Thanks to Staceyjoy for the tip…

Deborah Kolben writes in the Daily News: Shaya Boymelgreen "is plowing ahead with plans for a hotel in the center of Bruce Ratner’s $2.5 billion Atlantic Yards project just as Ratner’s pace seems to be slowing …

(a spokesman says Boymelgreen) is trying to convert a former bread factory at 800 Pacific St. into a 150- to 200-room hotel. ‘We’re having preliminary conversations with various hotel operators’ …"

"Down the street, Boymelgreen also is working with developer Henry Weinstein to convert an 85,000-square-foot building and a neighboring vacant lot into office and residential space.

Both buildings are planned for the spot where Ratner wants to build 17 residential and commercial towers and a 19,000-seat NBA arena for the New Jersey Nets." Read more…

In BETWEEN WORLDS, Tracy Phillips "presents
a series of paintings that straddle the lines between youth & age,
abstract & figurative, dark & light, and comic & tragic.
They are ambiguous, simultaneously frightening and alluring. One might
wonder, are these depictions of today’s youth projected into some
unknown future, or a representation of an inner psychological state?
… The figures emerge from an
intuitive process, drawing on memory and imagination."

Diane Boisvert Gallery | 619 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11238; 718-783-7156; daily, 1-7 PM.

Post Punk Kitchen co-host Isa Chandra took time out from finishing her cookbook to ask: "Can you see if someone wants to open a cafe with me? … I’ve been planning on opening a veg cafe restaurant for awhile actually. I have a business plan and everything, I just don’t have enough money. But yes, I’m serious!"

Here is one location option: $1750; 720 sf + basement, corner of Washington Ave. and Dean St.
Here’s another: $3000; 900 sf, Washington closer to Eastern Parkway (WARNING: incredibly annoying ad copy)
Another: $2450; 1,000 sf, "up and coming" Prospect Heights area
Another: $3500; 1,300 sf, Carlton Ave. at Pacific St.

I think Isa is on to something. A well-done vegetarian restaurant would draw people from all over the city, and an up-and-coming corner like Washington and Dean would be a good place to start, if you can squeeze a kitchen and seating into 720 sq. ft. plus basement. Who’s in? (Bonus: Name the "up and coming" location of the storefront in the photo.)

Anti-Ratner activist Dan Goldstein got profiled this past weekend, as part of a New York Times article that described ProHo residents as "yuppies on the edge": "Mr. Goldstein is the only resident of the condo, now called the
Atlantic Art Building, who has not sold his or her apartment to Bruce
C. Ratner and his Forest City Ratner company in the last year to make
way for a development that is to include a new home for Mr. Ratner’s
New Jersey Nets." Full text here (sorry, Times, but you have to make your articles easier to find).

Set Speed did the heavy lifting and determined that the condo board president in Dan’s building paid $441k for his unit, then got paid a little more than $1.1M by Forest City Ratner: "Dan, what are you waiting for?? You got them right where you want ‘em!
You can spend the next 7 years watching the construction from your
awesome wrap-around terrace. But you know what, you’ve still got your
morals and I respect you for that."

But yesterday, here on the dailyheights message boards, Dan clarified his intentions: "this guy, who happens to be me, is not "holding out" to get 3x what I
paid. I’m holding out because I want to stay in my home, stay in this
great neighborhood, and do everything I can, with thousands of others,
to stop Bruce Ratner’s nightmare corporate welfare scam."

So what happens to Dan if Ratner gets his way?  How would that work? Dan would get kicked out. But somebody would have to cut him a check to compensate for his loss.

Poet Patricia Spears Jones writes a paean to Prospect Heights in the Brooklyn Rail: "I live in a neighborhood with an African tailor, West Indian shopkeepers, and Italian chefs. The economics are fragile, but they always are. There are real risk takers here."

"My neighborhood has fought its way to precarious prosperity only to be threatened by MEGA DEVELOPMENT … I don’t quite know what the Stadium will do except condemn housing in one of the most integrated neighborhoods in all of New York City … (where) only four percent of its citizens live on integrated blocks. I belong to that four percent." Read more…

[Photo: Teri Slotkin]