Rendering for Annabell Selldorf's design of the Sunset Park recycling center. Image from The Architect's Newspaper
Good morning. Here’s what’s been in the news related to streets and buildings in the nabe:
*Sunset Park has long planned a new recycling center down on the waterfront. Curbed last week posted a peek at some of the plans by “starchitect” Annabelle Selldorf’, which would include linked waterfront buildings with barge access, green roofs and even…goats? You can read more about the project in the full article at The Architect’s Newspaper. Take a look and come tell us what you think.
*Two sites offered rundowns of the “Future of Fourth Avenue” meeting last week. The Post noted the skeptics in the crowd, while the blog All About Fifth said, “the attendance was high and the engagement, real.”
*March 10 saw the groundbreaking on Sunset Park Early Childhood Development Center. The project of Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens serves more than 400 low-income families, is located in the former St. Michael’s School building near 42nd Street and Fourth Avenue. The center will also offer classes for parents in nutrition, housing assistance, ESL and GED, according to the Brooklyn Eagle.
I had heard tell of this earlier in the week, but a reader pointed out the coverage this morning. You can below watch the My Fox New York interview with Rittenberry and McGraw. The Post picked it up today as well:
Lance McGraw was on his way to work Thursday when the 23-year-old found a mission to test his mettle: a faint woman fell onto the tracks before an oncoming N-train at the Eighth Avenue station in Sunset Park–McGraw leaped to the rescue.
Waiting for the morning train at 8:30am, Parsons student Rosie Rittenberry began to feel faint. She suddenly fainted and tumbled onto the tracks. McGraw dropped his backpack and jumped in after her, lifting the 18-year-old, still unconscious, back onto the platform.
“It was a life-or-death situation,” Rittenberry told the Post. “This could have turned out much, much worse.”
After the horrific train accident that severed the leg of 16-year-old man earlier this week, it is good to hear a happy ending, and that old-fashioned heroism is not dead.
There are several pieces of sad news in Sunset Park.
*The leg of a Sunset Park teen was severed by an N-train passing out of a Brooklyn station Saturday night, according to the New York Times. The boy, identified by the New York Times as 16-year-old Jose Juarez of Sunset Park, was in the tunnel near the Kings Highway station painting graffiti with friends when a departing train sliced through the teen’s leg. He is currently in critical but stable condition at Lutheran Medical Center.
* A Sunset Park couple is suing Maclaren, maker of popular strollers recalled late last year for a defective hinge that had cut off the fingers of at least 12 children nationwide, the Post reported. Shannon Windram, 2½ at the time of the accident, makes at least 13. Shannon was with her mother on 69th street in March 2004 when the hinge cut through her first finger at the knuckle. Doctors were able to reattach it, but the tip later blackened and had to be amputated, Thomas Windram, Shannon’s father, told the Post. Apart from the individual lawsuits, Maclaren faces up to $1 million in fines in addition to the lawsuit for failure to report the defective strollers, according to Gothamist.
Good morning. It’s Thursday. The weekend looms. Let’s start with the prettiest in news:
*Lush trees, boggy wetlands and birds…in New York City? That’s precisely what Joel Meyerowitz portrays in large-scale photographs of 50 city parks on show at the Museum of the City of New York. Commissioned by the parks department, the exhibit is the largest documentary of the city’s 29,000 acres of parkland since they were photographed as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s WPA project of the 1930s. Sunset Park made the cut, City Limits Online reports, offering a little bit of urban to the pastoral scenes of the lesser known green in our nation’s great metropolis. Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks, at the Museum of the City of New York, Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., adults $10, through March 21.
*Governor David Paterson led the way in welcomingCouncilwoman Sara M. González at the new Sunset Park High School into her second term on the council, YourNabe reported. The comment section (ever enlightening) offers a range of reactions to the news.
*Last weekend, nearly every paper ran stories on the tragic fire that killed five in Bensonhurst, including the mother of two young children.The New York Times offered some history, and the story about how the blaze affected families of the dead in Guatemala. The Post reported while the alleged arsonist said “demons” drove him to torch a baby carriage that drove the blaze, it may have had more to do with revenge. A Daily News story portrayed 2-year-old Josias’ confusion at his mothers death. Their home destroyed, the family has taken up residence in Sunset Park.
*A string of holdups in local warehouses, including at least one in the 72nd precinct, continued this week. From YourNabe.com: On January 11, two black males armed with handguns entered a warehouse on Centre Street between Smith and Court Streets and robbed a 43-year-old man inside. Police said that cops have connected the thieves to four similar robberies in the nearby 78th Precinct in Park Slope and the 72nd Precinct in Sunset Park.
*In other crime news, a police arrested a man believed to be a thief with a thing for mailboxes. Officials alleged 49-year-old John Sturiale was one of two men who in December stole metal and plastic post office containers worth upward of $2500 (who knew?) from the post office on 58th Street, YourNabe.com reported. First email, then missing containers. Times are tough for USPS.
Do you know of neighborhood services that have helped you, or people who you know, through gang issues? Leave the information in the comments or email it to sunsetparkchron@gmail.com.
On August 30th, Deputy Inspector Jesus Raul Pintos sat in his office. He felt good. Crime was down in the 72nd Precinct. He had only one murder on his books for 2009. One day later, he had three.
Note–earlier, the headline incorrectly says “Gang-Related” stabbing. I have since discovered that is not the case. See more here.
One man was stabbed to death and two others injured during a gang fight in Sunset Park, according to Tuesday’s New York Post Police Blotter. On Sunday night at 61 Street and 7th Ave an unidentified victim was “slashed in the arm.” He was taken to Lutheran Hospital, where he died from his injuries. Two others, also stabbed, were listed as stable.
The Post reported that Nelson Liu, 19, was picked up for murder and criminal possession of a weapon. Police have arrested a second person in connection with the crime, according to the blog Best View in Brooklyn.
