East New York

Saturday

Noon. Councilman Charles Barron will march with a family alleging police brutality at 684 Thomas Boyland Avenue, between Blake and Sutter avenues, to the 81st Precinct on East New York and Thomas Boyland avenues, in Brooklyn.  read more »

1 p.m. Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum will deliver Easter baskets to homeless families at Teresa's House shelter, 1975 Creston Avenue, in the Bronx.

A tipster says Mayor Bloomberg will celebrate the funding of 55,000 units of affordable housing, bringing him more than one-third of the way to his 165,000-unit goal, with six years to go.

Where will he proverbially uncork the Champagne? Where else? East New York, probably not too far from Starrett City, where another 6,000 units hang in the balance. As fast as he puts 'em up, they come down.

- Matthew Schuerman

Bravo, real estate, said the Mayor on Wednesday during his State of the City address:

And all across New York from the Freedom Tower rising in Lower Manhattan to the new Yankees and Mets stadiums in the Bronx and Queens, to the new rail link at Howland Hook on Staten Island to right here in Brooklyn, where from East New York to the East River, new homes are going up and new businesses are opening. The evidence is all around us. This is a great time for New York an encouraging, optimistic time.

The full text of the address can be found here.

- Tom Acitelli

Another green world? [Metrop.]

• Few New York neighborhoods have suffered so distinctly--and so quietly--as Chinatown. Has lower Manhattan's most densely populated locale dealt with the "social, environmental and psychological problems" that arose after 9/11? CUNY has chronicled first-person accounts of local pollution, the "crippled" restaurant business, and a widespread identity crisis.(City Limits)
• Remember Silvercup Studios? Among other things, it's the billion-dollar development in Long Island City, a place Metropolis calls "one of those up-and-coming neighborhoods for more than a quarter-century." It also has 26 million square feet for "green-roof technology," so 20 years from now there will be a pseudo-Central Park streched over Queens. (Metropolis)
• It's horrifying that there's a sub-1% vacancy rate throughout the entire island of Manhattan (except for those unliked wastelands called Midtown East and the Upper West Side). And it's horrifying that a sub-1% vacancy rate is barely newsworthy anymore. (The Real Deal)
• How do we know East New York is gentrifying? Because Apollo Real Estate and Taconic Investment Partners have paid $90 million for about 1,000 residential condos in the Brooklyn neighborhood, and is pumping nearly half that number into improvements--but mostly because a Taconic prinpal says: "We do not envision this as a gentrification project, but rather as the revitalization of a community." Of course. (Crain's, via R.D.)
• Though Mr. Bloomberg's office swears he's never heard Jerusalem of Gold, the tastefully-titled luxury condo development in Israel boasts that "the Jewish mayor" is about to sign a contract for a penthouse apartment. Is there a contract? Not so much. Is there worldwide love for Mayor Mike? Yessir. (NY Sun)
- Max Abelson  read more »
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Was it a set-up, or a frank discussion about race?

Last night's forum about race and discrimination with Andrew Cuomo and Charlie King at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn attracted only about a dozen people (not counting staffers, reporters and elected officials). Perhaps a few more would have showed up if they knew firebrand Councilman Charles Barron, a member of the church, would get to ask a question.

"I'm very familiar with the history of HELP homes inc and Genesis homes, you're structure was white males... the higher up you went in HELPinc, the whiter it got...We had to demonstrate against your organization because of the structural racism, you had no black vice presidents - none...you brag about building homes and all the things you did in East New York, but there was a lot of structural racism in your organization...why should we believe you now"

Cuomo's responded:

"When I was there that wasn't the case, I then left and went to Washington...the exact opposite facts that you just stated are my record at HUD..."

The forum's moderator - who used to support King, but now backs Cuomo - Assemblyman Daryl Towns, finally got around to asking Barron to sit down...after about five minutes. [More of the exchange is after the jump.]

Afterwards, Towns turned to questions from the audience, which they submitted on index cards. The questions were picked by King's campaign manager and hand delivered by Cuomo's political director, Joe Percoco.

During the Barron exchange, Charlie King sat quietly with his head bowed.  read more »

Caitlin Klevorick, King's campaign spokeswoman, said there was no set up.

"Charlie Barron's question was of his own making we were totally unaware of the question until it was asked," she said. --Jason Horowitz

An extraordinary thing about the race for Speaker is how it's not being driven by two traditional factors in city politics: political machines and race. Sure, machine politics will play big a role, but neither of the two leading candidates, Bill de Blasio and Chris Quinn, is closely tied to a county organization. And race is part of the politics, as always, but only part.

This is all the more striking because there has been for years a strong feeling that the next Speaker should be black or Latino. One of the loudest voices in support of that notion was East New York's Charles Barron, the body's leading race politician. But now even Barron has, reluctantly, given up and allied himself with de Blasio.  read more »

"I think it should be a person of color, but it doesn't look like it's going to be," he told The Politicker. "The two persons who were running out there weren't serious," he said of Leroy Comrie and Joel Rivera.

Barron deplored the weakness of the Council's Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus. "Before we can get together and make a decision of what we can do as 25 strong, we are all in different camps," he said. "We have a tendency to be picked off by county leaders, by the mayor, by unions and other groups."

Charles Barron, the black radical Councilman from East New York, has always wanted to take on the "white power structure."

And in today's Newsday, Barron's fantasy comes true. In the round-up of his re-election contest with a challenger named John Whitehead, the paper runs a photo of the other John Whitehead -- former Goldman Sachs chief, Reagan deputy secretary of state, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Chairman, and a man Liz Smith (in Newsday!) once called "chairman of the establishment."  read more »

The Whitehead pictured in today's paper is a man Barron has, basically, been running against all his life.

Officers Put Small DentIn Uptown Grand Larceny  read more »