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Brian & George's Ukrainian Odyssey, page 10
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ALBERT KING COMES TO RED HOOK'S MICCIO CENTER
“We have been working with the Miccio Center for ten years now,” said Mandy Gutmann, the executive vice president of community relations for BSE Global, which is the parent company for the Nets. “Ever since the Nets came to Brooklyn in 2012, we’ve done all types of events together. We’ve done free basketball clinics and hosted youth games and when we learned that the Miccio Center was damaged during Hurricane Ida, we knew that we needed to help.” Roland Knight Sr, the Program Director of the Miccio Community Center, spoke about the importance of the work and the new equipment in the fitness room. “We’ve had to go through a lot of devastating things, whether it was flooding, having to close our program, not having enough heat, or not having enough air conditioning to keep the program going,” Knight said. “Then the pandemic happened and we had to figure out how to keep our door open in some kind of capacity for the community, so we gave out food and PPE (personal protective equipment.) “Then we had a visit from the Brooklyn Nets with players here and it was announced that our room was being renovated. I was very emotional about it because I knew this is what we needed. Our weight room was completely lost and our equipment was old and dilapidated. These renovations are a great honor and they present a great opportunity for our youth.”
King grew up in Fort Greene (along with his brother Bernard) and played for Fort Hamilton High School. He then spent four dominant seasons with the Terrapins at the University of Maryland and his number 55 jersey was retired by the school. “The Brooklyn Nets are a big part of the commu- Nydia Velazquez helps open the Red Hook ballfields as kids and nity and being from Fort Greene, I’m always proud others look on. A masked former BP sits with Nydia. See page 6. to represent what the Brooklyn Nets are doing,” King said. “I grew up playing in the playground, and you’d play in the morning, you’d play in the afternoon, you’d play when it was raining. You played because you loved it and it was he Red Hook Star-Revue, just the thing to do. And it founded in 2010, was ackept you out of trouble! And if cepted as a member of the I had to pick one memory that New York State Press Association stands out, it was being draftin 2012. The Press Association is ed to the NBA back in 1981, the statewide trade organization but it was always great to just for NY's community newspapers. play basketball at any level. In addition for lobbying for the in-
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“Exercise is so important, not just physically, but mentally too. Having an organization like the Nets that gives back with a facility like this is something that I think the younger people here will remember forever. Now they have a great place to come and exercise. The Nets do a lot of great things and whenever they call me, I’m available. It’s always nice to see organizations give back because they want to, not because they have to.”
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dustry, it nurtures young journalists, facilitates advertising, both legal and classified/display for member papers, provides legal and journalistic help and every year holds a Better Newspaper Contest at its spring convention. We just got back from the convention, held in person this year at the GOTTSCHALK ON NEW MELVINS, PAGE 17 Gideon Putnam Hotel in Saratoga Springs, where we snagged a fancy FREE First Place award for Best News IS THIS RED Story, written by Jorge Bello. the red hook
The work was done as part of the NBA’s 75th anniversary celebration and included providing treadmills, a bike machine, weights and racks, benches, and installing three murals.
INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
Some of the kids who come to the Miccio Center were at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and were the first ones to get to try out the new equipment. They also got to meet Albert King, who spent the first six seasons of his NBA career with the Nets.
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FEBRUARY 2021 INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
HOOK'S Here's what the judge said about a story we ran about the Gowanus FUTURE? rezoning: "Amazingly thorough. Found I had questions that were A permanent change to the Red Hook skyline may be on the horizon. This is a rendering of a proposed Red Hook high-rise. The plans have just been submitted for approval to the Board of Standards and Appeals, bypassing the City Council. The Community Board is also part of the decision process. Local input is still important. The Star-Revue encourages every Red Hook resident to let the BSA and the Community Board know what you think about this. DETAILS ON PAGE 7
GOWANUS NEIGHBORS TRY TO SLOW DOWN INEVITABLE CONSTRUCTION ONSLAUGHT
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hen the city unleashes a rezoning and its accompanying host of contentious public review meetings on a neighborhood, seldom does anything stop it. A coalition of local grassroot organizations led by Voice of Gowanus managed to do so temporarily by suing the city and preventing it from triggering the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), a seven month path leading to approval in the City Council.
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Grella on JAZZ Quinn on BOOKS Gottschalk on MUSIC Dante on FILM
by Brian Abate
he Brooklyn Nets held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Red Hook's Miccio Community Center on May 4th to celebrate renovations, including new gym equipment they donated, after the center’s fitness room was damaged by Hurricane Ida in 2021. The Nets worked together with Good Shepherd Services, which runs the Miccio Center.
MAY 2022
On January 15, they were able to get a temporary restraining order stopping the clock, pending a final decision. At a subsequent hearing on February 4, Judge Katherine Levine unsuccessfuly tried to get the City to modify their virtual meeting format to include an in-person aspect to the virtual format made necessary by the pandemic. The City refused, claiming that a telephone option satisfied any inequities caused the need for a good computer connection.
by Jorge Bello Judge Levine tabled the hearing, announcing she would think it over and probably come to a decision the second week of February. In the claims Voice of Gowanus is bringing in, it argues that the city lacks transparency and did not abide by ULURP protocols set out in the City Charter, such as providing proper notice before certifying the rezoning. The lawsuit also addresses a lack of public participation as a result of the city holding ULURP meetings only virtually, which it has been doing since September. Even when there isn’t a global pandemic, community activism is something not everyone has the time or resources to do, and organizers think that a virtual ULURP would exclude even more Gowanus residents from a process specifically designed to give them a say in the rezoning of their neighborhood.
Fool me once Then again, even when people in a community targeted for rezoning are able to expend the time and energy
The Voices of Gowanus held an in-person press conference by the Canal last month announcing the filing of their lawsuit. (photo by George Fiala)
to attend ULURP meetings, their efforts are unlikely to be reflected in the version of the rezoning that gets implemented. In Gowanus, this has been true of the city’s past attempts at community planning, said Katia Kelly, who signed her name on the Voice of Gowanus lawsuit and has lived in the neighborhood for 36 years. From
2013 to 2015, Councilman Brad Lander presided over Bridging Gowanus, a series of public meetings he created with the goal of assuaging residents’ misgivings about the rezoning by giving them a chance to shape the agenda. Yet, when Lander presented the neighborhood plan at the final meet-
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Gus Semon, owner of Trumbull Printing, who prints this paper, stands with George Fiala, Star-Revue Publisher, with the first place plaque.
subsequently answered, which speaks to the flow and structure of the article. Sourcing is solid, coherent voices on both sides help paint a more vivid picture of the issue at hand. Love it. Use of graphics, photos, and clever and unique formatting of the story just added to the completeness of it all. Lede, no, the first paragraph alone does something fantastic for me. It tells you the subject of the article, sure, but in just two sentences, also allows you to understand the issue at hand as well. With a little imagination, you can even see what the possible stances of stakeholders will be during the ensuing story. Great piece, thank you for submitting. Was a joy to read!"