Stiles Properties’ proposed Java Street (bottom) and India Street piers, as seen in a 2009 rendering.
Source: Architects Newspaper

Last month, the City’s Economic Development Corporation issued an RFP for the redevelopment of the Java Street pier. This is the only City-owned pier on the North Brooklyn waterfront (it’s actually a pier in concept only – the actual pier structure was demolished in 2000). EDC’s current call for proposals seeks to carry out that mission, by transferring ownership of the .

EDC’s RFP says that the agency

aims to identify and select a qualified and experienced developer that has the financial capacity to construct improvements on the Site, including a new pier structure that will allow for vessel moorage and provide local residents with safe and enjoyable access to the East River waterfront.

Public access to the waterfront is sorely lacking in Greenpoint*, so any progress on this front is a big step forward. But according to Councilman Steve Levin’s office, this may all be part of a deal between EDC and the developer of an adjacent waterfront site, Stiles Properties. According to Levin, Stiles and EDC have already applied to the Army Corps of Engineers to start the construction of the pier.

So what’s in it for Stiles? Three words – FAR. Even though this property is in the middle of the East River, it is still a “parcel of land”, and it comes complete with development rights, zoning restrictions, etc. Stiles owns the adjacent property between Java and India Streets, west of West Street. With its R8 zoning, the ±18,000 square feet of (underwater) land would generate up to 40,000 square feet of additional development rights by Levin’s calculations. Those development can only be transferred to adjacent properties (like the one which is owned by Stiles Properties).

Is this a bad thing? That’s not entirely clear. Greenpoint needs access to the waterfront, and an innovative public/private partnership may be what is needed to kickstart a very moribund development environment on the Greenpoint waterfront. Certainly the City isn’t in a position to build out the pier and provide the public amenity. So this may be the best way for the City to follow through on its promises from six years ago, and for the Greenppoint community to start to reclaim its waterfront.

But as an adjacent property owner, Stiles is in a unique position to capitalize on the development rights here (as is the owner of the block to the south, who – by the way – claims that he owns part of the site that the City is trying to transfer). Stiles presented plans for a Java Street pier to Community Board 1 almost a year ago. The fact that Stiles has already applied to construct a pier on Java Street indicates that they have some expectation of winning the RFP. The RFP itself is very aggressive in its timeline – it has a one-month turnaround (sorry – the deadline already passed), and requires that applicants demonstrate that they are “prepared to commence construction within six (6) months of closing and complete construction within eighteen (18) months of commencement”. And with the work their architects (Pelli Clark Pelli) have been doing over the past couple of years, Stiles has a clear advantage in the requirement to submit architectural plans on short notice.

The transfer of the air rights is – presumably – as of right. Assuming that the additional floor area can be squeezed into the height restrictions of the existing zoning envelope, the floor area can be moved from underwater onto land through a zoning lot merger. No special permits or other discretionary actions that would trigger public review are required (although it may be subject to some review for disposition of City-owned property). (Stiles has a separate proposal to generate floor area by acquiring India and Java Streets themselves – that would be subject to additional public review. It’s not clear if that is still on the table, or if this pier acquisition makes it moot.)

The RFP raises other questions. It says that the use of site must “serve a public purpose”, but what are the requirements for public access? Would it be transferred to City Parks as other waterfront esplanades and piers are required to be? Would it be open to the public at all hours, or would it be treated differently? Will the additional floor are generated come with a requirement to build 20% affordable housing, or is it all market rate?

In the end, a lot of the concern is about transparency. Greenpointers were upset when the Palin development on the block to the north (India/Huron) went up to 40 stories by moving existing bulk within the same property (no additional FAR was generated in that move). But that was done with a public review. This proposal would increase the as-of-right development by 6% or more – from 660,000 sf to approximately 700,000 sf, all without public input on the design and use of City-owned property or any public review at all.

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* No private developments have broken ground in Greenpoint, so the waterfront esplanades that you see going in at Northside Piers and the Edge are far off in Greenpoint’s future. The City recently broke ground at Transmitter Park (expected to be completed for Summer, 2012), and has constructed a small park at the head of Manhattan Avenue. Larger open-space projects in Greenpoint are on hold – 65 Commercial Street is stuck in MTA limbo, Barge Park is awaiting the demolition of the Sludge Tank and Bushwick Inlet Park is waiting on the City to take action to acquire a series of (environmentally suspect) private sites.

CineMagic’s Riverfront Studios will be located in the big red building with the brand-new windows.

Yesterday I mentioned that 420 Kent Avenue (part of the former Kedem Winery site) was undergoing a major rehab (something a bit more than the “interior renovation of storage garage” described on the Alt-2 application). My information was correct – the property is being converted into a massive soundstage facility for movie and video production. According to a listing of production facilities put together by the citystate, CineMagic’s Riverfront Studios at 420 Kent Avenue will include five stages (River Stage, Schaefer Stage, Rooftop Stage, Skyline Stage and Daylight Stage) totaling more than 60,000 square feet. The people behind this operation already operate a small stage on Elizabeth Street in Soho (the website for the Williamsburg facility isn’t live yet).

Given the investment required to put together a major facility like this (which I assume CineMagic wouldn’t do without some sort of long-term lease), I’m betting that owner Rector Hylan has no imminent plans to build residential here.

The City Council approved the New Domino rezoning yesterday, making some modifications along the way. The final rezoning can now be summed up in three words:

It’s still big.

For anyone who supports a progressive approach to land use and planning, yesterday’s Domino vote was nothing short of a disappointment. (And judging by the large number of people who submitted testimony to the City Council and City Planning Commission against the Domino proposal – they easily outnumbered supporters – there are a lot of disappointed people in Williamsburg today.) Despite very strong community support for a better plan, the rezoning that the Council passed is essentially the rezoning that the developer asked for. There will still be at least 2,200 residential units, and there will still be hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail and office space. And yes, those impacts are still offset by the developer’s pledge for 660 units of affordable housing (a maximum of 30% of the project) and a new 4-acre waterfront esplanade.

The changes that were made to the development side of the project really amount to rearranging deck chairs. They certainly don’t address any of the core objections raised by Community Board 1 or Borough President Marty Markowitz (who still has issues with the project). The height of the two tallest towers are reduced by 60′ each (to 34 stories), but that floor area is just reallocated within the development site. And one of the few changes made by City Planning – reducing the height of one of the office towers – is undone by the Council. The net effect is no reduction in density, no offsetting of the per capita reduction in open space for Williamsburg (a “statistical fractional decrease” in the words of the developer – an actual reduction in available open space to you and me), no mitigation of shadow impacts on Grand Ferry Park or neighboring row houses, and no improvements to an overburdened transit system (other than a shuttle bus to make it easier for Domino residents to get to the overburdened transit system).

In short, the New Domino continues to employ a new math – one that says that 5,000 to 6,000 market-rate (i.e., luxury) tenants somehow won’t permanently change the character of a working class Latino neighborhood (prediction – it will). At 2,200 units (minimum), Domino will increase the local population by about 20%. And that assumes that all 330 of the affordable housing units set aside for residents of Community Board 1 go to residents of the immediate neighborhood (prediction – less than half that number will).

There are some truly positive changes that came out of the Council negotiations, all of them courtesy of the city (and your tax dollars).

First off, there is the city’s commitment to continue funding the Tenant Anti-harassment Fund. One of the effects of the gentrification of Greenpoint and Williamsburg has been increased harassment of tenants, particularly those in rent stabilized or rent controlled apartments. The addition of 1,540 new market-rate units is only going to make the problem worse on the Southside. A consortium of community groups has been fighting this trend – with very tangible results – for a few years now. Now that initiative will continue. The question is, will the initiative continue through the development of the entire Domino project (a ten-year horizon), or is the City just going add a year or two onto the project?

The other big win for the community is the funding of a district-wide transportation study. Again, pretty dry stuff, but this is something the community has been asking for for over 7 years (since well before the 2005 rezoning). We’ve seen the results of ad hoc transportation planning, and they aren’t pretty. Done right, a district-wide transportation study might even lead to a comprehensive transportation and transit plan that will address some of the burdens that projects like Domino (and many, many others) will bring to this transit-poor neighborhood.

There are other benefits for the community at large, including additional capital funding for parks and a capital contribution to a community cultural center (Northside Town Hall, I believe). Of course these promises get added to the long list of promises from the 2005 rezoning (many of which remain unfulfilled). And the big thing that the City could have done to mitigate the reduction in open space Domino is bringing to the neighborhood – creating new parkland – remains a dream.