DailyHeights

Ground Breaking
Originally uploaded by Atomische.

*OK, OK, we know a million dollars ain’t what it used to be… So let’s propose a new definition of Millionaire: anyone who won’t think twice about plunking down a record-breaking (for Brooklyn, at least) $1000+ per square foot for a condo.

…That’s the sale price predicted a few months ago for units in Richard Meier’s “super deluxe” 15-story glass tower on Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Heights, now under construction (photo, right). While these may be quite a bit more expensive than luxury apartments near the edge of NYC they seem like a screaming bargain next to the current price of luxury apartments in Manhattan, which according to the Daily News are now almost $1500 per square foot.

But there’s a bigger story here about a smaller public space… at least for those of us Prospect Heights residents who are already making way for millionaires every day as we try to squeeze past the blue plywood wall that’s blocking the public sidewalk.

The construction company drilled the foundations for this wall more than a foot into the cement sidewalk!

Is that legal? No idea – we are simply too dense to translate those obtuse building permits.

Is it annoying? Just ask any pedestrian who’s forced off the sidewalk and onto the muddy, garbage-strewn strip of “grass” by oncoming strollers, dog-walkers, or the weekend hordes of PHers making their way to Prospect Park and the GAP Greenmarket. Hell, try to get past a single XXL pedestrian, for that matter – the sidewalk simply no longer adequately allows two-way traffic.

Is this what life will be like for the next two years? When the subject came up on the Prospect Heights Parents group on Yahoo!, there was some talk that local politicians (Tish? Marty? Hello?) could pressure the developer to move back the wall.

Somebody got in touch with somebody who actually knows something at the DOT, and according to them, the permit says they have to maintain a pedestrian walkway 5 feet wide. Uh… what pedestrian walkway? We don’t see any. Anybody handing out citations yet?

No. In fact, somebody called 311, and they said, “Get over it, crybabies!” Well, not exactly… but apparently they claimed it had been inspected and that the passage is adequate. Uh… no.

What next? You can make noise, too: If this annoys you, then call DOT and reference complaint # C1-1-203530336. Now who’s got their phone number? Let us know in the Prospect Heights Message Boards.

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Construction photo: Thanks to Atomische for capturing this and uploading it to the Prospect Heights Photo Pool.