Brooklyn parkland ruling on Tobacco Warehouse burns DUMBO arts center; Midtown bike lanes to be added

A Brooklyn federal judge has ruled that the National Parks Service decision to let two historic buildings—including the Civil War-era Empire Stores site and the Tobacco Warehouse—be removed from parkland protection (as part of Brooklyn Bridge Park) so the city could sell them to private developers was in violation of proper procedures. The park service and the city, which were defendants in the case, had argued that the two buildings had been put within the park’s borders by mistake. The plan to turn the roofless Tobacco Warehouse over to DUMBO arts group St. Ann’s Warehouse for a $15 million community events and live theater project has been jeopardized by the new ruling. Scheduled to lose its 14,000-square-foot home next May because of commercial development, the arts center is confronting homelessness, and had thought its long-term future was secure when the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation approved plans for renovation and a subsequent move to the Tobacco Warehouse on the DUMBO waterfront. Some civic groups in Brooklyn would prefer to preserve the Tobacco Warehouse as an “open neighborhood site.”

Work has begun on a protected bike lane on First Avenue from 34th to 49th streets, an extension of the lane that opened last year starting at First Street. Bicycles and cars will share a new northbound lane on First Avenue from 49th to 59th streets and a southbound lane on Second Avenue from 59th to 34th streets. According to the Department of Transportation (DOT), statistics show that the lanes in place since last year south of 34th Street have dramatically curbed traffic injuries.