Domino to Fall?

There's a campaign on right now to save the hulking old Domino Sugar Factory in Williamburg, which was built back in 1884, and ceased producing the sweet stuff a few years back. Unsurprisingly, some developers want to fill it to the brim with—guess what?—condos. But locals are resisting and petitioning the Landmarks Commission for help. The campaign to save it has an unlikely ally in slippery City Council Member David Yassky, who did a mighty fine job last year overturning the landmark status of another 19th century Brooklyn warehouse, 184 Kent. He also wants to save the parts of the Greenpoint Terminal Market that didn't go down in ashes in last May's huge conflgration and the McCarren pool, the huge WPA swimming hole that nobody uses for swimming anymore.

Yassky's letter said that, as Williamsburg and Greenpoint “change and evolve, it is increasingly important that we work to preserve our ties to the past." If it sounds like disingenuous politican bullshit, that's because it is. Dude's got an election coming up. And he's probably guessing that the save-Domino fight doesn't stand a chance of a sugar cube over a bunsen burner in this market. The place is a factory, after all, and factories just don't set up shop in the five boroughs anymore. If it's not carved up into luxury residences, it will sit there empty, just taunted developers with its potential land value. And developers don't like to be taunted.

Also, this is the Landmarks Commission we're talking about, those political lapdogs who'll roll over on anything if the pressure gets to be too much. Their current leadership would give up the Flatiron Building.