Sugar Factory Developer Less Than Sweet: F*ck You If You Don’t Like The New Plan
Jed Walentas of Two Trees Management Company threatens to revert to previous plans (pictured above) if the community continues to protest the newer, more extreme development plans
From Brooklyn Paper:
Domino Sugar factory owner Jed Walentas has a backup plan if neighbors don’t like his lofty new vision for the massive waterfront property: go back to the site’s much-maligned previous development blueprint.
Walentas, whose company Two Trees Management Co. bought the shuttered sugar refinery last year, told neighbors he hopes to get the greenlight for his proposal to build skyscraping edifices with eye-catching cutouts in the middle, but if that falls through he will revive the city-approved plan by the past owner Community Preservation Corporation Resources, which call for shorter more monolithic towers.
“We spent $185 million to purchase this site, and we’re going to get a return on our investment,” Walentas said on Thursday in his first meeting with Williamsburgers to discuss the future of Domino.
Neighbors, including many activists who battled the previous Domino development plan, greeted the Two Trees proposal with snark, derision, and anger, criticizing the project for its potential impact on transit, its light-blocking scale, and what they described as Walentas’s “my way or the highway” attitude.
“Maybe you think we are dumb, but we are not DUMBO,” community stalwart Isaac Abraham shouted at the builder, referring to the neighborhood that Walentas and his father David meticulously developed over the past two decades.
Previously, Extreme design for the future of Domino Sugar Factory revealed
The impact to the neighborhood will be the same either way. I do like the prior design better, because it can keep up with new developments around the world. If this is going to happen, it better be great!
This design is just same boring-safe… Go big or go home!
What people don’t realize is that Williamsburg is DUMBO just with more people, bars and restaurants. Get over yourselves. The new residents of Williamsburg have themselves to thank for this potential monstrosity/eyesore that is going to come to fruition. They can fight it all they want, but there nothing they can do to stop it from happening. Did they think it was going to stop after they put up those hideous condos by the waterfront? Get real. The gentrification of Brooklyn has only sped up in the last few years and shows no signs of stopping. It has spread all over like a disease, all thanks to the new inhabitants and our prick of a mayor Bloomberg who has allowed big developers free reign over underutilized property in NYC. Instead of building affordable housing, they have chosen to build luxury properties every single time. And then instead of refusing to pay such ridiculous prices for homes, idiots with money continue to buy them. These fools have some gall to complain about the new potential development. Their presence is what started the ball rolling in the first place.
By the time these things are built, we’ll be well into another recession. Only deeper this time.
welcome to bloomburg.