The City’s draft waterfront plan calls new public access at Williamsburg Bridge Park (5) and the former BRT power plant site (6).

The Department of City Planning has released its draft comprehensive waterfront plan (aka Vision 2020), and it has a lot for North Brooklyn to get excited about (and quite a few things that reiterate past promises).

The plan identifies a number of areas for new waterfront access, including the Williamsburg Bridge Park site just south of Domino, which is currently occupied by two city agencies that are not providing waterfront-dependent services (“explore potential for open space under bridge dependent on finding relocation sites for current DOT and DCAS facilities”). The reuse of this site was first proposed a few years ago by then-Councilmember David Yassky, and it got some added traction during the Domino rezoning. (The Domino rezoning will result in a reduction of access to open space on a per capita basis; the creation of a large waterfront park right next door would reverse that.) Since the Domino rezoning, NAG and other local groups have been looking into how to jumpstart the conversion of this site into public park space.

The City’s waterfront plan also calls for an expansion of public access (visual and physical) to the Navy Yard’s waterfront, and for public waterfront access at the former BRT (Con Ed) power plant site at Division and Kent. Even more interesting is that the plan calls for this site to be industrial or commercial (“explore options for redevelopment for industrial and/ or commercial uses with opportunities for public access if appropriate”), rather than residential. Meaning that the site is envisioned more as an extension to the Navy Yard than as an extension to the South Williamsburg residential waterfront north of Division (the Kedem, Schaefer and Certified sites).

The plan also includes new ideas for Newtown Creek, including a boat launch at Manhattan Avenue. (And some old ideas
yet to be followed through on.)

The plan also has some new ideas for Newtown Creek, which largely boils down to public access and residential/commercial uses at the mouth of the creek and continued industrial uses with public access (like the NCWWTP nature walk) further upstream. The plan calls for residential and commercial development of the Long Island City waterfront (with public access to the creek), opposite Manhattan Avenue, as well as improvements to public access and a boat launch at the Manhattan Avenue street-end. (The boat launch could be referring to the proposed Greenpoint Boathouse at GMDC’s Manhattan Avenue facility – if it isn’t, it should be.) There are also rather fuzzy calls for public access of some sort beneath the Greenpoint Avenue and Kosciusko Bridges.

It should be noted that the plan also reiterates a number of past promises that the City has made to Greenpoint and Williamsburg – promises that are nice to see reiterated, but would better appreciated if implemented. These include the development of 65 Commercial Street as a park, the development of the Greenpoint Lumber for residential use, the redevelopment of the India and Java Street piers and the acquisition and build-out of Bushwick Inlet Park. All of these are promises that the City made as part of the 2005 rezoning that remain unfulfilled (the India/Java Piers have recently taken on a controversy of their own).

In all, though, there are a lot of new and very positive ideas being put forth in the City’s plan. The plan, which is part of a decennial review of the waterfront that City Planning is required to undertake, will be reviewed at a public hearing on October 12, after which it will be issued as official City policy.

via Brownstoner

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).

As I speculated recently, the Brooklyn Paper has confirmed that at least one of the RFPs issued recently by the City’s EDC is for the construction of a ferry landing at North 6th Street. Starting sometime around January 2012, residents of the Northside will able to take the ferry to their jobs in Lower Manhattan and to Kips Bay. It’s long overdue, but still great news.

Two new projects on North 8th Street are coming online – an 8-unit rental building at 203 North 8th Street and a 9-unit condo (The Bedford) next door at 205. Both are touted for their proximity to McCarren Park, the L train and “Broulims, a new supermarket, two blocks away”.

This raises two important questions (other than why is “The Bedford” between Driggs and Roebling?):

1. Where exactly is this new supermarket that is not a Khim’s Millennium?

and

2. Why is Broulim’s, an Idaho-based grocery chain, making Brooklyn the location of their first store outside the Mountain time zone? (I see they have a store in Driggs, Idaho – are they making that a theme?)

It has been discussed for ages, but it looks as though the City is really moving ahead with its plans to expand the East River ferry service to all of North Brooklyn. In addition to the action at India and Java Streets that I discussed yesterday, the Post has some vague details about a new RFP for a “Williamsburg ferry landing” (distinct from possible future landings at “Northside and Greenpoint”). The City has two requests out – one (due tomorrow) is for the North Williamsburg Ferry Landing; the other an invitation to bid (which is what I think the Post is talking about) for the “Passenger Ferry Landing at Williamsburg Project”. I’m assuming the North Williamsburg Ferry Landing is at the Edge – the RFP describes it as connecting to an existing pier. But where the Ferry Landing at Williamsburg is to be located is a mystery to me.

Still, by this time next year, there should be ferry landings at Schaefer Landing, the Edge, India Street and possibly one other mystery location. That means more riders, which is good news for the viability of the East River ferry service. But until fares come down and there is a free transfer between ferry service and the buses and subways, this will not have anything more than the slightest impact on L train ridership.

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.

****
* 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.

349 Metropolitan: When Dreams Were Big

One of my favorite condo-glut whipping boys is back. As Curbed posted today, 349 Metropolitan Avenue is getting a facelift – losing it’s Jerusalem Gold Stone in favor of Pennsylvania Beige Brick (OK, I made up the Pennsylvania part). The stone was a disaster from the get go, probably because (a) it is more appropriate to arid climates like Jerusalem, and (b) it probably shouldn’t be installed with Spackle and no wall ties (see below). Despite the extreme value engineering1, this is probably a change for the better from an aesthetic point of view.

And to complete the circle of life that is the North Brooklyn condo jungle, the project is going rental (due to open this summer!).

* OK, it’s not really value engineering if you buy it twice.↩
More 349 Met:

Williamsburg Inventory Predicted to Double [11211]
Rhymes with Clueless [11211]
Developer Blight: Snow Day Edition
Development Notebook: Burg’s 349 Metropolitan Sold & Tagged [Gowanus Lounge]

Left: How to tile a bathroom (warning, not suitable for exterior applications).
Photo: Curbed

What Williamsburg Bridge Park could be
Photo: Pamela Hutchinson

Williamsburg Bridge Park, today

Sometimes it takes a little imagination. Sometimes it takes a little inspiration. And sometimes it takes a tourist on holiday. This morning all three came together when I saw Pamela Hutchinson’s photo of the Manhattan Bridge on Brownstoner.

This is exactly the view that we should be seeing from South 6th Street and Kent Avenue. Instead, we see a parking lot on City-owned property being used for all sorts of things, none of which have any need to be on the waterfront.

The City Council is taking up the Domino rezoning on Monday. Call your Councilmember and tell them to turn the DCAS property under the bridge into Williamsburg Bridge Park. Tell them that Domino will reduce your access to open space. Tell them that the community demands a better Domino.