SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Source: Cymbrowitz’s office

It’s been a good couple of week’s for the area’s wildlife. First, Coley the Osprey escaped more than a year of warrantless government surveillance, as the recording device that tracked his movement became dislodged and eventually removed. Then some kidnapped horseshoe crabs found justice when they were saved from becoming bait and their kidnappers were fined.

Today, one of Sheepshead Bay’s iconic swans was found injured and abandoned on the side of Emmons Avenue.

Luckily for our feathered friend, Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz’s staffers took notice – and pity – and had the winged beast rescued for rehabilitation.

Source: disneylovelyfairytales/Tumblr

It’s like Snow-freakin’-White up in here.

Here’s the press release from Cymbrowitz’s office:

It was almost a swan song for this constituent in distress.

At about 9 a.m. today a staff member for Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz (D-Brooklyn) passed an unusual sight on East 19th Street between Shore Parkway and Emmons Avenue in SheepsheadBay.

A fully-grown swan was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, its foot at an odd angle away from its body. The animal, which managed to cross Emmons Avenue, didn’t appear perturbed, just stock-still.

The staff member walked across the street to Assemblyman Cymbrowitz’ district office and made some calls seeking help for the swan. She called Theresa Scavo, chair of Community Board 15, who alerted the Parks Department, but it wasn’t their jurisdiction.

Then the staff member called the 61st Precinct, which arrived quickly. The police took a proprietary interest and established a safe perimeter around the swan. A passerby with a camera was asked to move across the street so as not to disturb the animal.

By 10 a.m., a cage arrived to transport the injured swan to a wildlife rehabilitation facility in Manhattan.

The Parks Department planted approximately two dozen new trees along Emmons Avenue west of Ocean Avenue this week, as the city moves to complete the final phase of a decade-long rehabilitation of the waterfront.

The $460,000 project, funded by Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, will continue throughout the spring. On the checklist for beautification are:

• repaired sidewalks
• covered trash bins
• new trees, with granite block pavement in enlarged tree pits
• new curb cuts
• fresh paint on the Bay’s railing
• blue concrete and matching artistic design elements previously installed near the piers, from Ocean Avenue to East 27th Street
• 1964 World’s Fair-style benches

When construction is finished, the Emmons Avenue street-scape will have seen a complete overhaul over the last decade. Repairs began in 2003, when the city installed new antique-style lights along Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard. In 2006, the city completed a similar renovation to the current one, from Ocean Avenue to East 27th Street, adding new benches, sidewalk designs, tree pits and more.

Cymbrowitz, in a press release, said that the improvements will help the community continue to recover from Superstorm Sandy.

“Beautifying Emmons Avenue is part of the larger mechanism of long-term recovery,” Cymbrowitz said. “Trees represent new life. They’re meant to last, and so is Sheepshead Bay.”

The grilled whole salmon from the newly-reborn Amberjack V Mediterranean restaurant.

Amberjack V

The Amberjack V (Emmons Avenue, Pier 10), a long-time staple of Sheepshead Bay’s harbor cruise fleet, was reborn when it reopened on Friday as a Mediterranean restaurant operated by the same folks behind Anatolian Gyro (1605 Sheepshead Bay Road).

The new seafood restaurant, cafe and bar will keep the old name to honor its former owners, but won’t be making the trip out into the open ocean anytime soon, said Metin Turan, Anatolian’s owner and now partner in the Amberjack. Instead, they’ll be serving their Turkish and Mediterranean fare dockside, only leaving port for special event cruises.

The restaurant has a full bar and the menu is dominated by seafood, befitting its location on the waters of Sheepshead Bay. It has two floors, seating approximately 150, and in good weather will also have outdoor seating. Belly dancers and live music will take place on the ship’s deck, luring in would-be patrons.

“People want to come and eat and enjoy the city’s waters, and listen to a little music,” Turan said. ”It’s something new and something interesting [for the Sheepshead Bay marina].”

The 120-foot-long vessel was previously owned by Fred Ardolino, who also owns the Atlantis, a larger cruise boat docked in the Bay. The Amberjack V has made history twice – first when Ardolino became the first in the Bay to convert a fishing boat to a dinner cruise ship in the late 1980s; and again on September 11, 2001, when she and the captain, Vincent Ardolino, played a pivotal role helping evacuate survivors from Manhattan to other boroughs in the largest sea evacuation in history.

And if anyone thinks opening a restaurant on a ship in the Bay is a bad business decision after Hurricane Sandy, Turan is undeterred.

“This was here in Sandy and nothing happened to it. The good thing about the boat, as long as you [give the rope slack], the boat goes up with the water,” Turan said. “And you can always take the boat out to a safer place.”

The Amberjack V will celebrate its grand opening at noon on Sunday.

Photo by Erica Sherman

It has been a rumor for as long as I’ve been alive that El Greco, the Sheepshead Bay staple, is for sale, sold, closing, moving, evaporating, burning, building, growing, shrinking and whatever else. Well, for once, one of those is actually true. El Greco, recently named one of the city’s best diners by Gothamist, has put the land it sits on up for sale.

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This is a paid announcement from il Fornetto, Sheepshead Bay’s premier waterfront dining establishment at 2902 Emmons Avenue.

Click to enlarge

For more information, visit il Fornetto’s website.

The above is a paid announcement by il Fornetto. Sheepshead Bites has not verified the claims made in this advertisement. If you own a business and would like to announce a special offer to tens of thousands of locals, e-mail us at advertising [at] sheepsheadbites [dot] com.

This is a paid announcement from il Fornetto, Sheepshead Bay’s premier waterfront dining establishment at 2902 Emmons Avenue.

The above is a paid announcement by il Fornetto. Sheepshead Bites has not verified the claims made in this advertisement. If you own a business and would like to announce a special offer to tens of thousands of locals, e-mail us at advertising [at] sheepsheadbites [dot] com.

Community Board 15 helped clear the way for a new storage facility on Knapp Street, voting in support of a waiver to existing zoning restrictions at their meeting last Tuesday despite objections from community groups.

The proposed location. Click to enlarge. (Source: Google Maps)

Metro Storage NY came before the Board in a process to repeal a “restrictive declaration” on the property at 2713-2735 Knapp Street, a wedge of land that juts into Plumb Beach Channel at Voorhies Avenue. The 28-year-old declaration prohibits any use other than a retail and marina development, a clause that has caused the land to stay desolate since the original plans fell through years ago.

“It’s derelict. What do I see here? I see some trucks, I see some cars,” said Metro Storage’s attorney, Howard Goldman, before the Board.

Goldman said the restrictive declaration and the lot’s proximity to the Coney Island Wastewater Treatment Plant means that few plans can get through the process to make use of the property. In 1996, an application was submitted for a two-story retail development was squashed, and, in 2005, a plan for a residential development was opposed by the Department of Environmental Protection.

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I don’t think there’s any secret that there’s no love lost between myself and the Breakers condo development (3128 Emmons Avenue), which I’ve alternately referred to as “fugly,” the “fanciest storage unit complex in the borough,” and marketed by unscrupulous wags (who ultimately pushed the development into bankruptcy). So when the pier’s surface – built less than five years ago – totally separated from the pilings it stood upon during Superstorm Sandy, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a matter of shoddy construction or if somehow was hit by more force than some other older structures that took the water’s might with little damage.

Chances are, we’ll never know. But one of the development’s residents sent the above photo to us today, letting us know work on rebuilding the pier is well under way. We hope that it’s being built to be a little more future-proof, and capable of withstanding a Sandy-like event.

Oh, and after it came off and collided with the dilapidated club house of the Greenlawn Bungalow Colony, it settled next to the club house’s old pilings, and we got a shot of it a few days after Sandy.

Top photo by Albert.

The FDNY’s Marine 3 headquarters in 2009. (Source: Vlad Iorsh/Flickr)

The fire eaters of the FDNY’s local marine unit will have to rebuild their summer headquarters – or find themselves homeless, thanks to Superstorm Sandy.

The Marine 3 summer vessel. (Source: FDNY)

The unit – FDNY Marine 3 – operates a summer base at the tip of Kingsborough Community College (2001 Oriental Boulevard) in Manhattan Beach. When the waters whipped through the campus, it ravaged the unit’s four-year-old quarters, rendering them useless.

“Marine 3′s quarters sustained damage from flood waters,” confirmed an FDNY spokesperson.

It wasn’t alone. Several firehouses were damaged and many have not reopened since the storm. All are in the process of being repaired, and trucks have been stationed throughout the affected communities to provide quick response.

Marine 3′s headquarters will also be rebuilt, the spokesperson said, although he was unable to provide a timetable or estimated cost for the repairs.

In the meantime, local mariners need not worry. Marine 3′s vessel – used only during the summer, when boating and other water sports are at their peak – was pulled out of the area ahead of the storm, and was unharmed. When summer rolls around, it will again be stationed at Kingsborough, whether the headquarters are rebuilt or not.

“There is no impact to fire protection or fire service in that area,” the spokesperson said.

The Marine 3 headquarters opened in September 2008, featuring 24-hour security, a new kitchen and bathroom, and a state-of-the-art floating concrete dock. The location also became a training center for members of the Fire Department’s Marine Division, which was given access to Kingsborough Community Colleges’ Maritime Technology Program, a high-tech sailing simulator that puts students at the helm of various vessels to prepare them for careers on the water. It helped grow the city’s small vessel program, which FDNY brass lauded as allowing them to provide faster, more efficient responses to water-related emergencies.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Local mariners have something to be happy about this New Year: the Department of Environmental Protection reversed course on plans to destroy a 78-year-old navigational aid between Manhattan Beach and Breezy Point that mariners say makes them safer and shows them the way home when gizmos can’t.

According to documents released under a Freedom of Information Law request filed by Sheepshead Bites, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection decided to leave a wastewater diffuser pipe that locals affectionately refer to as the “roundhouse” after sailors and other mariners objected to its removal.

“Comments received questioned whether it would be more advantageous to leave the existing outlet chamber in place,” DEP reps wrote to partnering agencies in a September 2012 letter. “If kept, it could serve as an underwater fish habitat and provide opportunity for sea birds to perch.”

It wasn’t just the environmentalists that the DEP sought to please; the agency determined the now defunct roundhouse served a crucial purpose for navigation, and as a marker for underwater infrastructure that could damage vessels.

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