NY Press: Land Grab?

Phew, I'm still recovering from the beardies and staches party.

This morning I went to my new favorite coffeeshop, Think Coffee, (Mercer between 3rd and 4th) and the cover page of New York Press caught my eye with the headline, "Land Grab: Developing a City for The Wealthy." Whoo. I grabbed a copy on my way out, and paged through the entire newspaper three times looking for the cover story.

The story ended up being a single-page vignette about two opposing socio-economic experiences of living in Bed-Stuy. Still worth reading about, but really, is it worth that cover? Reminds me of the silly marketing that some good movies are subjected to (like selling Friends with Money as a Sex in the City comedy, which it is not). I always get a bit annoyed with being misled. Now that I got that off my chest...

The cover article in question is about The Spencer in the liminal part of Bed-Stuy, the border land between Bed-Stuy and Clinton Hill. I was mostly interested because I dragged my boyfriend to an open house, mostly out of curiosity. I took one look on this little street that is Spencer and just felt terrible: there was these two hulking six-story luxury condominium buildings with two-story little houses wedged between them. Ugh. It was inconceivable. And I couldn't figure out why the city would let it happen.

Well, the article mentions the loophole that the developers took advantage of to get the zoning variances (the developers told the city that they were building a dormitory). Read more about it.