The Yard (Brooklyn)

The Yard was, as Time Out put it, indeed a yard, beside the pungent Gowanus Canal at Carroll and Bond streets, and ramshackle in a postindustrial-meets-bucolic sort of way^{1, 2}. Its early highlights included Sabbath in the Park, a day of Black Sabbath music, and a Harvest Fest with hay rides and live chickens that drew a crowd of 1,000².

Its second season, with Jen Lyon among the owners, kicked off on May 24, 2008, with the jazzy spoken-word artist Mike Ladd and ran through October². By 2010, as the BKLYN Yard, it was the home of Sunday dance parties, food fairs and flea markets³.

On May 1, 2010, the landlord, David Lefkowitz, told Lyon, by then president of MeanRed, that he would no longer honor the company's lease, and gave it no chance to renegotiate³. He had been all set to sell the lot to Toll Brothers for a 447-unit project, until the canal's Superfund designation undid the deal³. In June the Yard announced it was shutting down for the summer, and the summer turned out to be all of it^{1, 3}.

By 2012 Gowanus Grove, home of the Mister Sunday DJ parties, had part of the block, and the Lightstone Group had proposed a 700-unit rental building at 363-365 Bond Street, running from Carroll Street to Second Street⁴. Every building on the site, 388 Carroll Street and 363 Bond Street, was demolished in 2014 so the ground could be cleaned up⁵. Then the apartments went up after all: 365 Bond Street, with 430 units, in 2016, and 363 Bond Street, twelve stories of grey brick, in 2017⁶.