Unfortunately, according to Kinetic Carnival, the Coney Island blog, Thor has begun booting poor people from the area. Says Kinetic Carnival:

Thor has given notice to most of their newly acquired tenants in the Henderson’s building and beyond!…This is just the beginning of Thor clearing its land up for the zone that will mark the first construction site towards the revitalization of the New Coney.

Having spent some scary summer nights watching cops chase teens through Astroland, we are not too sad about this massive urban renewal. And we don’t trust opponents. After all, community activists also objected to the construction of Keyspan Park, home of a very minor league Mets team, and that turned out to be such an astonishing addition to the area, we are almost trading in our copy of Das Kapital for a Brooks Brothers tie.

We do have one question. After Thor finishes the project, will the area still have that hot-doggy, French-fryey smell that mugged our senses as we walked from the D Train, down the ramp to the Surf Avenue on the hottest day in July?

– Jerry Saieh

From the website of DDB: “About two dozen people — including homeowners, a commercial property owner, Freddy’s Bar on Dean Street and families and individuals who rent — are arguing that use of eminent domain is unconstitutional.

“You have a Puerto Rican extended family, a Romanian immigrant, you have a Pakistani family with nine kids — this is New York. This is Brooklyn,” said plaintiff Daniel Goldstein, who helped organize the anti-arena group, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn.

The 8-million-square-foot project will create 6,400 housing units, including 2,250 units for low- and middle-income families. About 600 of those affordable apartments will be for sale. A spokesman for Forest CityRatner declined comment for this story.”

Having lived a few blocks from the project from nearly 27 years, we have mixed feelings. While we are not crazy-in-love with Atlantic Avenue, we hate, hate, hate Ratner’s other project–the Atlantic Mall.

Blue–as in Big Blue or Jet Blue or the neighbor’s late dog Blue–is designed by “internationally-renowned blah blah blah” Bernard Tschumi, dean of the Columbia School of Architecture, known among his brethren as a theorist–i.e. a loser who never gets an architecture job.

Anyway, Tschumi finally got one, and Blue, as of today, has only seven condoms, er condos, left, the most expensive, a two-bedroom-three-bathroom duplex being offered for a very reasonable $3,475,000. Only 46 times what our parents paid for their duplex back in 1976. Oh, but that was across from MOMA.

The foreclosure rate on Staten Island—one of every 683 homes, or twice the national average—is the highest in the city. Because of unscrupulous brokers, residents of the boring borough are losing their homes. According to Legal Services of New York, a non-profit helping Staten Islanders fight back, the high foreclosure rate has two causes: the real estate frenzy over the past five years, coupled with the popular ARM mortgage option were the culprits. We have no idea what an ARM mortgage option is, but it sounds dangerous.

Anyway, according to the 2000 census, Staten Island’s population stands at 443,728, the city’s fastest growing borough with an estimated 31,286 moving there between 2000-2005, a period in which 5,869 families wanted to buy homes. In fact, 64% of Staten Island households are homes. The promise of a 1% interest rate enticed even the finickiest buyers to part with their life savings.

– Feliks Gitsin

After long debate, the City Council nixed the plan, halting construction until experts can assess the danger.

– Teshia Sooklal

Bronx grandmother murdered by asphyxiation: we guarantee, this is the last you’ll hear of this story that merited a teensy box on page 16 of the Daily News. Thugs tied up 65-year-old Teresa Reyes, a day-care center cook, ransacked her apartment and left her to die. This is a wild guess, but we don’t think Rosie O’Donnell will skip skewering Donald Trump for giving teen beauty queen Tara Conner a second chance in favor of this story.

Giuliani Running: our ex-mayor, whose pre-9/11 mistakes might have cost the lives of more than 100 firefighters as well as approximately 1000 office workers (read Dwyer and Flynn’s 102 Minutes), yet emerged from the disaster a national hero, is throwing fund-raisers, presumedly for a presidential run. Our only comfort is that John Lindsay, the last New York mayor to run for president, crashed and burned in the Florida primary.

Since then, according to lenders and realtors, it has turned into buyers nirvana. Not only is winter a crappy time for sellers, but housing inventory hasn’t sunk enough to help. This means fewer buyers.
It gets better. Analysts claim that although price drops have been drastic—10% in New York—the decline has been steady for more than six months, and it will get worse before it gets better, with housing prices predicted to drop another 6-8% by August next year.

Oh, so that’s why a two-bedroom condo in DUMBO with $860 common charges and $40 taxes just sold for a measly $949,000.

– Feliks Gitsin