Who Needs a Sidewalk on Berry Street Anyway?

We don't mean to fixate on micro issues like block-by-block construction issues, but the way that a development can come along and do violence to quality of life for its neighbors is fascinating in a car crash sort of way. These days, when we run into someone that we know lives near a construction site in Williamsburg, we ask them about whether their quality of life has diminished with pile driving or digging and whether their building has been damaged. (Advice to buyers of expensive new apartments: Look around you very carefully and do some research, unless you won't mind 12-24 months of construction hell outside your $750K bedroom window.)

All of which brings us to the corner of N. 10th Street and Berry, which has two active construction sites and one stalled building which turned into a swimming pool during the Nor'easter. It now has a sidewalk collapsing from construction and a building that may be in the process of being undermined by digging. Our Greenpoint correspondent headed south and reported:

the sidewalk had been fenced off...Curious, I peeked inside and discovered that these developers had not only taken out a chunk of sidewalk (it had collapsed), but they may have undermined the foundation of the building next door (on Berry).

We now return to our regular menu of "big picture" items, noting the new fence below, which is blocking the sidewalk is certainly colorful in a neon kind of way.