According to the Brooklyn Paper, Councilman Vincent Gentile will announce the arrival of a much sought after Green Market – similar to that found in Union Square – since the first Bay Ridge farmers market closed in the late 90’s, due to lack of demand.

The current project’s interim home will reportedly be, rather appropriately, the parking lot of the now shuttered Key Food supermarket.

The Bay Ridge Green Market will start this Saturday, Oct 4th on 3rd ave and 94th st., starting at 8:00am to 5:00pm – and will feature produce, meat and fish.

Since closing in June, Key Food’s interior has been completely stripped, and construction of the new Walgreen’s – which Senator Golden maintains will service the community’s grocery needs through a ‘wish-list’ – is slated to begin in January.

(photo courtesy of Urban75)

According to an anonymous tipster present at last night’s P.T.A meeting at P.S. 185, Verizon communications has reportedly powered down their cellular equipment atop 8701 Ridge Boulevard, as they make preparations to relocate the equipment to co-op apartment building – believed to be 8701 Shore Rd.

The news, which was met with a round of applause by 60 or so parents in attendance, comes just 6 months of Verizon wireless first installed the controversial equipment adjacent to the school.

Ever since then, parents concerned over unknown, potentially dangerous long term effects of radiation have gone to the mattresses with the cellular communications giant – demanding they remove the equipment.

The NYPD has captured a suspect in connection with the early morning rape of a Bay Ridge woman in her Fort Hamilton Pkwy home last week.
According to WABC and The Brooklyn Eagle, police apprehended 39-yr old Ralph DiMassi inside 653 Grand Ave. in Crown Heights.

Police say DiMassi is homeless and faces charges ranging from: first-degree rape, sex assault, burglary, robbery, first-degree assault, forcible touching, criminal trespass and unlawful imprisonment.

DiMassi allegedly beat the 49-yr old Bay Ridge woman with a screwdriver, then dragged her into a storage room where he sexually assaulted her while on her way to begin her daily commute.

DiMassi was apparently ratted out by a pal in Staten Island who said the suspect told him he did something ‘very bad to a woman.’

According to the Eagle, DiMassi has priors ranging from: robbery, grand larceny and petty larceny – at that time, he pleaded guilty to the top count and received a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.

NJ.com, and LehighValley.com report that DiMassi is also a suspect in a carjacking at the Pohatcong Plaza shopping center, near Phillipsburg, where he’s accused of forcing an Easton, Pa., woman into her car in the shopping center parking lot and telling her he needed a ride.

DiMassi was reportedly out on bail when he committed the attack.

(photo courtesy: WABC Channel7, NJ.com)

Local micro-celerbrity Andrew El-Kadi took on ‘corporate America,’ and, not so surprisingly – lost.

File it under causes not worth fighting; but Andrew El-Kadi – who interestingly enough mustered more names on a petition to save the 85th street Starbucks than preservationists could to save the Green Church – will have his last ices espresso there sometime this week, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

When not serving ice lattes and foamed coffee floats to ginzoloons coming for their morning fix before spending all day in Pilo Arts getting Brazilian bikini waxes – the rookie Starbucks is being ravaged by knucklehead hooligans from Fort Hamilton high school.

The 85th street Starbucks is Bay Ridge’s newest, first, and only franchise to close in Bay Ridge as part of the 600 store nationwide downsize.

(photo courtesy: the Brooklyn Paper)

The Department of Building has notified Community Board 10 that at least 4 more applications for the construction of cell tower equipment have been approved in Bay Ridge – less than 4 months after parents at P.S. 185 waged war on Verizon wireless communications for putting the controversial signal carrying equipment less than 50 ft from classrooms.

The new cell sites include: 8801 Shore Rd; 6701 Colonial Rd; 7501 Ridge Blvd; 6702 8th avenue; and Regina Pacis Church on 12th avenue and 65th street.

Staten Senator Marty Golden and Councilman Vincent Gentile have both introduced legislation to curb the potentially hazardous, if not unsightly equipment all over Bay Ridge – but with no success.

The Fedeal Communications Act allows carriers unfettered access to place the equipment wherever they wish; city and state law is prohibited from regulating where they go based on health concernes according to Gentile.

(photo courtesy: Home Reporter)

What appears at first glance to be a convenient butt disposal bin/beer cozy for the various denizens stumbling out of Peggy’s at all hours, and the morning rush to Fanning’s for that 8am Bud (seen right, courtesy a reader) are in actuality planters for a corner tree planting initiative by the 5th avenue BID – just the latest ‘neighborhood beautification’ project in the Bay Ridge BID’s never ending pursuit to justify their existence.

The idea, carefully conceived by the various trustees of the 5th avenue BID – who no doubt have any number of hands in a landscaping, and, or metal fabrication business – will now evolve into several dozen metal projectiles for the local hooliganry.

For those of you unaware why there is such a thing as a 5th avenue BID, much less one who would do something that seems so counter intuitive to the neighborhood’s after-hour character – join the club.

To the best of our knowledge, our 5th avenue BID exists (as apparently do most) to buy trash cans, and other accessories left and right, and pay two dudes to run up and down sweeping sidewalks; which is something most small businesses did around here themselves simply as a matter of pride before the real estate and small business powers-that-be got together and decided to incorporate it. Now small businesses pay a tribute “special assessment” for said ’services.’

The Bay Ridge BID was formed in 2006 and runs from 65th street to 86th street and 5th avenue.

Among its officers are none other than local Realtors Basile Capetanakis (14 Appollo realty), Thomas McGuire (McGuire Realty); the esteemed Michael long (Conservative Party Chairman and formerly of Long’s Wines and Liquors); as well as a few other people who pretty much run everything around here.

What’s never really fully been studied is the overall impact such programs have on revitalizing or actually ‘improving’ conditions in their respective BID zones. Now, as anyone who’s had the pleasure to walk Bay Ridge’s 5th avenue can tell you – the parts that are still, well, “shit,” have remained shit despite the BID’s existence. while those parts of 5th avenue that have indeed improved, have probably done so not because of any of these so-called ’special services,’ but through real value added capital improvements by small business owners.

The relationship of BIDs to Empire Zones, of which 5th avenue from 65th to 86th is also a member, remains a unclear.

However, if BID’s perform half as well as Empire Zone’s, hopefully someone is minding the hen house other than the foxes.

In an article published last year in Crain’s New York Business -“Warning to Empire Zone Underperformers” - 400 New York City business in the city’s 11 Empire Zones were put on notice of non-compliance under the terms of the program.

Among the 404 letters sent out across NYC, Brooklyn received the most with 184 letters, in what was a sweeping investigation of the state’s largest economic development program, the “Empire State Development;” which awards tax breaks and other benefits to companies in return for their adding jobs and investing in depressed areas.

In response to the year long Bay Ridge Big Dig, otherwise known as the City’s water main and sewer reconstruction project stretching the length of 86th street from Shore Rd. to Gatling place – effecting virtually every resident and small business owner on, or in the vicinity of the busy shopping and residential corridor – Councilman Gentile has just announced via a press release that a petition to the department of Sanitation to suspend alternate side parking for parts of the affected areas has been granted.
we get press releases! we get lots and lots of press releases….

“Responding to local frustrations, Councilman Vincent J. Gentile and Community Board 10 submitted separate suspension requests to the Department of Transportation and Department of Sanitation. This week, the Department of Sanitation granted that request.

From September 25 through October 10, 2008, alternate side parking along 85^th Street and 87^th Street from Shore Road to 5^th Avenue will be suspended. Teachers, business owners and residents will be able to park in any available spot on either side of the road seven days a week.”

Bay Ridge’s newest addition to the supermarket family, Key Food, is expected to come online within a matter of weeks – according to Councilman Vincent Gentile, who gave Community Board 10 an appraisal of what Bay Ridge’s supermarket landscape would look like in the coming year.
Aside from the new northern Bay Ridge Key Food slated to open on the site of the old Harry’s for the Home on 69th street between Ridge blvd and 3rd avenue, marketing in Bay Ridge will include the much talked about Walgreen’s Pharmacy (formerly Key Food of 93rd st); a 9000 sq ft. addition to Foodtown supermarket; and a Bay Ridge food co-op.

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, rumors floating around the ‘gossip circuit’ about a Fairway supermarket moving into the 4th avenue Staples ‘isn’t going to happen’ – reports one member of Community Board 10.

Lucky for us, however, a ’supermarket task force’ has been established by our own State Senator Marty Golden to establish a ‘wish list,’ (or “shopping list” maybe?) of things they will ask Walgreens to carry beyond their pharmaceuticals to make up for the closing of the Key Food that no one ever saw coming – except those on the ‘gossip circuit’ of course.

According to the Eagle, Councilman Gentile said: Foodtown is still working things out with the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals for its planned 9,000-square-foot expansion. There is a zoning issue involved.”

Foodtown’s owners, PSK Supermarkets, purchased the former Loft and Short Ribs restaurant building at the corner of Third Avenue and 91st Street last year for around 1.5 million dollars.

The Brooklyn Paper reports (what we reported a week ago) that permits for the demolition of Bay Ridge’s Green Church have been approved – but with no date certain as to when the 109-yr old structure would come down.

The construction company charged with bringing down the church – which has became a lightening rod issue for local preservationists, and a fight for survival for 20-or-so Methodist congregants – will not comment on the plans for demolition, telling the Brooklyn Paper they: ‘don’t have all [their] ducks in a row.’

When the church’s demolition was initially (although not prematurely) announced last week, Councilman Gentile issued a press release describing the ‘valiant effort’ to save the ailing church structure; in which, he outlined three of the ’secret’ alternative proposals he presented to Pastor Emerick and his congregation (all of which were unilaterally rejected by the congregation for various reasons) all the while characterizing his role as an ‘intermediary’ between preservationists and Mr. Emerick – cordial.

Plans for a 72 unit condo development by owner Abe Betesch is still awaiting DOB approval. The architect is none other than ‘Scorano-of-Bensonhurst,’ Bircolage Designs.

Last week the blog representing the Committee to Save the Green Church, Bay Ridge Journal, was disassembled to exclude contact info for the preservation effort.

While the fate of the preservationists formerly known as the Committee to Save the Green Church remains uncertain, one will always wonder what could have been – if only the Committee had boogied instead of banged.

(photo courtesy: Kevin Walsh’s Forgotten-NY)

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, the death of a 99th street man last week is no longer considered murder. Which is amazing murder was even considered at all!

Apparently the death of 39-yr old Waldemar Gaba in a 99th street apartment is being declared an accident, almost a week after he was found in a friend’s apartment, dead, with blunt trauma to the back of his head!

Gaba’s body was discovered early Thursday afternoon after authorities received a phone call from a woman believed to be Gaba’s mother. The fact that it can’t be confirmed whether the woman in question is Gaba’s mother should only inspire confidence in the thoroughness of the investigation!

Gaba, who, according to fellow party-goers, was partying-hearty the night of Sept. 10th – obviously drinking the 9/11 blues away – got really drunk, fell, hit his head, and died.

Like so many others, everybody wants to go to the party, but no one wanted to stay and clean up – because no one else noticed the guy with blunt force trauma to the back of the head while on their way out!?

The Eagle goes on to report that firefighters went to the residence and were forced to break down the door to gain entry. Detectives and police officers from the precinct quickly converged at the scene. Because of the nature of the injury, homicide was initially suspected.

Although the City Medical Examiner has yet to rule an official cause of death – much like a suicide by duct tape, or multiple self-inflicted gunshot wounds – the Eagle reports detectives are leaning towards an “accident. “