Developers Who Destroyed '5Pointz' Mural Create Faux Graffiti ArtIn November 2013, in the middle of night, painters blanket 5Points with white paint, destroying decades of street art in the span of a couple of hours. The order was given by Jerry Wolkoff, who bought the Long Island City-based buildings in 1971.
In 2014, he formally destroyed the buildings, paving the way for -- surprise, surprise -- two luxury towers to be built in its place. [...]
What the renderings showed insulted supporters of the 5Pointz. Mojo Stumer implement all of this antiseptic-looking graffiti in the halls, including a garish-looking 5Pointz sign that will be featured throughout the two properties. Luxury building using faux-graffiti isn't anything new, but there is an extra tone-deafness here, once the history of the property is considered.
"To the 5Pointz community, for him to name the building 5Pointz and to use a mock-up of a logo of ours, we feel the disrespect continues."
Wolkoff, who spoke to DNA New York, said: "It's my building, and I let them express themselves for 25 years...I loved what they did. I have no animosity."
It's so cool that the clearly aggrieved party here "has no animosity". I am reminded of the museum scene in Children of Men:
This may give New York real estate developers a bad name.
Did you ever think New York real estate developers had a good name?
... or any real estate developers for that matter?
The irony, of course, is that Buttersea power plant has been destroyed.
there once was a squat in an abandoned factory in Milano (italy)... after ~10 years of activity they got evicted for some really urgent development project.
5 years later the place was finally razed to the ground to make place for a new luxury commercial building.
Some genius had the brilliant idea of opening a restaurant in the building and call it exactly like the old squat and use the names of some of the collectives that did stuff at the squat for 20$ cocktails.