A quick note on credibility: in the last issue, we may have mentioned that warmer days were on the way. Then we got more snow than we can remember in Brooklyn. We take full responsibility and promise to stay in our lane-sandwich recommendations, not weather forecasts.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood keeps growing around us. There’s a vote happening in Gowanus right now that could shape the next decade of public space, maintenance, and community programming, yet most people don’t know about it. That’s our Big Story this week.

We’ve also got a hidden izakaya you should know about, a housing lottery with a hard deadline, a full weekend of live shows at Bell House, and the case for why Court Street Grocers might be the most important ten-minute walk you take this month.

Now Open / Coming Soon — A hidden izakaya, a Bond Street newcomer, and a 25,000-square-foot gym for kids

The Big Story — There’s a vote happening in Gowanus right now that most people don’t know about

Things to Do — Kaiju Big Battel, Ed Gamble, John Hodgman, The Moth, and Powerhouse Arts

The Local — Court Street Grocers: stacked sandwiches and zero compromises

Development Watch — A housing lottery deadline and the biggest building you haven’t heard about yet

Quick Hits — Powerhouse Arts’ big spring and the Red Hook tank milestone

Cotra Is the Izakaya Hiding on Carroll Street
451 Carroll Street, between Nevins St and 3rd Ave
Now Open · Wed–Sun 5–10 PM
Three friends who also run Trad Room in Bed-Stuy opened Cotra in the former Monte’s space in mid-2023, and it’s still flying under the radar. The menu is small plates like addictive cabbage, mochiko chicken, and yakiniku ribeye, with creative cocktails and a back patio that channels retro Tokyo. This is exactly the kind of place residents should know about. Get your reservations on Resy.

Ingas Bar Team Coming to 112 Bond Street
112 Bond Street, at Pacific St
Coming Spring 2026
The team behind Ingas Bar is taking over the former Café Kitsuné space on Bond Street for a new restaurant. Details are still thin (no name, no menu, no firm opening date), but the Ingas crew has a strong following, and the Bond Street location puts it right in the heart of the action. One to watch.

Gotham Gymnastics Doubled in Size
315 & 316 Douglass Street, between 3rd and 4th Ave
Now Open
Gotham Gymnastics on Douglass Street has over 25,000 square feet of gym space with vaults, bars, beams, foam pits, in-ground trampolines, a ninja course, and a climbing wall. Classes run from 18 months to 18 years, plus adult open gym and birthday parties. If you’re one of the thousands of families moving into the new buildings along the canal, this is your spot.

Gowanus Improvement District
Balloting open now · 51% support needed to move forward

There’s a vote happening in Gowanus right now that could shape what this neighborhood looks and feels like for the next decade. It’s not a city election. There’s no polling place. And most residents have never heard of it.

The Gowanus Improvement District is a community-led effort to create a Business Improvement District, a nonprofit funded by property assessments that would maintain the waterfront esplanades, keep streets cleaner, coordinate public art and programming, and advocate for flood mitigation across the neighborhood. Think of it as a permanent organization whose only job is taking care of Gowanus’s public spaces.

The effort has been in the works since 2021, when the creation of a BID was written into the city’s 56 Points of Agreement as a condition of the Gowanus rezoning. The steering committee, led by the Gowanus Canal Conservancy alongside Arts Gowanus, Forth on Fourth Avenue, Friends of Thomas Greene Park, and the Old Stone House, is now in the outreach and balloting phase. They need 51% support from property owners and commercial tenants to advance to the legislative phase. The proposed first-year budget: nearly $2.8 million.

Why does this matter? Because Gowanus is about to have 12 acres of waterfront esplanade built by different developers, each responsible for maintaining their own section. Without a coordinating body, you get what happened in Williamsburg after its rezoning: beautiful public spaces that quickly became dirty and disconnected. The BID would take on unified maintenance of all of it, plus supplemental sanitation, streetscape upkeep, and community events like outdoor markets and performances.

Not everyone’s on board. Some longtime residents and artists worry the BID is another layer of gentrification, an organization geared more toward newcomers and tourists than the people who’ve been here for decades. Others counter that the neighborhood doesn’t even have trash cans on some blocks, and that a funded organization focused on the public realm is exactly what Gowanus needs as 20,000 new residents arrive.

If you live, work, or own property in the proposed district, you can cast a ballot at gowanusimprovementdistrict.org. Public meetings are being held this spring, sharing the same presentation at each, with time for Q&A.

Kaiju Big Battel: Unholy Diver at Bell House
149 7th Street
Sunday, Mar 1 · 6:00 PM
Live monster wrestling. Costumed kaiju characters. Total absurdity. If you’ve never been to a Kaiju Big Battel show, this is one of those events that’s impossible to explain and impossible not to enjoy.

Ed Gamble at Bell House
149 7th Street
Saturday, Feb 28 · 7:30 PM
One more shot to catch the Taskmaster and Off Menu podcast star.

“What is Lost, What is Held” Opening at Powerhouse Arts
322 3rd Avenue, at 2nd St
Wednesday, Mar 5 · Free
Powerhouse Arts opens its first-ever artists-in-residence exhibition. More on this one, plus the Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair returning in April, in Quick Hits below.

John Hodgman at Bell House
149 7th Street
Fri–Sat, Mar 6–7 · 7:30 PM
The author, humorist, and former Daily Show correspondent does two nights. Hodgman’s live shows are warm, dry, and consistently excellent. Friday is the better bet.

Connor Wood and Yvette Segan “Work It Out” at Bell House
149 7th Street
Sunday, Mar 8 · 7:30 PM
Stand-up from two of the sharpest rising comics on the circuit. Worth the Sunday night out.

The Moth StorySLAM at Bell House
149 7th Street
Monday, Mar 9 · 8:00 PM
Live storytelling competition where audience members put their names in a hat and take the stage. A Bell House staple and one of the best recurring events in the neighborhood.

485 Court Street, at Nelson St
Open 7 days, 8 AM–6 PM

There’s a moment, about thirty seconds after your first bite of the Cubano at Court Street Grocers, where you stop talking. Not because anything’s wrong. Because everything is exactly right. Confit pork shoulder and heritage ham layered with Swiss, sour pickles, mayo, and yellow mustard, pressed onto Sullivan Street stecca bread until the outside shatters and the inside goes molten. It’s worth every cent.

Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross opened this place in 2010 after a 13-month permitting nightmare forced them to change locations to Carroll Gardens. We are so glad they are here! Both are Rhode Island School of Design grads, and you can see that in the shelves, stacked with the obsessive eye of people who care about how things look and taste in equal measure. Duke’s Mayo from South Carolina sits next to sambal paste. Craft hot sauces line up like a gallery wall. About 70 percent of the products are sourced directly from producers, which the owners have described as “a logistical nightmare” they’re happy to endure.

The Cubano is just the beginning. The Reuben, house-cured short rib on Orwasher’s rye, has been on best-of lists since 2011. The Italian Combo is a masterclass. The Broccoli Reuben somehow converts non-believers. The menu is deep enough that regulars cycle through it for months without repeats. But the grocery side is what keeps people coming back between meals. It’s the kind of place where you walk in for coffee and walk out with a bag of things you didn’t know you needed.

Court Street Grocers has since expanded to Greenwich Village and Williamsburg, but the Carroll Gardens original is the one that matters to us. It’s a ten-minute walk from the canal-front buildings, just past Carroll Park on the quiet southern stretch of Court Street. If you moved to one of the new towers and haven’t been yet, consider this your assignment.

Douglass Port Affordable Housing Lottery — Deadline March 23
251 Douglass Street, at the Gowanus Canal
Applications due March 23, 2026, via NYC Housing Connect

The newest Gowanus Wharf building has 65 affordable apartments up for grabs. Studios start at $903/month, one-bedrooms from $961, and two-bedrooms from $1,142, available to New Yorkers earning 40, 60, and 100 percent of the area median income. The 260-unit building is part of the Charney/Tavros campus that’s rapidly reshaping the canal’s east bank. Union Channel is already leasing next door, and Nevins Landing’s twin towers are on track for spring completion. Preference goes to Brooklyn Community Board 6 residents for 25% of units. If you know anyone looking, the clock is ticking.

175 Third Street: The Biggest Building You Haven’t Heard About Yet
175 3rd Street, near the canal
Pre-construction · Groundbreaking targeted mid-2026

Designed by BIG and dencityworks | architecture for the Gowanus Wharf campus, this is planned as a roughly 1,000-unit mixed-use building with ground-floor commercial and retail space. This is by far the largest single building in the Gowanus pipeline. It’s still in pre-construction, but a mid-2026 groundbreaking target means shovels could hit the ground before the year is out. We’ll be watching this one closely.

Powerhouse Arts has a big spring ahead. The converted 117-year-old power station on 3rd Avenue opens What is Lost, What is Held on March 5. This is the inaugural exhibition from its new artists-in-residence program, featuring Grace Lynne Haynes, Nazanin Noroozi, and Ngozi Olojede, who each collaborated with the building’s fabrication shops to explore themes of water, memory, and loss. The ceramics studio is also launching a member pop-up sale the same day, with additional weekends through March.

And mark your calendar now: the Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair returns to the Grand Hall April 9–12. Last year’s inaugural edition drew 7,500 visitors over four days. This year’s is bigger.

The Red Hook tank is done — six months early. The excavation for the 8-million-gallon overflow capture facility on the east bank of the canal, bordered by Nevins, Butler, and Degraw Streets, finished ahead of schedule. The next phase begins this spring and runs through summer 2026. When it’s all complete, the site will include 2 acres of public waterfront open space. The matching Owls Head tank at the canal bend near Second Avenue and Sixth Street breaks ground this spring, too.

That's Issue #4.
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And if this BID story was news to you, forward this to a neighbor. The more people who know, the better.

See you out there.

The Gowanaut