Report Roundup

BP: ...the city unveiled plans for a bike-friendly facelift for Smith Street, turning the much-used approach to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges much less harrowing.

The improvements will work as a complement to the bike lane on the parallel, one-way southbound Hoyt Street.

“The bike lanes on Smith and Hoyt streets will work as a pair,” said Preston Johnson, an official with the Department of Transportation. “They’ll enhance access to the bridges and also to destinations on Smith Street.”

BP: Marc Elliot just took over the kitchen of the Irish pub Ceol on Smith — and created a menu so exquisite that his customers have no reason to move on for dinner after a few drinks.

“All we used to have was shepherd’s pie and bangers — but we had about three customers coming in for those,” Elliot said. “So I took note of that and all the items on other Smith Street menus, and put none of them on mine. Everyone has fried f—king calamari. I don’t.”

BP: An effort to preserve the history of Carroll Gardens is being criticized for actually hastening the neighborhood’s gentrification, said opponents of a controversial city initiative to widen the area’s historic district.

“They just want to re-gentrify and force out whatever elements from the past are left,” said lifelong area resident and businessman John Esposito, who helped form Citizens Against Landmarks to thwart the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s nascent effort to extend historic protections to a larger segment of the brownstone neighborhood.

BP: On Monday, Brooklyn finally gets a chance to park it on the stoop.

...the first phase of Brooklyn Bridge Park — featuring a vast green lawn and a granite front-stoop sitting area located on Pier 1 — will open to the public.