Earlier there was news of a luxury condo leveling a church and digging up graves, now word is in that the South Williamsburg power plant on Kent Avenue will meet the same fate. The Brooklyn Paper reports that Con Edison has finally admitted its plan to demolish the defunct power plant and neighborhood landmark.Neighbors of the abandoned Kent Avenue power plant knew something was up back in March, when workers started tearing holes into the......

There may be satisfaction on the horizon for fans of the southern comfort food dished out at Pies 'n' Thighs, the beloved South Williamsburg hole in the wall that shut down last month. Upon closing, the owners vowed to reopen a “bigger, better, more miraculous hole in the wall!” Eater caught wind of a local Community Board hearing last night, during which the owners' plans to obtain a license for beer and wine was......

Michael Lappin, CEO of the managing company for what is being called the "New Domino", responded yesterday to our questions about the proposed project via email. The iconic Domino Sugar sign is not included in these renderings. [We photoshopped it back in, above.] Is there any plan to preserve that somewhere at the site? We are making every effort to save the sign. We are looking at different engineering solutions regarding the “where and......

Untitled, by Blaise K at flickr A week after the illegally converted-for-residential use warehouse 475 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg was evacuated by city agencies, due to building violations including an illegal matzoh bakery (and combustible grains being stored in the basement), the building will be padlocked this afternoon at 4PM. There will be a "solemn observance of the shutting of a great arts community," according to a press release we received. More details:Come and......

Photos via loveitmadly's flickr. On Sunday Gowanus Lounge received frantic emails from tenants in a blocklong loft building at 475 Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg who were being suddenly tossed out into the frigid night by the FDNY; we went to the building on Monday morning and talked to some of the shell-shocked residents as they moved out, one of whom told us, “Sheila [Properties] owns the whole lot and I don’t want to......

Satellite map rendering of 475 Kent Avenue from Live Search Maps Over 150 residents of an eleven-story building at Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg were evacuated yesterday after the Fire Department and Buildings Department found a number of violations. The building had been illegally converted to residences and a matzoh factory, complete with two silos of (highly combustible) grain in the basement. A neighboring building was cited as well, and the violations ranged from......

Photo by Youngna Park It's a dark day for South Billyburg lovers of southern comfort food – dark as blackened catfish on a moonless Brooklyn night. Eater points out Peter Meehan's discovery that the beloved hole in the wall Pies 'n' Thighs, in the shadow of the Williamsburg bridge, will close tomorrow night. Party, or wake, to follow. The closure has to do with some gripes on behalf of the reactionaries at the health......

Soon after the New Year, the inviting little café formerly known as Chickenbone will be reborn as Dram. So named for the unit of measurement in the apothecaries' system, the south Williamsburg bar will focus on specialty pre-prohibition cocktails made with all-fresh ingredients. Managing partner Tom Chadwick – who currently moonlights behind the bar at Bushwick Country Club – told us that his vision for Dram involves bringing the fastidious cocktail craze, popularized by exclusive......

There’s activity over at the old Jade Mountain space on East 12th, the restaurant with the iconic neon CHOW MEIN sign. Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York (via Eater) reports that an on-scene workman offered up this tidbit: “It’s going to be a restaurant.” Jade Mountain closed earlier this year after much-missed owner Reginald Chan was struck by a vehicle while delivering food. Here’s a photo of the restaurant’s landmark sign taken by reader Jay Jaffe: Red,......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A steam leak at 39th Street and Lexington in Manhattan, a car vs. building on Hoyt Avenue in Staten Island and an oil slick on Park Lane and 85th Road in Queens An unorthodox robbery in Brooklyn: a burly Hasidic Jewish man brandished a knife and threatened a woman in South Williamsburg. Defense lawyers for the men charged with shooting police officer Russel Timoshenko are wondering why Brooklyn DA......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a homicide on Melrose Ave. in the Bronx, a lightning strike at 82nd Ave. and 249th St. in Queens, and a hate crime on the walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge. 25-year-old former model and current vice president of the Trump Organization Ivanka Trump was appointed to the board of directors of Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc. A recent New York Times column noted that investors in Trump's casinos would have......

The NYPD just put out a radio alert that Moses Teitelbaum, Grand Rebbe of the Satmar sect of Hasidism, died at Mount Sinai Hospital. Teitelbaum was 91, and had been suffering from spinal cancer. He had been the head of the sect since 1979. Thousands of people are expected to throng the streets of Williamsburg once this announcement gets out-- and things could turn violent, as Teitelbaum's two sons are feuding over who will succeed......

A couple of years from now, after the American real estate market has utterly collapsed, we may well look back at this day as a kind of high-water mark, the spot where the insanity peaked and then rolled back. Curbed broke the story yesterday-- a crackhouse in South Williamsburg that has been flipped twice in the last six months, and is now being sold for about a million dollars. First, read the description from......

Short of naming saffron the Big Apple's color, Mayor Bloomberg bestowed The Gates masterminds Christo and Jeanne-Claude with the Doris C. Freedman award for enriching the public environment. Interesting facts: Freedman was the founder of the Public Art Fund, and Mayor Ed Koch created the "Percent for Art" law, "which requires the city to spend 1 percent of its budget for eligible city-funded construction projects on art for city facilities." The AP said that Christo......