Dumbo Links Week of 11Sep2011

68 Jay Street Bar

The following are selected links from this past week on blogs and websites with discussion about Dumbo (and its neighboring areas):

12 Comment

  • From WSJ: “Jane’s Carousel is a complete disaster in its current location,” said Doreen Gallo, the executive director of the DUMBO Neighborhood Alliance. “The Brooklyn waterfront is too important a historic landscape to be used as a blank canvas for a developer to put an expensive toy in what they would like to be their front lawn. This is a public park.”

    Doreen, you are a sad and jealous person. That carousel is awesome there.

  • From WSJ: “Jane’s Carousel is a complete disaster in its current location,” said Doreen Gallo, the executive director of the DUMBO Neighborhood Alliance. “The Brooklyn waterfront is too important a historic landscape to be used as a blank canvas for a developer to put an expensive toy in what they would like to be their front lawn. This is a public park.”

    Doreen, you are a sad and jealous person. That carousel is awesome there.

  • Have you actually even met Doreen before you pass judgement on what kind of person she is? I’ve met her numerous times over the years and find her to be a heroically humble and positive person who spends untold hours of her life helping individual neighborhood residents know their rights, speaking out at public hearings, and talking to public officials being heavily lobbied by rich developers. This is hard, thankless work no one else in the neighborhood is willing to take the time to do. She works tirelessly to save the neighborhood from being completely chewed up and spit out by developers.

    I’m guessing you were just making a throwaway comment about her in the thoughtlessly viscous tone that many adopt on Internet blogs, but it’s rather gross in this particular case.

  • Have you actually even met Doreen before you pass judgement on what kind of person she is? I’ve met her numerous times over the years and find her to be a heroically humble and positive person who spends untold hours of her life helping individual neighborhood residents know their rights, speaking out at public hearings, and talking to public officials being heavily lobbied by rich developers. This is hard, thankless work no one else in the neighborhood is willing to take the time to do. She works tirelessly to save the neighborhood from being completely chewed up and spit out by developers.

    I’m guessing you were just making a throwaway comment about her in the thoughtlessly viscous tone that many adopt on Internet blogs, but it’s rather gross in this particular case.

  • I think her quotation in the WSJ was fair game for commentary, and, in fact, blatantly demonstrated the qualities of personal sadness and jealousy. The “thoughtlessly viscious” tone of my critique is nothing in comparison to the contempt oozing out of her snarky comments about the carousel, which you don’t need to have met her to detect. I mean come on, these guys just shelled out millions of their own money on something that makes the neighborhood better and something in which the public will share, and Doreen makes that classless comment in a national paper about them. Shame on her. Talk about thankless efforts, how about what the Walentas’s have done for that park?

    Perhaps Doreen’s work is thankless becuase she doesn’t deserve thanks for taking positions like those she articulately so callously in the WSJ.

  • I think her quotation in the WSJ was fair game for commentary, and, in fact, blatantly demonstrated the qualities of personal sadness and jealousy. The “thoughtlessly viscious” tone of my critique is nothing in comparison to the contempt oozing out of her snarky comments about the carousel, which you don’t need to have met her to detect. I mean come on, these guys just shelled out millions of their own money on something that makes the neighborhood better and something in which the public will share, and Doreen makes that classless comment in a national paper about them. Shame on her. Talk about thankless efforts, how about what the Walentas’s have done for that park?

    Perhaps Doreen’s work is thankless becuase she doesn’t deserve thanks for taking positions like those she articulately so callously in the WSJ.

  • Yes, the content of the quotation is fair game for commentary. But judging Doreen’s character based on whether you agree with the quotation is not fair game.

    In my experience, NYC has many amoral real estate types with bloated egos pursuing their own agendas just using high profile donations as a tool along the way.

    As a neighborhood activist, Doreen has had untold hours of behind-the-scenes firsthand dealings with the Walentas organization as have many of his tenants and customers in the neighborhood that she works with. I think she is well qualified to comment on what’s really going on. Unlike Walentas, she makes not one red cent from any of this. If she delivers a sharply worded comment about a developer’s practices, I sit up and take notice of what she is saying.

    I think Doreen might agree with me that the real issue is should any one individual, regardless of his motivations, be allowed to determine the structures on and use of historic, protected public lands by writing a big enough check.

  • Yes, the content of the quotation is fair game for commentary. But judging Doreen’s character based on whether you agree with the quotation is not fair game.

    In my experience, NYC has many amoral real estate types with bloated egos pursuing their own agendas just using high profile donations as a tool along the way.

    As a neighborhood activist, Doreen has had untold hours of behind-the-scenes firsthand dealings with the Walentas organization as have many of his tenants and customers in the neighborhood that she works with. I think she is well qualified to comment on what’s really going on. Unlike Walentas, she makes not one red cent from any of this. If she delivers a sharply worded comment about a developer’s practices, I sit up and take notice of what she is saying.

    I think Doreen might agree with me that the real issue is should any one individual, regardless of his motivations, be allowed to determine the structures on and use of historic, protected public lands by writing a big enough check.

  • I agree wholehearteadly with Doreen and I applaud her speaking out.

  • I agree wholehearteadly with Doreen and I applaud her speaking out.

  • “In my experience, NYC has many amoral real estate types with bloated egos pursuing their own agendas just using high profile donations as a tool along the way.”

    Well I reject your premise that the Walentas’s are the only ones promoting their own agendas. I see the opposite of you, I guess – I see the amoral long-time neighborhood residents with bloated senses of themselves who are pursuing their own agendas (some of which listed below) by opposing the carousel:
    1) reducing property values to keep out high-earners
    2) returning to the idyllic days of artists and druggies
    3) resisting all change
    4) fighting leftist class-warfare battles (see #1)

    Regardless of any “motivations,” I think the new carousel is awesome, and that’s a great place for it. Maybe the appearance and placement is debatable and in the eye of the beholder, but the motivations of how it got there shouldn’t enter into that debate. They simply aren’t relevant. I mean, if Doreen had a bigger check than the Walentas’s then certainly she would’ve purchased the land and prevented the carousel. If she had successfully done so, would she (and you) think it is right that shee “be allowed to determine the structures on and use of historic, protected public lands by writing a big enough check”?

    My problem w/ Doreen’s comment and this motivation-based critique of the carousel is that she doesn’t even say or think it is ugly, she just attacks the motivations. And that just smacks of jealousy.

  • “In my experience, NYC has many amoral real estate types with bloated egos pursuing their own agendas just using high profile donations as a tool along the way.”

    Well I reject your premise that the Walentas’s are the only ones promoting their own agendas. I see the opposite of you, I guess – I see the amoral long-time neighborhood residents with bloated senses of themselves who are pursuing their own agendas (some of which listed below) by opposing the carousel:
    1) reducing property values to keep out high-earners
    2) returning to the idyllic days of artists and druggies
    3) resisting all change
    4) fighting leftist class-warfare battles (see #1)

    Regardless of any “motivations,” I think the new carousel is awesome, and that’s a great place for it. Maybe the appearance and placement is debatable and in the eye of the beholder, but the motivations of how it got there shouldn’t enter into that debate. They simply aren’t relevant. I mean, if Doreen had a bigger check than the Walentas’s then certainly she would’ve purchased the land and prevented the carousel. If she had successfully done so, would she (and you) think it is right that shee “be allowed to determine the structures on and use of historic, protected public lands by writing a big enough check”?

    My problem w/ Doreen’s comment and this motivation-based critique of the carousel is that she doesn’t even say or think it is ugly, she just attacks the motivations. And that just smacks of jealousy.