SoBro or LoCo?

First there was the rezoning of Long Island City, then the infamous Williamsburg-Greenpoint Waterfront. Now the Dept. of City Planning presents the third waterfront rezoning of the Bloomberg era, the Lower Grand Concourse! At a time when half finished condo towers are blighting up new sections of skyline, the Department of City Planning has given the go ahead to a rezoning of the South Bronx waterfront south of E 149th St, now filled with auto body shops and warehouses. The idea is to create a new SoHo in SoBro, a way to open up new loft space for artists and transform a neighborhood with one of the highest levels of asthma in the country with new parks. Let's hope this trilogy works out better than the Godfather Part III.

• Lower Concourse Rezoning [Dept. of City Planning]
• Lower Concourse Lift [Daily News]
  

Gowanus Canal Will Kill You And Save You

The Gowanus Canal used to be the next big thing, but since the housing market bottomed out, it seems no one wants to pay top dollar to live next to a potential Superfund site. It begs the question, why would someone want to live next to a site that could kill them? Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, because now it could SAVE YOUR LIFE! That's right, the Gowanus is so polluted (how polluted is it?!) that reseachers say they have discovered new forms of bacteria growing in the stagnant waters that could be used as antibiotics.

"What we suspected turned out to be true," Nasreen confirmed. “The extracts from the microbes in the water proved to be potential sources of antibiotics or inhibitors.” Clearly, this discovery has a possible significant positive impact on human health as well as on the health of ecological systems."

No word yet on developers converting empty condos into biolabs.

• Poluted Gowanus Canal May Be Source Of New Antibiotics [Innovations Report]
• Gowanus Canal Coverage [Curbed]
  

Curbed Inside: Cooper Union's New Green Roof

Images from vanshnookenraggen/flickr.com

Thom Mayne's 'John Locke meets the Borg' Cooper Union Academic building is shaping up for new students to immediately get lost in. Much has been made of the retro skip-stop elevators and the magnificent crooked staircases that lead you to no place in particular, but did you know that it will also have a fantastic green roof?! Well, sort of. These pictures show off the new roof garden, which is not accessible to students, however a terrace next to it is open, so watch for flying cigarette buts when walking by. Already at home on the roof is the relocated eagle saved from Penn Station. Keep your fingers crossed to see if any of his real life brothers take up residence in any number of the crazy spaces in the skin of this building.

• Cooper Union Coverage [Curbed]
• Cooper Union Builds [cooper.edu]
  

ARC Gets The OK From NYCC

The Access to the Region's Core (ARC) Tunnel got the seal of approval from the New York City Council this week when it voted in favor of a new land-use plan for Penn Station. Construction began on the New Jersey portal back in June, and the latest vote allows construction to begin on the new subterranean station along with vent buildings in Midtown. The new tunnel and station will double the amount of trains entering into Penn Station per day as well as expand the station further east, closer to the Midtown business district. You know what that means, twice as many people from New Jersey flooding into Manhattan everyday.

Stimulus Dollars At Work In L.I.C.

The transformation of Long Island City from industrial wasteland into an office AND industrial wasteland got a shot in the arm this week when the mayor's office and the New York City Economic Development Corporation announced plans to spend up to $75 million in city and federal dollars to "green" up the neighborhood and improve traffic. New trees, benches, and crosswalks will be installed to make the area, known for it's heavy auto traffic between the city and Long Island, safe for pedestrians and more attractive for development.

Rezoned in 2001, L.I.C. soon became the spill-over neighborhood for businesses looking to be near Midtown but not haveing to pay for it. The first to take the city up on their new offer were the strip clubs being kicked out of Times Sq by then Mayor Giuliani. At the height of the building boom it seemed L.I.C. would be the edge city of Bloomberg's dream with new condo and office towers popping up, as well as a plan to completely rebuild Queensboro Plaza with new parks and bike lanes.

It all seemed like a dream come true. Long Island bankers could be closer to home and get a lap dance after work. But the contracting office market has left enough vacancies in Midtown that companies are thinking twice about L.I.C. Even neighborhood heavy weight MetLife, which moved it's upper management into a refurbished airplane factory in 2007 reversed it's decision a year later and brought everyone back into Manhattan.

Last year the city tore down a decrepit parking garage to make way for new development but the market has dropped out. Plans for glass towers have been scaled back, put on hold, or canceled leaving the neighborhood with half empty new buildings, vacant storefronts, and empty lots. Given the trends of Williamsburg, in a similar situation, time will tell if bankers and office workers will be hanging out in these rundown lots to shoot-up on their lunch breaks.

• Cleaning the Grit Off Long Island City [NYT]
  

Mi Cassa, Su Cassa

What's a developer to do when his 48-story condo tower in the heart of Midtown opens in the midst of a recession? Let the tenants finish it, of course! That's the idea behind Cassa by Mexico City's TEN Arquitectos. "In this ostensibly cold market, Solly Assa, the owner of Assa, says the building is finding affluent buyers who want to create enormous homes. Mr. Assa said he had sold 17 of 57 units at an average price of $2,000 per square foot. Five or six buyers, he said, bought more than one unit, with intentions to combine them; one bought four and two bought three each."[NYT]