Last month the city announced that the space dedicated to amusements in the latest Coney Island rezoning plan would be cut from 15 acres to 9 acres. City officials explained that the downsizing was necessary to accommodate “local landowners” – the biggest of those is developer Joe Sitt, whose glitzy plans were previously derailed by the city for the express purpose of devoting larger space for the amusement park. Now Sitt’s Thor Equities stands to......

Preliminary work could begin as soon as next month on the ambitious $500 million plan to transform Governors Island into a premiere destination for cyclists, nature lovers, large-scale music concerts and rock climbing. Last December a consortium of five design companies was chosen to turn the flat southern part of the island into an oasis with manmade hills and a shoreline promenade. Ultimately (say, 2013?) 90 acres of parkland will be remade for anyone willing......

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy held a public meeting in Carroll Gardens this week to unveil renderings for a park and esplanade that would run along the Gowanus canal. The project’s dubbed Sponge Park because planners hope it will help absorb some of the raw sewage that currently contaminates the canal during heavy rainfall. (Brownstoner believes oily runoff from the nearby Gowanus Expressway is another big problem.) The idea is that when the canal is finally......

The effect of a well-trafficked park under renovation really doesn't come into full relief until the spring, when the absence of greenery and flowers seems less like a normal part of urban living and more of a desecration of greenspace. The renovation of Washington Square Park continues at full tilt, however, as the fountain is reoriented centrally and the rest of the park is reordered to be greener and less anarchical. The Square used to......

After widespread outrage that the city Parks Department might end more than three decades of Latin American cuisine dished out during weekend soccer games in Red Hook, it was announced yesterday that the longtime vendors have been granted a six year permit. In the end, they were the only group to apply. Last summer the Department of Health cracked down on the vendors for health violations, and it was feared that the vendors would be......

Rendering of proposed Public Place development by The Hudson Companies. Earlier in the week, the department of Housing Preservation and Development [HPD] revealed renderings for a proposed housing development and park on 5.8 acres of heavily polluted land by the toxic Gowanus canal. Located on the site of a former manufactured gas plant, the city has owned the land, which stretches from Smith Street to the canal, for two decades. National Grid, who took over......

Above, rendering of the proposed park; below, photograph of the site in its current state A $114 million plan to put a waterfront park on the East River, just south of the United Nations, came into focus yesterday; the four-acre site is where a parking lot for a Con Edison power plant used to reside. City Councilman Daniel Gardonick said, "The opportunity to create this riverfront park is an opportunity we cannot afford to......

Earlier this year some renderings for a Governors Island redesign were released. Out of the five contending designs, all of which the NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussof called "unambitious", a winner was finally chosen. Earlier today at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Spitzer announced the Dutch firm West 8 has been selected to recreate the open space on the island. This was one of the firms that Ouroussof pointed out......

The great-grandson of one of an early owner of Macy's is being accused by a 52-year-old jewelry designer of imprisoning the woman and torturing her with, of all things, a lobster trap. Bette Marchek claims that William Straus kept her captive on his Westchester estate, starved her, beat her, and eventually attacked her with a lobster trap while the pair were on City Island in the Bronx. That was the figurative straw that broke the......

The daughter of Daniel Malakov, the orthodontist who was killed on a playground by a gunman wielding a pistol with a homemade silencer, has been placed in foster care. The girl's physician mother and her family are suspects in the Queens-man's murder. Malakov was shot in front of his daughter in a Queens playground just six days after he'd gained legal custody of his daughter following a bitter custody dispute. A judge at the Queens......