Brooklyn Today December 7: Kushner Firm Pays Brooklyn Heights Tenants $100K in Back Rent Overcharges

The Lede

Happy Friday! We take a stroll down the endangered Promenade, a date turns fatal in Fort Greene, and Bay Ridge’s holiday lights give Dyker Heights a run for its money. Plus, a Brooklyn rapper sues a gaming company, a customer goes ham at a Bushwick bodega, and Jared Kushner pays $100,000 to Brooklyn Heights tenants. Finally, Heights residents threaten to suspend donations to Brooklyn Bridge Park, Christmas trees bound for the borough get held up at the Canadian border, and Brooklyn as we know it may be gone.

Imprint

Michelle Obama graces the January cover of Good Housekeeping U.K.

The Rundown

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS QUESTIONS BBP EXPANSION PLANS AS ALTERNATIVE BQE REPAIR ROUTES EXPLORED

A suggestion to suspend donations to Brooklyn Bridge Park and throw financial support instead to groups fighting the city’s plan to temporarily replace the Brooklyn Heights Promenade with the BQE is stirring up a backlash in the neighborhood. The city’s plan may be terrible, Brooklyn Heights Association says, but the group is urging park donors to keep on giving to the park Conservancy while also funding the strategic and legal efforts to save the Promenade. BHA and the newly-formed A Better Way NYC have allied in advocating an alternate plan that would spare the Promenade during the $3.4 billion reconstruction. (via Brooklyn Eagle)

COME SEE THE BELOVED, ENDANGERED PROMENADE

What a view. From up on Brooklyn Heights’ beloved Promenade, you can see the rebuilt World Trade Center and Manhattan’s mighty skyline. Horrified Heights residents stood on the famed esplanade on Sept. 11, 2001, and watched the Twin Towers burn. Now, as you stand here, the sight of the new Trade Center is both poignant and healing. Closer to the Promenade, Brooklyn Bridge Park and the glittering East River please the eye. To your right, the iconic Brooklyn Bridge stretches across the water. We recently took photos from this iconic place, which is endangered by the looming BQE Rehab Plan. (via Brooklyn Eagle)

JACK’D DATE TURNS FATAL IN FORT GREENE

A weekend getaway with friends turned into David Keegan Riotto Haigh’s worst nightmare with him getting locked up on Rikers Island and facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars for murder. Haigh drove from Pennsylvania, on April 7, 2017 to meet up with his friends in Manhattan. Haigh also made plans in Brooklyn to meet James Johnson, 41, who he met through Jack’d, a dating app for gay and bisexual men. An evening of drinking and drugs inside Johnson’s apartment in the Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene, however, turned into an extended weekend that escalated into violence. (via Brooklyn Eagle)

BAY RIDGE HOLIDAY LIGHTS DAZZLE LIKE DYKER

Though it may not be the main attraction, Bay Ridge is once again giving its neighboring ’hood – lauded by The New York Times as “Con Ed’s warmest heartthrob” – a run for its money this season when it comes to massive holiday displays. Many of the neighborhood’s impressive shows can be seen along avenues like Narrows and on roads like Colonial and Shore. For example, the electric blue house on 81st Street between Colonial and Narrows has been a can’t-miss for locals and visitors alike for over a decade. (via Brooklyn Eagle)

‘MILLY ROCK’ CREATOR WANTS GAMING COMPANY BEHIND FORTNITE TO PAY UP

The creator of the dance craze and hit song Milly Rock has slapped the company behind a popular video game for stealing his moves to give characters swag. Brooklyn rapper Terrence Ferguson, better known by his stage name, 2 Milly, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Epic Games Inc. for using the dance in its video game Fortnite Battle Royale. The dance appeared in Ferguson’s music video for his song “Milly Rock,” which was filmed on various blocks of his home borough, including the corners of Gates and Patchen avenues. (via Brooklyn Eagle)

WANT TO KNOW THE LATEST BROOKLYN HEIGHTS HOUSE PRICES?

Let’s try this again. Yesterday, we linked to the wrong article in this blurb. Sorry about that. Here’s the actual link to Brooklyn Heights’ most recent home prices, which are some of the most expensive in the city. (via Brooklyn Eagle)

HANGRY CUSTOMER ASSAULTS BUSHWICK DELI WORKER WITH BREAD AND BELL

Police are looking for a deli customer who went ham on the man making his breakfast sandwich and threw a bell at him. Around 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 25, a man walked into the Hi Mango Natural Market on Flushing Avenue and got into a dispute with a 28-year-old employee. The argument escalated while the clerk was making the customer’s bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. The customer was seen on video screaming and banging his hands, balled into fists, on the glass refrigerator that separated him from the worker.(via Brooklyn Eagle)

KUSHNER FIRM PAYS BROOKLYN HEIGHTS TENANTS $100K IN BACK RENT OVERCHARGES

Kushner Cos., the well-known real estate firm owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald’s Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, has paid approximately $100,000 in back rent overcharges after a class-action lawsuit by five Brooklyn Heights tenants. The payouts “appear to be admission that the landlord … skirted rent regulation laws” in raising rents at 89 Hicks St., according to Crain’s. Kushner purchased 89 Hicks St. in 2014 from Brooklyn Law School, which had used it for student housing, then converted it to market-rate apartments. (Crain’s via Brooklyn Eagle)

TRADE WAR LEADS TO PROBLEMS FOR BROOKLYN CHRISTMAS TREE MERCHANT

As the U.S., Canada and Mexico continue to hammer out a new trade agreement, extra scrutiny at the Canadian border has caused a delay in some people getting their holiday trees. Several days ago, Prospect HeightsChristmas tree merchant David Sevigny, whose company is known as Christmas Tree Brooklyn, was told by his customs broker that a thousand of his finest trees, worth about $100,000, were being held up at the border. “I imagine the trade war had something to do with it,” he said. (PIX11 via Brooklyn Eagle)