Crown Heights News

Developers seek to convert warehouses zoned for commercial use to residential units.

Crown Heights is one of the fastest — if not the fastest — gentrifying neighborhoods in New York City, and the building of condos and rentals there can be a very profitable endeavor. However, due to various zoning ordinances that predate the surging demand for housing, developers are frustrated by empty warehouses in areas zoned for commercial use that cannot be converted to residential units, as well as many other building restrictions.

The Crown Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

This past weekend, Shloime Klein, a Crown Heights resident, borrowed a book from the Maple St. Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. When he opened the book, he was shocked to find it crawling with ‘stage three’ bed bugs.

A minor brouhaha is playing out in local media over signs that have been popping up around Crown Heights, asking “residents, guests and visitors” to dress modestly, as it is “a Jewish neighborhood.”

A new study examining the average rent for a Brooklyn apartment revealed that Crown Heights continues to outpace the rest of the borough in rising rents.

Residents of St. Marks Avenue in Crown Heights are saying that police are giving them parking tickets as payback, after an officer was hurt by a bicycle that was dropped on his head last weekend.

Yuda Schloss at work at his Crown Heights apartment.

Where does kosher food fit into the city’s crowded foodie scene? Right into people’s own kitchens, according to a local chef on a mission to serve adventurous Jewish food to anyone who wants it.

Early Thursday morning, July 8^th, 2007 at 2:30am, Officers Herman Yan and Russel Timoshenko came under a hail of gunfire as the two stopped a stolen SUV on the streets of Crown Heights. Both officers where hit and injured, one of them gravely. Two days later, Officer Russel Timoshenko succumbed to his wounds.

The owners of a long-shuttered Kingston Avenue school building have reportedly signed a contract to sell the property for approximately $3,000,000. The buyer is reported to be Jewish Educational Media, who may be planning to open a museum dedicated to the Rebbe.

The Betzalel Gallery will be featuring a special exhibit of photos of the Rebbe from Jewish Educational Media’s The Living Archive in honor of Gimmel Tammuz.

Right: Yosef, Sarah and Tiferes Shidler.

A disturbing experience involving the positioning of an infant car seat on an airplane has been amicably resolved with Southwest Airlines. Yosef and Sarah Shidler, the Crown Heights couple at the center of the dispute, received both an apology and compensation for their troubles.

Rabbi Col. Jacob Goldstein (left) speaks with an architect at a zoning hearing in 2008.

Rabbi Col. Jacob Goldstein has served as Chairman of Brooklyn’s Community Board 9, which roughly correlates with the southern portion of Crown Heights and the neighborhood of Lefferts Gardens, for over three decades. His position there has long been seen as a way to placate the Crown Heights Jewish community, which has always been underrepresented on the board relative to their overall population in the district.

Thursday evening marked the ’Shloshim’ since the tragic passing of Levi Nemon OBM, just a few months shy of his second birthday. Community members, friends and family gathered in Oihel Nosson to mark his passing.

Seeing the demand for more dentists in Crown Heights after living in the neighborhood for a few years, Dr. Efraim Fuzailov decided to pack up his Borough Park office and set up shop right here in our community.