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April 19, 2007
Brooklyn Objects to 1910 Bakery Demolition for Development
Preservation Online
By Tovah Pentelovitch
"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.
Posted by lumi at April 19, 2007 9:30 AM