The banks of the Gowanus. Image courtesy of Department of City Planning

Attempts to rezone the area surrounding the Gowanus Canal, a neighborhood both affluent and in transition, have been in the works for over a decade. Now, Brownstoner reports, the long-anticipated Draft Planning and Land Use Framework of Gowanus has just been released by the Department of City Planning (DCP). The 188-page report is the result of 100 hours of outreach since the launch of the Gowanus PLACES Study in 2016 as well as information contained in a previous Bridging Gowanus Study released in 2014.

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Photo credit: Daniel Levin

Two Trees Management announced today that Domino Park, the long-awaited new waterfront recreational public space at the 11-acre Domino Sugar Factory site, will celebrate its grand opening this Sunday, June 10. In April, 6sqft revealed renderings of the new park and esplanade that will anchor the three-million-square-foot Williamsburg mega-development at the Domino Sugar Factory site, designed by James Corner Field Operations (of the High Line fame). The quarter-mile long public park, located just north of the Williamsburg Bridge, celebrates the history of one of the city’s most iconic industrial waterfront sites with adaptively reused syrup tanks, warehouse columns, and original cranes (now painted the park’s signature turquoise color “untealed”). There will also be a taco kiosk from Danny Meyer, a water feature, bocce courts, and a children’s playground designed by Mark Reigelman as a reinterpretation of the original factory.

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A conceptual rendering of the pool via Brooklyn Bridge Park

After five years of having a pop-up pool at Pier 2, Brooklyn Heights is getting its own permanent public pool. This morning, Brooklyn Bridge Park officially announced plans to build a pool at Squibb Park, above Pier 1 near the Pierhouse condo. Together with the NYC Parks Department, BBP will develop, operate and maintain the pool and future amenities. Tentatively, the pool is scheduled to open in 2020, with community planning sessions to be held this summer and fall ahead of issuing a Request for Design Proposals.

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The Salt Lot is a triangular piece of land just south of the point at which all three branches of the Gowanus Canal meet. The city-owned site hosts a NYC Compost Project facility, as well as the Gowanus Canal Conservancy’s nursery and educational facilities. However, the EPA has mandated a new four-million-gallon retention tank be placed there to manage combined sewer overflow. Gowanus by Design (GbD) saw this new infrastructure requirement as a catalyst for sparking conversation about much needed public urban space in the area. They’ve therefore created a conceptual proposal for the Gowanus Salt Lot Public Park, which includes three buildings constructed with materials that reference the Canal’s industrial history, along with sloping hills and wetlands.

More details and renderings ahead

Back in February, 6sqft reported that the Union Carbide Building at 270 Park Avenue–currently the JP Morgan Chase headquarters–was set to be the largest intentionally demolished building in history when plans move forward to replace the 700-foot-tall structure with a tower that will likely rise to over 1,200 feet. ArchDaily brings us a study done by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) that looks at the 100 tallest buildings ever to be demolished by their owners. The study, aptly titled, “Tallest Demolished Buildings,” confirms that if the current plans move forward, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s 270 Park Avenue would indeed become the tallest to go down–and the first over 200 meters in height.

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Rendering via CRÈME / Jun Aizaki Architecture and Design

A Kickstarter campaign launched on Thursday for a civic design project aimed at reconnecting the neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Long Island City and the residents who live there. Brooklyn-based studio CRÈME/ Jun Aizaki Architecture & Design’s concept, called Timber Bridge at LongPoint Corridor, calls for constructing a floating bridge made of durable timber that would sit on Newtown Creek and expand past to the LIRR rail yard in LIC. Not only would it provide people greater access to transit options, according to the design team, Timber Bridge would give bikers and pedestrians a safer commute than the Pulaski Bridge, a less-than-ideal path with lots of cars.

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Squash is often considered the sport of prep schools and Ivy League colleges, but four squash enthusiasts are changing that, one court at a time. The NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver officially opened the first-of-its-kind in the world outdoor squash court at Hamilton Fish Park on the Lower East Side. This amazingly cool court looks more like an Apple Store glass cube than a fitness facility. Even cooler, it’s funded by the nonprofit Public Squash and is free to the public and will offer free clinics throughout the summer.

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eVolo Magazine just announced the winners of its 2018 Skyscraper Competition. One of this year’s honorable mentions is “Manhattan Ridge: Affordable Housing for Commuters” by Zhenjia Wang and Xiayi Li, a proposal based on the premise that “people who work in Manhattan deserve a home in Manhattan.” Therefore, they’ve created a new, tripartite vertical system in which residents would consume and recreate “downstairs” and work right next to where they live. The existing buildings would remain and this new vertical space would rise up their facades.

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Rendering by Pier55 Inc/Heatherwick Studio

After years of drama, during which the project was declared dead, then given new life, construction on the public park anchored in the Hudson River (also known as Pier 55 and Diller Island), is now moving forward as evidenced by a site photo taken by CityRealty this week showing two walkways leading to the pier from Hudson River Park now in place. As 6sqft reported last October, the Pier 55 project spearheaded by media mogul Barry Diller was rebooted with Diller’s renewed commitment, complete with the backing of his recent legal foes, former ointment-fly Douglas Durst and Governor Andrew Cuomo.

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With baseball season back in full swing, talk at some point turns to the heartbreak of losing the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. Modern Mechanix informs us that team owner Walter O’Malley had championed a Brooklyn dome stadium designed by Buckminster Fuller–and how the result is yet another reason to blame Robert Moses. O’Malley took the team to Cali, if you’ll remember, because he got a better deal on land for a stadium–better than he was able to get in the five boroughs. He had wanted to keep the team in Brooklyn, but Ebbets Field was looking down-at-the-heels by then and bad for morale. In 1955 O’Malley wrote dome-obsessed architect Buckminster Fuller requesting a domed stadium design.

So what happened?