Back to the Pool: McCarren Planning Starting Again

Seems like the previous concert and event season at (and controversy about) McCarren Pool--the happening venue in Greenpoint/Williamsburg--is barely over. In any case, planning is already starting on Summer 2007 events. And so, most likely, is the controversy. First up, is a Parks Department meeting next week on Tuesday (11/14). The discussion will be about permits and scheduling as well as infrastructure. There will also be "community feedback" about "volume," "diversity of events" and "local component." Venue improvements and capital improvements are also up for discussion as are one-time events versus summer-long series.

Among those invited to the discussion are Live Nation, (which produced the concert series that drew the most community opposition), Sens Productions, which staged Agora II, Jelly NYC, which ran the free concert series and L Magazine, which teamed up on some film events. Bowery Presents, which just bought the Northsix venue, has also been invited. (And a lot of others too.) One of the Parks Department employees included in the distribution is none other than the now modestly infamous and pretty apologetic David Langlieb, who wrote the Greenpoint "vermin" essay that was, um, widely misunderstood.

We noticed a whole bunch of community-oriented groups missing from the list, but since we couldn't match all the email addresses to organizations, we won't detail them. Suffice to say that someone connected to a community group that was on the list forwarded it to other people who forwarded it to other people, etc. The meeting is being held at the Parks Department Brooklyn HQ in the Litchfield Villa in Prospect Park at Fifth Street. Applications and proposals for next year are being accepted starting Dec. 1.