Community Corner
Bed-Stuy Calls For Dangler Mansion Justice: Report
Residents and local officials rallied to call for the developer — and the city's landmark commish — to be held accountable.
BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — Residents and local elected officials rallied at 441 Willoughby Ave. this Saturday to call for the developer who demolished the Dangler mansion, and the landmark commissioner who they say acted too slow to save it, to be held accountable, according to Brownstoner.
The site reports that around 30 people, including local Council Member Chi Ossé and State Senator Jabari Brisport, gathered where the beloved mansion once stood to sound off on how the city should move faster to stop demolitions like this from happening again.
“They’ve gotten away with so much and they take and they take and they take, and I’m just hoping that this time that there will be accountability and for that to happen it requires a lot of people to just keep that pressure going,” local resident and business owner Lauren Cawdrey said, according to Brownstoner.
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A new group called Justice for 441 Willoughby is also collecting testimonials from current tenants in buildings owned by developer Tomer Elrich, who demolished the mansion and is planning to develop the Dangler site, according to Brownstoner.
"We're not against development," said Ossé at the rally according to Brownstoner, "it’s not that we’re against housing, we’re against this developer who did not engage with the community, who demolished a community landmark, who demolished a historic building and did not listen to the needs of the people of Bed Stuy."
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Brownstoner wrote that Ossé also said that, in addition to holding Elrich accountable, the "chairwoman of the LPC Sarah Carroll, she needs to resign.”
In a statement to Brownstoner, the Landmark and Preservation Commission said the Dangler Mansion demolition was due to "a longstanding technological limitation at DOB led to an extremely rare process error that prevented LPC from receiving information on the status of the project’s pending demolition application at DOB," said spokesperson Zodet Negron.
Negron told Brownstoner that modernization efforts and the development of a "permanent technology solution" would prevent this from happening again.
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