Brooklyn Objects to 1910 Bakery Demolition for Development
By Tovah Pentelovitch | From Preservation | Apr. 17, 2007
The 1910 bakery will be demolished after workers complete the
asbestos-abatement process, under way now.
Credit: BritinBrooklyn.com
In Brooklyn this summer, a former neighborhood bakery will be paved over to make way for a parking lot. That's just the beginning of the changes in store for the borough.
The Ward Bread Bakery building, built in 1910, will be razed as part of Brooklyn developer Forest City Ratner's 22-acre, $3.5 billion Atlantic Yards project—the city's largest development.
On Mar. 26, Forest City Ratner began asbestos abatement at the Ward Bread Bakery building. The process will take approximately two months, after which the building will be demolished.
Forest City Ratner did not return calls from Preservation Online, but locals say that the bakery site will be part of the developer's plan to build a two-city-block temporary parking lot for 1,400 cars.
Those opposed to the demolition plan are advocating for adaptive reuse of the Greco-Roman style building, which has been empty for three years.
"We are saying to Mr. Ratner, ‘Please, preserve this building and make whatever you plan to do fits in. Don't destroy our history and our neighborhood,'" says Patti Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition, a neighborhood group formed in 2002 to deal with what she calls "predatory developers."
Last month, Forest City Ratner released a statement saying, "The New York State Preservation Office has confirmed that there is no feasible alternative to demolishing the Ward Bread Bakery Building."
Catherine Jimenez, spokesperson for the state historic preservation office, confirms her office's conclusion. "We did a feasibility study and determined that converting the building would require substantial modifications that would be costly and would significantly alter the historic properties of the building," she says.
Hagan refuses to accept this reasoning. "Had this building been in the SoHo part of Manhattan, there would be fights over who got to adaptively reuse it," Hagan says.
The bakery building, with its arched windows and glossy white terracotta tiles, was most recently used as a storage facility.
The fate of the Ward Bread Bakery is just one point of contention between those dwelling in and around the site of the Atlantic Yard project. Numerous protests and rallies have been organized in the past few months, and the National Trust has been working with project opponents. "The collection of historic brownstone neighborhoods and landmarks that surround the Atlantic Yards site are so rare in their extent, cohesiveness, and historic and architectural qualities that their fate is of national importance," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust, in a Dec. 5 statement. "If it is built as proposed, its massive scale and incompatible design would gravely impact the essential historic character and setting of these treasures."
On Apr. 5, 26 community organizations filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court in an attempt to annul the Final Environmental Impact Statement and approval of Forest City Ratner's entire Atlantic Yards project. Annulment of the impact statement would put a halt on the development project at least in the short term.
Hagan's Prospect Heights Action Coalition was one of the 26 organizations to co-petition on the suit.
A spokesman for Forest City Ratner refused to comment on the lawsuit except to say, "They filed a lawsuit against us last week. And I'll let that speak for itself."
The State Supreme Court will hold a preliminary hearing on May 1.
"They don't have any understanding of peaceful coexistence," Hagan says of the Atlantic Yards project. "This is a capitalistic invasion. They are imposing something that is alien and wrong on our community. Their plans do not make any attempt to fit into the existing community and the existing architecture."
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