While developers are going full-steam ahead with plans to pack the old Domino Sugar factory full of high-end Condos, one Williamsburg resident is trying to stear the train on another course, and convert the building into a cultural institution modeled after the Tate Modern, the Domino Center.
Stephanie Eisenberg started her campaign with a now-famous light up sign, which read "Save Domino". (As NBC Local noted on Monday, those words have been replaced with "Vote Obama".) She bought the building in the 80's when South 3rd was "a drug supermarket", and kept prices low for her tentants making upwards of 40-50k a year. With the onslaught of condos around Williamsburg, Eisenburg hopes the Domino Center will become a possibility for residents hoping for something different.
She hopes the new center would let her "gather a group of art collectors who would lease space to store their art, creating public galleries without relying on public funding", thereby creating jobs, tourism, and the like. It all sounds fine and dandy, but there's just one, teensy tiny little problem with it all. The developers still own the Refinery. So, unless some miracle agent of change comes about (and we're not talking the presidential candidate), chances are a whole new baby boom of yuppies will soon be dancing in the sugar pits of Domino.
