs,” she said. The other option — replacing the BQE lane by lane — would only shutter the promenade for two to three years, the DOT says. But it would be far more disruptive to traffic and wouldn’t create a bigger walkway in the end, Pandya said.

That method would cost more — up to $4 billion — take more than eight years, and come with less of a guarantee that the work gets done on time, the DOT says. It would also leave a “forest” of columns along Furman Street to support the new structure, Pandya said.

“This is like doing surgery,” she said. “… This is very painstaking work, and if anybody has done any work on a house, you rip open a wall and then all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Ugh, I didn’t know that was there.'”

Transportation officials said the project is a unprecedented undertaking that will impact not just Brooklyn Heights but potentially all five boroughs. But it has to be done, as the BQE would have to be closed to vehicles around 2036 if its problems are not addressed, said Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg. “Fortunately, it’s not falling down tomorrow, but unfortunately, it’s really deteriorating,” Trottenberg said. The work isn’t expected to start until at least 2020. But locals at the packed meeting said they’re already worried about whether they can trust the city’s promises about the work. Some also expressed concerns about air quality and whether the city would be able to pay for the entire project. “What guarantees are you going to give us that will stand up in 10 years that we actually will get the promenade back?” said Brooklyn Heights resident Susan Rifkin.

DOT officials emphasized that Thursday’s meeting was just the start of a long outreach and environmental review process leading up to a final decision on which option to use.

– Brooklyn Heights-DUMBO Patch

10:00 AM – 2:00 PM – WHERE: Cadman Plaza Park & Walt Whitman Park

Saturday October 6th
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Come help:
Rake and bag leaves
Weeding & pruning
Dig holes and plant daffodil bulbs
WE HAVE SUPPLIES WE JUST NEED YOU!
No experience? No problem

Note to Parents: This is a kid friendly event
We have rakes and tools for little ones

On August 1^st, , a CPN Board notice outlining the implementation of an HPD-approved “CPN Dog Policy” was distributed “under doors” to all CPN apartments, emailed to Shareholders within the BuildingLink System, and posted on our various CPN bulletin boards.  Subsequently, the CPN Board, DEPM Management and HPD received (via certified mail dated September 4^th) copies of a petition submitted by a CPN “Ad Hoc Committee for Dog Policy” (Contact: Sonia Collins 20J).   On re-count, the petition represented input from 67 apartments.  The petition’s cover letter requested a “deadline extension to January 1” since the signers thought that the originally-stated deadline starting September 1^st for dog registration did not give dog owners “enough time to process all requirements”.  This concern and other questions regarding the policy were voiced from the floor at the Board of Director’s Open Meeting of September 12^th.

CPN’s attorneys believed that January 1^st was too far from the original deadline.  However the CPN Board (your fellow Shareholders and elected representatives) have accepted the petitioners’ position that a softer launch is called for–and the registration period is therefore extended while the Board reviews the implementation timetable.  More details will be discussed at the Open Meeting on October 3^rd.  However, please note that the HPD-approved CPN Dog Policy is not rescinded–so if you are a dog owner and already have put together the required documentation for registration, you should complete the process via the Management Office.

In the interim, here are some clarifications and some policy parameters:

–for both community safety and legal & financial liability reasons, it is essential that all dogs in residence at CPN be registered with management as soon possible (non-compliance leaves ALL Shareholders of the Corporation legally and financially vulnerable);

–future annual dog registration renewals may be scheduled to coincide with Income Affidavit and Garage Agreement submissions.  In that context, registrations that begin during this current period will be considered effective and in force through April 30, 2020;

–among the issues the Board is reviewing is how to address/credit Shareholders who registered their dogs (and paid appropriate fees) under the prior, non-HPD-approved Dog Policy.

Please remember that your elected CPN Board represents the interests of ALL Shareholders in our community (dog owners and non-dog owners alike).  We take this opportunity to thank Sonia Collins and the Ad Hoc Committee on Dog Policy for their input and suggestions and welcome and encourage continued contributions by the Committee and other Shareholders with viewpoints on this topic.

Thank you again for staying involved.

CPN Board of Directors