Generally Speaking: Bay Ridge loses another big store

  A massive commercial property on the corner of Fort Hamilton Parkway and 86th Street is for sale or lease. This site has seen several iterations of large-scale furniture stores, including Seaman’s, Ashley, Jennifer Convertibles and, more recently, Jennifer Furniture Clearance Center.

Further along 86th Street is a new vacant lot that many years ago housed Blockbuster Video, and across Battery Avenue is the property that someday may be the site of a public middle school. When we stopped by this site, the old Nathan’s building was still standing and we saw a sign indicating asbestos abatement was taking place.

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Glad to see that Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill designating baseball as New York State’s official sport. The state Legislature, pushing politics aside, voted overwhelmingly for the measure; the vote was 61-2 in the Senate and 147-2 in the Assembly. On March 12, we joined the effort when we wrote a column, “Let’s make baseball New York’s official sport.” If you want to help promote it on your car, the DMV is offering vanity plates that say, “The Birthplace of Baseball.”