What do Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz and Keith Haring all have in common? Each artist has work up for sale at the 4th Annual Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM to us locals) Silent Auction.

BAM certainly plays an integral part in the Brooklyn art scene, and the auction, which raises money for BAM's various programs, raked in $237,500 last year. Artists from all over the borough have work for sale—which you can bid on on BAM's Web site—many from Williamsburg, Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. Bidding is open until April 13, when the closing reception will bring in the final bids.

Brooklyn has certainly always nurtured creative talent—nothing new there. The borough has increasingly become home to prominent names in the fine-arts community. While an afternoon spent in Manhattan's great museums or in Chelsea's galleries is certainly invigorating, poking around unconventional spaces that have sprung up all over Brooklyn can turn into quite the adventure. Brooklyn is an urban jungle peppered with art, inside and outside of the spaces that facilitate creativity.  read more »

On April 6, a weekly Brooklyn flea market will kick off in Bishop Laughlin Memorial High School in Fort Greene, but the event is a far cry from your neighborhood stoop sale or the dusty, glorified junkyards that linger in Manhattan.

For one thing the “Brooklyn Flea” is curated, said founder Jonathan Butler—until recently known only under his nom de plume Brownstoner.

Mr. Butler and his partner Eric Demby, a former communications officer for Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, handpicked about 200 up-and-coming designers as well as vintage clothing and antique vendors out of the 700 who expressed interest.  read more »

Jason Horowitz's friend Alistair Wallace just sent in this picture from DeKalb Avenue and Washington Street, near the Fort Greene farmer's market in Brooklyn, where there are a bunch of little kids giving out signs that say "Obama Rules" and "Support Obama."

They are also having a bake sale, although it is not clear at this time if the proceeds will go to Obama's campaign.

At Brooklyn grocery L’Epicerie, you can have a dream homemade meal—just make sure to bring your friends.  read more »

• Bribery arrests for Parks contractors.
[NY Sun]
• Building buyers beat gains taxes by fast selling.
[NY Sun]
• Tougher sites for new city rental development.
[NY Sun]
• Barneys may expand into Meatpacking District.
[NY Sun]
• Zoning changes coming for Bed-Stuy, Fort Greene.
[NY Sun]
• Few good choices for subprime borrowers.
[NY Times]
• Rats shut down Papaya King on Upper East Side.
[NY Post]
• City dwellers buy second home first.
[Daily News]
• Feds leave option to cut rates.
[WSJ]

Did we miss any New York City real estate news this morning? Please send along tips and links.

]]> http://www.observer.com/node/35894#comments Real Estate Fort Greene New York City Papaya King Inc. The New York Times Company Thu, 22 Mar 2007 04:30:06 -0400 Observer Staff 35894 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/node/35828

• Brooklyn's busiest corner is getting yet another "upscale" development. But unlike the future Atlantic Yards monolith, "Atlantic Gardens" will be fixing up eight buildings into "shops with glass walls," adding a 3,000-square-foot flowery field. And there's a cafe! Brooklyn needs another cafe. [Real Deal]
• But Brooklyn doesn't need more babies. There are 13 newborns every day in Borough Park--and Sunset Park is the "Baby Boom Runner Up." [Fort Greene Courier, via Brooklyn Record]
• Parsons is holding a two-day interior design jamboree (a.k.a. symposium). Why does decor matter? It has apparently "become a hybrid of environmental psychology, fashion design, product design, architecture, material science, and cultivated taste." And plush velvet. [I.D.]
• It was only 13 years ago that New York's Steven Holl Architects were commissioned to build a center for Knut Hamsun--Norway's coolest, wildest novelist. The tarred-black wooden museum [above] will open just in time for Mr. Hamsun's 150th birthday. [Dezeen] - Max Abelson]]> http://www.observer.com/node/35828#comments Real Estate Atlantic Yards Borough Park Brooklyn Fort Greene Wed, 07 Mar 2007 12:58:51 -0500 Observer Staff 35828 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/node/31653 Mike Bloomberg is pushing back against critics of his education policies today, announcing a $30 milion plan to create the city's first-ever standardized science curriculum for grades 3, 4 and 6 starting next year.

  Bloomberg is set to make the announcement at Brooklyn Tech High School in Fort Greene.

  -- Azi Paybarah]]> http://www.observer.com/node/31653#comments Politics Brooklyn Tech High School Fort Greene Michael Bloomberg Tue, 06 Mar 2007 06:28:37 -0500 Observer Staff 31653 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/node/30995 So, after months of study and discussion, the City Council approved a plan to revise the huge tax break that residential developers receive for building large new developments. The story of the so-called 421a program is the recent history of the city in microcosm. When the program was originally enacted in the 1970s, the city was going bankrupt, the Bronx was burning, and whole neighborhoods were turning into depopulated wastelands. New York basically had to bribe developers to build here. Then the city rebounded. But the program remained. In the 1980s, the Koch administration revised it to create the so-called 80-20 formula within an "exclusionary zone"--basically Manhattan between Houston and 96th Street, except for the East Village--whereby a developer wishing to take advantage of the tax break would have to make 20 percent of his units affordable to low and middle income people. With some adjustments, that's more or less how the program remained until yesterday--or, I should say, will remain until the city's revisions are approved by the state legislature next year.

  The reason the program had to change was obvious to anyone who has seen shiny glass buildings rising in, say, Astor Place or Fort Greene. The developers of these buildings, and the owners of the condos within them, were getting incentives worth tens of millions of dollars to build in areas that, because of changed market conditions, really aren't so risky anymore. Furthermore, because these areas are rapidly gentrifying, and poorer people are being pushed out by higher rents, they are desperately in need of affordable housing. Expanding the exclusionary zone to encompass such neighborhoods is a simple, relatively painless way to increase the affordable housing stock. Sure, developers make a bit less money, and maybe a few fewer mammoth apartment towers get built, but maybe that's not a bad thing for these neighborhoods, activists say. Who wants their brownstone block to be swallowed up by development, anyway?  read more »

  It seems like everybody wins. But not long ago, for another story I am working on, I was talking to a well-known developer in Brooklyn who raised an interesting point. ]]> http://www.observer.com/node/30995#comments Politics Fort Greene Houston Manhattan The Bronx Thu, 21 Dec 2006 07:34:06 -0500 Observer Staff 30995 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/node/35466 70 Lefferts Place, the big yellow wedding cake of a house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, was landmarked on Tuesday, leaving developer Christopher Morris feeling about $2.4 million lighter.

  (Actually, a Brownstoner commenter says he still plans to convert the thing into condos.) (Photo courtesy of Historic District Commission.)

  - Matthew Schuerman]]> http://www.observer.com/node/35466#comments Real Estate Brooklyn Christopher Morris Fort Greene Tue, 12 Dec 2006 12:00:20 -0500 Observer Staff 35466 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/node/35453

  The green outline shows Speaker Christine Quinn's proposed 421-a exclusion zone in northern Brooklyn--the area within which developers would need to include on-site affordable housing in order to qualify for tax breaks.

  Currently, the exclusion zone covers only well-established neighborhoods (West Village, the Upper East and West Sides), where an automatic 421-a tax abatement for new multifamily housing (which is what the rest of the city currently enjoys) would seem too much of a giveaway. Adding in Billyburg makes sense (as well as Park Slope-Fort Greene-Downtown Brooklyn, of which you can see a greenish corner at the bottom).

  But that two-block strip along Broadway, which goes through the southern part of Bushwick all the way to Eastern Parkway? Has that become a condo corrider? Or is anti-developer sentiment so strong in those parts that City Council members Diana Reyna and Eric Martin Dilan wanted a little piece of that green to cut into their districts?

  - Matthew Schuerman]]> http://www.observer.com/node/35453#comments Real Estate Brooklyn Diana Reyna Fort Greene Park Slope Fri, 08 Dec 2006 03:27:14 -0500 Observer Staff 35453 at http://www.observer.com