Comments on: 5Pointz owner gives up the fight: LIC’s Crane St Studios closed for good

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:44:24 +0000

If this great urban art landmark is going down, then the least that should be done is to offer the artists who tag there a permanent canvas, so to speak, on the new site whatever it may be. What a great way to pay respect and give recognition to this art of today by having it decorate a new structure being built there. I think people will love it. Imagine graffiti murals in the lobby and on panels on the exterior. AWESOME!!!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:29:37 +0000

Hey 11, go ahead and apologize for the mega developer. But no reason to apologize to the woman who came close to dying and now has a life of recovery ahead of her. Believe me, this mega developer knows exactly what he’s doing. Why don’t you try googling some of his projects that run in the billions. This building is just being held for the right time. If there was a sincere interest in the artists the building would not have been the disaster waiting to happen.

Artists have always been the convenient fodder to fill neglected buildings. It’s exactly what slumlords do. Are you saying that slumlords do a great service in the ghetto because they let poor folks pay to stay in rat holes?

By: walter

walter — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:16:12 +0000

i had a studio for several years, i never had heat, so if the landlord was painting heating bills he was getting screwed. and like most artists i coverd the windows with plastic.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:49:48 +0000

#11 Do you have any concept of the cost of heating and lighting a space of that size, not to mention RE taxes? He’s lucky if he broke even.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:30:42 +0000

Peanuts

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:11:11 +0000

#10, let’s see, between 5 ptz and Crane about 200 studios at an average $600 = $120000 a month = $1.4M a year. Give me a frickin’ break.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:59:05 +0000

#9 He could have also sold the building for a gazillion dollars to a developer or even devloped it himself when the zoning changes happened a few years ago and LIC real estate was so hot and everything was selling for a fortune. I don’t think extracting the little money he did from the artists was taking advantage of them, you’re right, he is an extremely successful developer, the rents here certainly were not lining his pockets. REALLY taking advantage would have been booting them out and selling the building off for megabucks or turning it into a luxury building like Arris. But he didn’t.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:10:52 +0000

Don’t bother #8, these Midwest people think NY’ers are all dumb ass rubes like them and the 1960-70′s never ended. They read it in Boy’s Life, so it must be true.

Welcome to the *real* NY bitches.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:54:26 +0000

#5, I respectfully disagree. It's easy to rent below so-called market rate when you are renting glorified closets and providing no safety whatsoever. I have no respect for an extremely successful Long Island mega developer who bought these buildings nearly half a century ago for close to nothing and has just extracted money from artists while doing the bare minimum to make the building safe. He could have easily taken a tiny percentage of his yearly gross to bring the building up to standard.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:45:05 +0000

Forget Brooklyn #3, Michigan is calling you back home.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:30:51 +0000

There are some large empty factories on 37th Avenue (near Northern) – would work great for artist studios

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:07:29 +0000

#4, I think that is unfair. The owner was very supportive of the arts community and rented space to artists at below market rates. The owner tried very hard to make repairs to keep this space for them, many who had been there a long time. I know several artists who had studios there, and the rent was incredibly low–they have been unable to find anything comparable in the Long Island City area and are leaving.
#3 is right, other neighborhoods in Brooklyn and afar have lots of cheap workspaces and many of our artists will leave because with the loss os 5Pointz they can’t afford to stay..
Our loss. Well, mine anyway, some of you may be pleased with that. I’m not.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:02:30 +0000

The owner of 5 pointz crammed artists into unsafe tiny fire trap studios and made tons of money off of them for years. It took a tragic accident to finally get the City to take notice of the conditions. While I regret the loss of this vital group of artists I have no sympathy for the owner. I have not heard him express an ounce of regret for the injured artist – only his whining about all these terrible safety rules that he thinks are so unfair. For years he thwarted artists who complained of the conditions by flippantly saying he’s ready to sell out to a developer any day. The volume of tenants (many from overseas or out of town) allowed him to not give a damn. If anyone complained there was always someone else waiting in the wings. In my opinion he was essentially a slumlord.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:33:18 +0000

Sad.

I moved from LIC to the area around the Morgan L recently… if you want tons of lofts full of artists and interesting gallery spaces and events, it is booming over here… and rents are much more affordable. Come on over.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:15:57 +0000

This building will make an awesome loft apartment conversion.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:10:08 +0000

This was to be expected. I think a lot more artist spaces will be lost in the next few years as well. 5pointz is not the only place they have illegal studios that are unsafe that are being rented out any way. It will be very sad though if LIC loses its arts community. It’s like the only soul we got.