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Koch AnnouncesNew Rehab SchemeBY STEPHEN HABERSTROHSeveral hundred Prospect Heights residents strained to hear a microphonelcss Mayor Koch announce a major experimental $6 million building-renovation program at a press conference in front of 376 St. John%u2019s Place on October 14. Twenty buildings, which had fallen into New York Citv%u2019s hands because of tax arrears, scattered throughout Prospect Heights, will be rehabilitated by a team of local developers and architects along with a non-profit neighborhood corporation.Ted Hilles, the developer, who heads Prospectus Development Corp., said the project would %u201celiminate the cancer%u201d in the area. %u201c Everything surrounding these twenty buildings is fine and solid, including the people, and once the renovation is completed the whole neighborhood will be stabilized and improved.%u201d The burned-out structures and tenements will be transformed into %u201cliving, breathing, renovated, and habitable buildings,%u201d continued Hilles. %u201c No one will be pushed out.%u201dSome apartments will be converted into co-operatives and are , presently occupied. Following the ' press conference Mayor Koch went a tew doors up the block and assured tenants in 388 that they would not be displaced.Seven of the twenty buildings need moderate renovation and 130 dwelling units will be available for rental. The remaining thirteen buildings have been classified %u2018section 8%u2019 eligible for federal subsidies. These will undergo %u2018gut rehabilitation%u2019 at a later date, opening an additional 57 apartments.The architect for Prospectus Development Corp. will be David Hirsch and David Danois. %u201cThe long, narrow %u2018railroad flats%u2019, builtK o f o r o t QOt u/ill rtr\\ f h tv \\n rvVi ervotiol Uv* ulIuub%u2018* apauaire-arrangement,%u201d says Hirsch. %u201c Two of three flats will be combined into one apartment, changing it into a more modern layout.%u201dThe corporation was formed in June specifically for the program and will join forces with the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Corp., the community co-devclopcrs, a non-profit group headed by Chairperson Abe May, headquartered in the %u2019Old 9%u2019 schoolbuilding at 279 Sterling Place. Their joint proposal was recently accepted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the N.Y.C. Department of Housing Preservation.Donna Shala, Assistant Secretary for HUD, said at a smaller conference in the %u2018Old 9%u2019, following the Mayor%u2019s announcement, that the Co-ops for Neighborhoods program was being tested first in New York City, %u201c precisely what the government should be doing.%u201d Her Office of Policy Development and Research will monitor the project and, it deemed successful, will be tried in other cities.Mayor Koch called the Co-ops for Neighborhood program %u201can innovative vehicle for joining together the talents of private entrepencurs in cooperation with local residents who can appreciate what is needed to make their neighborhoods better places in which to live. Ownership of their apartments will give residents a stake in their neighborhoods.%u201dPintchik Buildings To Be FixedBY JEAN LENIHANA major facelift of over 20 Pintchik Paint%u2019s buildings on Flaibush Avenue will be appearing soon, due to another Cinderella project sponsored by Brooklyn Union Gas Company and The Williamsburgh Savings Bank.The renowned yellow buildings between 6th Avenue and Dean Street will be unrecognizable by ihe spring of 1980, in a project with the theme, %u201c You%u2019ll wonder where the yellow went.\replace the yellow, and shutters, gas lamps and plantings will be installed.The 100.000 dollars worth of cosmetic work, says Jack Pintchik, represents a %u201c massive rebirth\On Oct. 12, Mayor Ed Koch announced a $6 million federal program to create low income coops in Prospect Heights. With the Mayor are Donna Shalala, assistant secretary of the U.S. Dept,of Housing and Urban Development, and Abraham May, chairman of the Prospect HeightsNeighborhood Corporation. (Occhiogrosso Photo)Board Six District ManagerResigns; Programs DiscussedFlaibush Avc. %u201c Flatbush is thegateway to Brooklyn and Pinichik%u2019s work will be a dramatic turnaround for this avenue,%u201d says Fred Rider, head of the Cinderella Program for fifteen years. He can no longer remember the number of Cindcrcllas he%u2019s done, but estimates it at over 150.Rider%u2019s influence prompted the bank to arrange for a loan on the buildings, enabling Pintchik to do he renovation he has wanted for wo years now.Owners of buildings in between Pintchik%u2019s properties are now being contacted by Rider and asked to join in on the renovation spirit as well.BY LINUS GELBERJoan White resigned her post as District Manager of Community Board Six to a hushed audience at the last meeting of the Board on October 10. A heavy silence fell across the Borough Hall courtroom meeting-place as Board Six chair Anita DcMartini read W hile%u2019s letter of resignation aloud. %u201c It is with a great deal of personal regret on my part that I accept this resignation,%u201d DcMartini told the members of the Board. %u201c This is, I think, a great loss to the Community Board, as 1 feel Joan has done a great job.%u201d White explained in her letter of resignation that, after a tenure of more than (wo-and-a-half years as District Manager, she felt it was time to continue and finish her education, and eventually move on to other horizons. She will continue working for the Board until a replacement is picked, a process which will probably take well Over a month.%u201c I%u2019m going to miss sitting up here with her,%u201d DcMartini regretted. The Board then, at the suggestion of member Kitty Tcrjcn, passed a resolution commending and thanking White for her work in the District Office and behind the scenes .Turning to other business, theBoard moved quickly through its Committee reports with an eye to going home, as the courtroom was without heat and rapidly became freezing as rain and snow pelted down outside. A proposal encouraging the city to allot more monies for Board staffing, in the range of $10,000-520,000, was unanimously passed, and a number of complaints about noise levels in the repair of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) were fielded. DcMartini assured that, although department of Transportation seismic readings placed the noise within acceptable limits, levels would continue to be monitored. %u201c It%u2019s not pleasant, but it%u2019s not out of range to work with,\Budget Committee chair Richard Valcich then talked over the Board%u2019s preliminary budget hearings which were held in four neighborhood spots in the Board%u2019s district loculi input from residents into the budgetting process. %u201c We tried to bring the show into the communities,%u201d explained DcMartini, %u201c I think it was a disappointment.\the meetings a \although he admitted that no budget proposals had come out of the hearings. %u201c I was not aware ofsome of the problems the neighborhoods had,%u201d he said, noting that he was working with %u201c residents and quasi-leaders%u201d to try and iron out some on-paper programs.Two successes for the Fifth Avenue area were then discussed; one centered around renovation of the J.J. Byrne Park (Fifth Avenue and Fourth St.), which will involve rearranging and relandscaping some of the play areas to allow a twelve-foot wall along the Fifth Avenue side to be removed, exposing the landmark Old Stone House and the body of the park to scenic and facile view from the Avenue. A sum of $590,000 has been set aside for the renovation as a local Capital Budget item.The other program for the area involves a now nearly traditional gripe from residents along the avenue; the strip has been designated one of two lest sites in the City for an Arson Strike Force program. While the Board was not dear on the fine points of the program, it will involve a combination of street watching, clerical crossindexing and investigative techniques to try to limit arson and establish patterns so that the problem can be more efficiently dealt with.Poplar Developers Chosen To Renovate BrooklynHeights Block 207 into Co-op Apartment Complex DVIIDDVUAVMAM . . . %u25a0_ BY LIBBY HAYMANThe selection of Poplar Street Associates as the developers for the long awaited re-use of Block 207 in Brooklyn Heights was the result of several kinds of teamwork, the parties involved in the project say. There was teamwork between members of the design group who worked out the scheme fotVcombining existing buildings and new construction, teamwork between the lawyers, financial specialists, and architects who worked as partners in preparing the proposal, and cooperation between the developers, and a committee of community representatives, as well as the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) which ultimately designated Poplar Street to do the job.Further cooperation will be needed now that the plan for the North Heights site has to go through die uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP)which will begin with review by Community Board Two and go to the City Planning Commission and the Board of Estimate. Since the site is located in a historic landmark district, the Landmarks Commission must also review the project.The designers selected both by the Block 207 Ad Hoc Community Committee and by HPD, after eight developers submitted competing proposals have been involved with design and planning in Brooklyn Heights before. Wids de la Cour, one of the architects of the plan, has his office on Henry Street in the Heights and has designed numerous brownstonc renovations. He is a member of the Historic Buildings Committee of the American Institute of Architects in New York, and his concern with historic preservation was crucial in dealing successfully wttn the zu/ site, where 19th Century buildingsarc to be incorporated into a new residential complex.Another architect, David Hisrch, has also designed brownstonc renovations, but has additional background in urban design, having been the project manager for the Fulton Mall several years ago a! the Mayor%u2019s Office of Downtown Brooklyn Development. Hirsch is also a developer of a new federally funded rehabilitation project announced for Prospect Heights this week.The design team was strengthened by the work of landscape architects Sonja Locke and Donna Walcavagc, who share an office with de la Cour in the Heights. Locke was known to the neighborhood as the designer of the Picrrepont Street Playground, an important factor to the community committee which was concerned with well designed playspace for the new project.Nancy Wolf, Co-chairwomanof the Ad Hoc committee along with Otis Pearsall, says that the selection process has been a %u201cmarvelous example of what can happen when communities and agencies work together.%u201d All designers presented plans to the committee, which in turn recommended Poplar Street as its top choice to HPD. The committee liked the Poplar Street plan because it was %u201c in tune%u201d with the goal of historic preservation, and also because it provided for co-operative ownership of the 87-97 apartments, most of them large enough for families.Wolf comments that the plan for a %u201c stable, permanent community\buildings, across the street from P.S. 8, was important to the committee.With at least nine months of ULURP process ahead, the 207 plan will be undergoing refinement and revision. The community committee had supported a scheme showing a different placement of one of the new buildings %u201c Scheme B%u201c from the one selected by HPD %u201c Scheme A%u201d and the differences will no doubt be discussed further. Additional attention will be given to noise protection from the nearby expressway. Also ahead is the financial planning for the project. A Park Slope resident, Tony Sanders, is acting as mortgage broker on the project, while legal work is also coming from a Park Slope dweller, Ezra Goodman.The partners in the plan stress that it is too early to tell just how much the project will cost and what the price of the apartments will be. Though the site is in an Urban Renewal area and HPD has designated the developers, public funds will not be used.October 18. 1979. The PHOENIX. Page 5