Weidmann Cooperage
80 Wythe Avenue
(photo: WPA)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Two Trees Management is looking for federal tax-exempt financing for its hotel project at 80 Wythe Avenue.

Two Trees, the DUMBO-based development firm, bought the former Weidmann Cooperage a few years ago, and has planned a hotel there all along. The subsidies are controversial because the site is zoned for manufacturing use. While hotel use is allowed in a manufacturing zone, city support for the subsidy would run counter to the city’s prior commitments to maintaining manufacturing uses in the Bushwick Inlet area. The other project that is competing for the subsidy is a film-production studio on Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint (a manufacturing use in a manufacturing zone).

Industrial retention advocates have questioned the project for its impact on the surrounding Industrial Business Zone and for the quality of the jobs that the hotel would create. City Comptroller John Liu has also raised questions about the validity of Two Trees’ claims with respect to the number of jobs the project would produce.