A rendering of the proposed water park at the American Dream Meadowlands
New Jersey’s massive American Dream Meadowlands mall, previously called “Xanadu,” has yet more obstacles to clear, the Bergen County Record reported. The 2.7 million-square-foot project, which will be one of the nation’s largest shopping centers if and when it opens (currently it is slated to open in 2013), has yet to receive the sign-off it needs from the federal government, the Record said. [more]
The Columbia University School of Social Work is a winner, and 230 Park Avenue is a loser in energy efficiency so far among New York commercial buildings participating in the Environmental Protection Agency’s second annual “Battle of the Buildings,” according to the program’s website. Two hundred and forty-five buildings across the country are competing improve their energy efficiency in the competition organized by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program, according to the program’s website.
– Miranda Neubauer [more]
Two of the biggest Gowanus Canal polluters are real estate development sites where remediation efforts failed, according to Environmental Protection Agency officials working on the Superfund cleanup at the canal.
One of them, the Daily News reported, is the 363-365 Bond Street site on which Toll Brothers had once planned to build 460 condos and townhouses. The developer, which was supposed to clean up the site before breaking ground, abandoned the project when the Gowanus gained Superfund status last year. (Toll had actively campaigned against the designation, arguing that it would render the development site unmarketable).
According to the EPA, it’s a good thing it did, because new investigations there have since found cancer-causing poly-aromatic hydrocarbons and other potentially harmful chemicals are present in the ground, and Toll Brothers would have never known about it because “the investigation they had done at the site was inadequate.” [more]
Waterfront residences are a costly perk in New York, but not for a group of houseboat dwellers along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. The New York Post reported that the mostly “hipster 20-somethings” who live by the toxic waterway pay no rent for their homes, other than a fee to the city for the right to park along the docks. However, while the residents have avoided city regulation for some time, a recent Environmental Protection Agency study shows they have another obstacle to dodge: the water itself. The EPA, which organized a $500 million cleanup of the Gowanus Canal, found it to be a “cancer-causing cesspool” and warned boaters not to fall in. [more]
The Environmental Protection Agency is planning a large-scale inspection of New York City schools after a city-led pilot study found elevated levels of toxic PCB chemicals in three buildings last summer, according to the New York Times. The PCBs were found leaking from old fluorescent light fixtures and the Bloomberg administration has contended that there’s no cause for immediate concern about students’ health as a result of the contamination. Plus, the city has said, replacing the outdated fixtures in the estimated 750 to 850 school buildings that need new ones would likely cost around $1 billion. But the EPA called exposure to PCBs “cause for considerable concern” and will nonetheless begin its inspections early next month. [more]
Gowanus, the Brooklyn neighborhood long-derided for its toxically polluted Gowanus Canal, could sustain an extra 1,500 to 2,000 residential units, industry experts say, once the Environmental Protection Agency-mandated canal cleanup goes through, according to the Brooklyn Paper. Of course, this residential rebirth could take years and millions of dollars, with conservative estimates pegging the canal cleanup cost at $400 million. Insiders say the cleanup effort could take a decade or longer. [more]
It’s slow-going for remediation workers at the future site of a new Whole Foods supermarket in Gowanus, according to the Pardon Me for Asking blog. Although work to clear the site of toxic waste began only a few weeks ago, the site at 214 3rd Street has already been hit with two stop-work orders this month from the Department of Buildings, allegedly due to unsafe work conditions. The 2.15-acre plot, which sits near the recently-designated superfund site Gowanus Canal, is riddled with industrial waste, according to numerous environmental experts.
From the April issue: Last month, Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal became one of the most polluted
places in the country, at least in the eyes of the federal
Environmental Protection Agency, which named it to the infamous
“Superfund” cleanup list.
While that environmental scarlet letter may not make for the most
compelling marketing gimmick — New York’s Love Canal, whose toxicity
led to the creation of the Superfund in 1980, is hardly prime real
estate today — Gowanus probably won’t see its property values dip,
according to many brokers, landlords and developers.
There are a couple of reasons for that counterintuitive assessment.
For one, the neighborhood around the canal, a narrow 1.8-mile,
tilde-shaped waterway, includes bits of established neighborhoods like
Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. What’s more, mopping up the mess from oil refineries, tanneries and
raw sewage, which have contaminated the Gowanus since it was dug in the
1860s, will likely mean better things to come. [more]
Toll Brothers’ planned residential tower on Dumbo’s Water Street cleared the first phase of the public review process when a Community Board 2 committee approved the project’s design in an 8-3 vote last night. Toll Brothers’ plans call for 67 market-rate apartments and 86 underground parking spaces. Current zoning in the district allows for up to 12-story buildings and does not have the 20 percent affordable housing requirement that other areas of Brooklyn have, so the steel and gray concrete project at 205 Water Street glided through the vote easily. “We loved the gritty nature of this industrial area, and that was our inspiration,” said Navid Maqami of Greenberg Farrow, which designed the project. Toll Brothers, which recently abandoned its long-planned Gowanus Canal development after it garnered a Superfund designation from the Environmental Protection Agency, will now need to win approval from the full community board before an April 6 vote by the Landmarks Commission. [Brooklyn Paper] [more]
The Environmental Protection Agency is on the hunt for responsible parties to pay for the $300 million to $500 million Gowanus Canal cleanup, after putting the site on its Superfund list last week. Already, nine responsible parties have been named, and 20 more — including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Kraft and Citigroup — are being questioned about chemicals used on the site and how they were disposed of. “This reads like the Fortune 500,” said Superfund director Walter Mugdan. “It doesn’t mean that those companies had facilities on the Gowanus… they acquired somebody who acquired somebody who had a facility on the Gowanus.” Many of the companies that could be on the hook for the cleanup costs are typical Superfund offenders, Mugdan said. Other potentially responsible parties include Bayside Fuel Oil, BP America, Honeywell and ConocoPhillips and more are expected to get added to the list as those already named call out other polluters in order to spread out the costs. [NYDN]
