Month: September 2010

City Has NOT Bailed on Greenpoint Hospital Developer

Aaron Short follows up on the Greenpoint Hospital story, and discovers that HPD is not, was not and will not be reconsidering its award of the project to TNS-Great American Construction. This comes after Greenline, a local paper run by St. Nick’s Alliance (which, in turn, is a partner with GREC in their competing proposal for the Hospital site), had reported that HPD had agreed to reconsider the award.

So at this point, unless they can’t negotiate the final agreement with HPD or don’t have the funding to do the project, TNS-GAC will be the developer.

Out of Context at 11 Broadway

09/19/2010 | Comment

11-bway-new.png
11 Broadway (the latest model)
Photo: GreenbergFarrow via Crain’s


Talk about out of context.

In the course of an article on L+M’s new proposal for 11 Broadway, the Brooklyn Paper manages to drag up a three-year-old quote of mine on a completely different development proposal for the site, making it sound like I am trashing this proposal:

The residential building will likely have stunning views of the Williamsburg Bridge and the lower Manhattan skyline, but Community Board 1 member Ward Dennis believes that much of the building’s views to the north and west will be cut off by the 34-story towers of the Domino development.

“What you’d see from this [building] is the East River and Corlear’s Hook — the part of Manhattan just south of the Williamsburg Bridge that is loaded with public and union housing projects,” said Dennis on his blog, Brooklyn11211. “Not exactly million-dollar views.”

Of course that quote was in reference to a completely different project – a 200-room luxury “waterfront” hotel, that some were saying would have killer views of the city. Given its geography, I was a bit skeptical of this claim. Three years on, the Brooklyn Paper strips it of context, and makes it sound like I have a problem with the new proposal.

L+M’s project sounds very interesting. It will certainly set a new standard for affordable housing in the neighborhood – it will have 20% lower-income housing (less than 80% AMI) and 60% middle-income (125% AMI?), with only 20% of the units at market rate (this is what the affordable housing groups should have been fighting for at projects like Domino). The Broadway building will be 15 stories tall, a consequence of the fact that the blocks alongside the Williamsburg Bridge were never included any contextual rezonings. The architects for the project are Greenberg Farrow, the same people who brought you 80 Metropolitan and North 8 condos (and for full disclosure, a firm that I do work with professionally).

Is 15 stories out of context? On Broadway, adjacent to the bridge and fronting the water across Kent, I’d argue that it is more appropriate than the 17-story block Domino will put just off Wythe Avenue. The latter high-rise sits adjacent to a neighborhood of three-story row houses, and will form the backdrop for a row of three-story houses on Wythe Avenue. Height has its place, just not everyplace.

For the record, the only thing I have written about the new L+M proposal for 11 Broadway is this post, passing on the original Crain’s article on the project.



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Brooklyn Paper Endorsements

The Brooklyn Paper is out with its endorsements for tomorrow’s primary (and a very good rundown of the pros and cons on each candidate). Some of their highlight picks in North Brooklyn are:

Joe Lentol, 50th Assembly District
Lincoln Restler, 50th AD Male District Leader (“strongly” endorsed)
Kate Zidar, 50th AD Female District Leader
Esteban Duran, 53rd AD Male District Leader

Comments Fixed

09/10/2010 | Comment

The memory issue that was wreaking havoc with the commenting here has been fixed. You should be able to leave comments without getting cryptic error messages.



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Is Greenpoint Hospital Plan on Hold or Not?

Aaron Short follows up on the Greenline’s story on the Greenpoint Hospital RFP. Greenline had reported that – in response to community outrage over the award of the project to a Bronx developer – the City had put a hold on the project in order to “reconsider” a neighborhood proposal for the site. Now Short has the City walking back that claim, saying that “the ‘hold’ was merely a rumor”.

It will be interesting to see where this leads. (And I guess that “line of communication” that HPD promised to open with community is still a little backed up.)

[Greenline is published by St. Nicks Alliance, which is a partner in GREC, the local development group fighting for reconsideration of the RFP.]

Goldman Arm Revives Williamsburg Project

11 Broadway was originally slated to be a luxury hotel (with lofty ambitions and delusions of waterfront views). Now, L+M Development Partners, with financing from Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, is developing the site. The project will be mixed use, retail and residential, with 20% of the residential portion set aside as affordable housing (I’m not sure if this is in or out of the inclusionary housing zone – it is definitely not in the height-restricted contextual zone). The architect for the project is Greenberg Farrow (who were also the architects for the most recent hotel scheme).

via The Real Deal

HPD Pulls Greenpoint Hospital RFP

09/03/2010 | Comment

Greenline (which is not online) is reporting that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has suspended the redevelopment of the Greenpoint Hospital site in order to review its RFP process. In April, the agency had awarded the development rights for the property to TNS Development, a Queens- and Westchester-based affordable housing developer. That award was made despite the fact that two local groups with extensive experience developing affordable housing in North Brooklyn – Greenpoint Renaissance Enterprise Corporation and Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council – had submitted bids.

GREC was particularly upset about getting passed over in the designation process, and for good reason – they had been advocating for development on the site for over 25 years, had already developed 45 units of affordable housing elsewhere on the hospital site, and had the support of Community Board 1. To top it off, TNS’s winning bid was remarkably similar to what GREC had proposed.

The suspension of the development process came after GREC had a joint meeting in July with HPD Commissioner Rafael Cestero, the Mayor’s office, BP Marty Markowitz and Councilmember Diana Reyna. In suspending the development, HPD has agreed to reconsider GREC’s proposal and to “develop a line of communication with the community” (a promise that HPD has made many times before).



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