‘People’ Gets the Last Giggle Over Brangelina Baby PicsTurns out the issue whose cover displayed little Vivienne and Knox sold 2.6 million copies, the fourth-largest selling issue of all time for the mag. Plus, the rest of our industry news roundup.
neighborhood watch
Historic Brooklyn Navy Yard Houses Get a Stay of ExecutionBrooklyn Navy Yard: The Feds have indefinitely delayed plans to tear down ten nineteenth-century houses here in order to build a supermarket. Patina before potatoes! [Brownstoner]
Dumbo: The waterfront Empire Stores warehouse is so decrepit that the park surrounding it has been closed for safety, and everyone’s pointing fingers over who let the Civil War–era pile languish for so long. [Brooklyn Paper via Curbed]
Elmhurst: This no-frills Queens hood isn’t slated to do so well in the real-estate boom, but maybe it’ll fare better than expected with loving testimonials like this: “At sunset, the dirty black bricks of the six-story apartment buildings turn deep red and almost dark pink. At night, it’s peaceful.” Ahhh… [NYDN via Queens Crap]
developing
To the Brig With You! Affordable-Housing Plans Progress Near Navy Yard
Don’t think that yesterday’s PlaNYC hoopla has sapped the city’s energy for more planning announcements: Today City Hall announced a development team to create an “unprecedented mixed-income community” on the Brig, a former prison site bordering Fort Greene and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A partnership called Navy Green will convert the 103,000-square-foot site, which served first as a forties-era naval prison and later as an INS detention center and minimum-security city pen into what plans say is an energy-efficient complex of 434 townhouses and apartments, including dozens of co-ops priced for families earning under $92,000 per year. As these early drawings show (one above, one after the jump), the sparkly towers and new retail are planned for the site — the city mentions an ecofriendly dry cleaner as a potential tenant — under a design that grew out of community workshops in 2003. The conversion, due to start by this summer, illustrates the aggressive hunt for city-owned land that Mayor Bloomberg promised in his speech yesterday. And it’ll give New Yorkers the rare chance to come and go from a military prison at their leisure. —Alec Appelbaum
