We don’t know what’s up at City Point, the once grand development planned at a property originally owned by developer Joe Sitt–the Galleria Mall that he promised to turn into the “Belaggio” of shopping malls. (Guess “Bellagio” is Italian for sell it and tear it down?) In any case, what’s signficant about this, other the fact that the project is shrinking faster than one’s (deleted) in the waters off Coney Island this time of year, is that no work has been done on the project in months. Back in November, Brownstoner reported:
We had heard through the grapevine that the changing market conditions had led Acadia Realty Trust, the project’s developer, to go back to the drawing board to reconsider the mix of residential, office and retail. But fear not: On Friday, they filed a New Building application with DOB. It’s unclear to us whether they are filing the project in stages, but this building is a lot shorter than previously planned. The original plan called for 500,000 square feet of retail, 250,000 square feet of office and over a million square feet of hotel and residential space. The new app calls for a 16-story, 268-foot-tall building with almost 900,000 square feet of space; it appears from the application that this is all commercial space. A call to the developer for clarification was not returned.
Talk about the Castration School of Development. What interests us is that Acadia hasn’t even bothered to complete demolition in any way, shape or form. The photo shows that foundations of the old mall are still in place. The steel columns of the old Toys R Us are still there, and frankly, a 12-year-old could gain access to the site because it’s so poorly maintained. So, no more talk of 60+ story sharp phalluses of offices and apartments pentetrating the Brooklyn sky. Okay. The freeze on work, however, tempts us to put this if not in our Dead Pool of Rotting Corpses of projects that will blight the landscape with emptiness, in the Pool of Troubled Ones. We would also toss this puppy into our Blight Me collection of foul developer blight, but what this wasteland and crumbling, cheap blue plywood fence replace was a blight on the landscape, anyway. The parking garage on Flatbush Avenue was one of the few Brooklyn demolitions we’ve cheered. In any case, it certainly does show that Mr. Sitt knew when it was time to take the money and run. Now, the question is, what’s Acadia going to do with this land in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Is it shovel ready, maybe?
