In the Brooklyn Paper, Aaron Short has this quote from one of the few legal tenants in the building:

“It’s horrible!” said Ralph De La Rosa of Go Yoga, which occupies a first-floor business space. “The city should be doing something else instead of vacating them in this way.”

Let’s review, shall we. This is a six-story building with 12 “apartments”. There are no sprinklers (as is required for hotels and other transient uses), there are no secondary means of egress (as is required for hotels and other transient uses). Most of the four-story addition is constructed of combustible wood framing. All of the DOB permits for this building describe a three-story commercial building, so the top three stories seem to be some form of immaculate construction (DOB issued a violation for the construction of the third story in 2002, but somehow missed the fourth, fifth and sixth). There is no certificate of occupancy (so technically, even Go Yoga is in there illegally).

What else, exactly, would you have the city do? Other than the fact that a lot of people are out of their (very expensive) home, what is horrible about this whole episode is the fact that the city didn’t do something about it eight years ago.

View WBP in a larger map

Last night, long after the Domino drama was over, Community Board #1 passed a resolution calling on the City to turn the DOT-operated property underneath the Williamsburg Bridge (in green on the map) into a public park. As I wrote yesterday, this is not a new idea (in fact, the Williamsburg 197a plan called for this same thing 10+ years ago). But it is an idea whose time has come.

Coincidentally, City Planning did a presentation to the Board last night on their development of a 10-year comprehensive waterfront plan. They are in the midst of a survey of the entire NYC waterfront (the last such survey was in 1992). Two of the City’s stated goals in waterfront planning are “expanding public access to the waterfront” and “enlivening the waterfront with attractive uses, high-quality public spaces, and publicly oriented water-dependent uses, integrated with adjacent upland communities”.

“Williamsburg Bridge Park” is a 700′-long site located between South 5th Street (the southern boundary of the Domino site, in red above) and Broadway. The property includes a large amount of paved-over open space directly on the river, so it could be turned into an ersatz esplanade at relatively little expance. The property also includes a two-story building between South 6th and Broadway and a couple of smaller buildings directly under the Williamsburg Bridge, any of which could be repurposed for recreational uses. The property is currently used by DOT, but there are no “water-dependent” uses – the land is just left over space from the old Brooklyn Ferry Company (which ran the Broadway Ferry from this site) that would be put to better use a public park.

Photo: Bachner for the Daily News

One of the biggest adverse impacts of the Domino rezoning is the impact on community-wide open space. As I’ve said before, despite a huge allocation of open space in the project (well above the minimum required by zoning), the project actually reduces the per capita open space rather significantly. In a community that ranks near the bottom in city-wide open space rankings, that is simply not acceptable. Also not acceptable are the significant shadow impacts on Grand Ferry Park – Domino will put the park into shadow for an additional 4 to 6 hours per day, year round.

In talking about mitigation, I’ve mainly discussed reducing the density of the project – attacking the denominator. But what if you could something about the numerator? Say, for the sake of argument that there was a large city-owned site directly adjacent to the Domino site. Two-blocks worth, right on the river. One that includes buildings that could be converted for recreational uses and open space that could be readily converted into a waterfront esplanade.

Something like this, perhaps?

From the Greenpoint Gazette, a Domino spokesperson on the preservation of the Refinery building:

No other waterfront development is preserving anything…

Ahem.

The developer of the Austin, Nichols & Co. warehouse (pdf) is not only preserving a huge industrial building on the waterfront (five blocks from the refinery), they are doing so voluntarily, with historic preservation tax credits and a facade easement donation. And the building looks beautiful.

It’s unprecedented.

A long, long time ago I wrote a post about the ridiculous set up at 164 Grand Street. This is a new condo-turned-rental on Grand just off of Bedford (across the street from La Villetta Bakery). At the time, I noted that the building (designed by Scarano Architects) used every play in the book – mezzanines, attics and cellar duplexes. What was particularly ridiculous about the cellar duplex is that the building’s trash cans sat right on top of the sidewalk grates that protected the cellar’s light wells.

The cellar in this instance is not a legal living space. Often such a space is designated on plans as a “home office” or other such contrivance to get around the fact that it does not have sufficient light or natural ventilation to qualify as a habitable room. Sure, real estate agents will give you a nod and a wink when they tell you you can’t use it as a bedroom – but the Certificate of Occupancy (pdf) is pretty clear on the question: “not for living or sleeping”. And plenty of people do use these non-habitable spaces for habitation.

But it is illegal. As the tenant in this unit found out last week.

164 Grand
Partial Vacate

The Domino rezoning hits CB1’s Land Use Committee tonight. As a result, I have spent the better part of the past few weeks reading and rereading the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) (and thereby neglecting things like blogs and tweets), trying to get my head around the thing. And after all that, I think I can sum up the Domino rezoning in two words:

It’s big.

Supersize gigundo big, in fact.

The total project is over 2.8 million square feet of residential, retail, community facilities and office space concentrated on 6 blocks of Southside Williamsburg. Most of that, 2.4 million square feet, is for residential apartments. At about 1,000 square feet (gross) per unit (the developer’s estimate), that works out to 2,400 units. At 2.5 persons per unit (a conservative number), we’re looking at 6,000 new residents.

That’s a 24% increase in the population of the area west of the BQE that encompasses South Williamsburg (to just past Division Avenue), the Southside and the Northside (to North 10th Street).

(Community Preservation Corporation Resources (CPCR), the lead developer, is saying that they will “only” build 2,200 (a potential population increase of “only” 22%), but the zoning regulates floor area (square footage), not number of units or number of people. Market-rate development in the neighborhood has been heavily skewed toward one- and two-bedroom apartments, and if CPCR went that route, the number of units could easily exceed the 2,400 estimate in the EIS.)

The affordable housing is big too. CPCR proposes to make 660 of those units affordable at a variety of income levels. If they stick to their 2,200 total units, that works out to 30% of the total development. (The developer’s proposal is for 660 units, not a fixed percentage of the overall development.)

In terms of how this proposal compares to past rezonings, two words: much bigger. 33% bigger, to be precise. If the Domino project were developed according to the standards of the 2005 rezoning, it would be 600,000 square feet (550 units) smaller. (Worth remembering – CB1 voted against the 2005 rezoning because, among other things, it was too big and did not provide enough affordable housing – the community demanded 40% affordable and wound up with 33%.)

Put another way, the 2005 rezoning anticipated 5,544 new residential units on the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront. The Domino rezoning would increase the potential number of waterfront housing units by 43%.

Retail and Office Space

The retail portion of the project is big too. 127,000 square feet big. That’s half again as much as the total new retail development projected for the entire 184-block 2005 Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezoning. On top of that, CPCR is proposing to construct two office towers at the north end of the site with just under 100,000 square feet of commercial office space within.

Open space

Domino does open space big too. The proposed development would result in just under 4 acres of publicly-accessible open space. The waterfront portion of the open space would be turned over the Department of Parks and Recreation for administration (with Domino paying for upkeep, same as Northside Piers and the Edge have done). In addition to the 1/4-mile long waterfront esplanade, there will also be four “upland connectors” (you and I would call them streets, extending the Southside street grid west of Kent Avenue), to which Parks would be granted an easement for permanent public use. The open space would also include a large lawn to the west of the refinery building (which, being a landmark, is retained in the development) and two playgrounds. Most of the open space is mandated by the waterfront zoning, though only three of the four upland connectors are required, so the addition of the fourth connector is a major plus in terms of the overall urban design.

But even with all this new open space, when all the new residents are accounted for, the community winds up with less open space per resident that we have now. About 6% less within the half-mile study area examined in the EIS (extending from Division Avenue to North 10th Street and as far east as Roebling Street). If you know this area, you know there is not much open space to begin with. In fact, this area has barely a quarter of the amount of open space mandated by City Planning.

In order to meet the City’s guidelines for open space at current population levels, we would need to add 61 acres of new open space to Northside, Southside and South Williamsburg (the half-mile area surrounding the Domino site). And that’s before you add the 2,400 new units Domino would bring to the neighborhood. In order to meet City guidelines with the Domino residents, we would need to add almost 86 acres of new open space.

At the end of the day, despite the considerable amount of open space being provided by Domino, the huge number of new units (and hence new residents) actually results in less open space per person.

And there’s one more thing.

Remember those office towers at the north end of the site? Well, they are going to leave Grand Ferry Park in shadow for the better part of the day. (“During the warmer months (April through October), all areas of the park would continue to get several hours of sun in the morning, and most areas of the park would get sun later in the afternoon as well. However, several hours of new midday shadow would be cast on the park. In December, under [current conditions], sunlight is already limited throughout the day, and the proposed project would remove all or most of the remaining sunlight for about two hours around midday. Portions of the park would continue to receive direct sunlight [emphasis added] throughout the day during the spring, summer, and fall.”)

Parking

If you guessed big, you’re catching on. 1,694 parking spaces big. The zoning only requires 1,042 parking spaces, and permits a maximum of 1,541 spaces, so the developer is applying for a special permit to allow it to exceed the maximum. Why CPCR needs 63% more parking spaces than zoning requires is not clear.

Domino also provides 456 bicycle parking spaces, and if you think that is a lot, you’re wrong. Under the City’s new bicycle parking regulations, Domino should be providing 1,241 units of bicycle parking (including one for every two housing units).

Transit

There’s no wrapping my head around this one.

The project will have an adverse impact on crowding at the crosswalk at North 7th and Bedford, but somehow all those folks crowding the crosswalk won’t have an adverse impact on the L train itself. (I guess because the L train is already pretty much at capacity, what’s another 700 riders during the morning rush?)

Domino would also have a “significant adverse impact” at the Marcy Avenue J/M/Z stop (where 40% of the riders from the project are expected to go to catch the train). One solution to the J/M/Z impacts is to not allow people to enter the train at the Havemeyer end of the platform. Instead, people (including Domino residents) should walk an extra block to the Marcy Avenue entrance. Somehow I don’t see that encouraging Domino residents to use the J/M/Z.

Actually, that and a shuttle bus are the only mitigation solutions to adding almost 2,500 additional subway trips to the morning and evening rush.

The truth is that when it comes to transit and transportation, there has been very little planning or mitigation for all the new development that already been approved (we’re still waiting for the MTA to widen the stairs at Bedford Avenue). It’s also true that there is really nothing that CPCR can do to mitigate any of its transit impacts, unless it proposes to build a new tunnel to Manhattan. So until that happens, its shuttle buses and “a multitude of alternative commuting options [that] may also be provided”.

Or, as the EIS puts it in a more candid moment, “absent such mitigation measures, the proposed project would result in an unmitigated significant adverse transit impact.” And we’ll just leave it at that.

TGE’s dream – denied (again)

TransGas Energy System’s latest legal gambit has fallen flat. In a terse decision [pdf], the New York State Court of Appeals has denied TGE’s motion to appeal a prior appellate court ruling.

This all goes back to TGE’s 2002 acquisition of rights to the Bayside Fuel Oil site at North 12th Street and Kent Avenue. In 2004, the New York State Board on Electric Generating Siting and Environment voted to deny TGE’s application to build an above-ground power plant on the site. In May, 2005, the City rezoned the site for parkland. In March, 2008, the siting board rejected a revised TGE plan for an underground plant on the same site, and in September, 2009, the Appellate Court upheld that siting board decision. And now, the Court of Appeals has refused to hear TGE’s appeal (“motion for leave to appeal denied”).

If you are keeping score at home, that’s community 4, TGE 0. (Actually it’s worse than that – TGE has had a series of smaller rejections over that time.)

Despite the fact that this has gone completely under the radar, this is very big news for Williamsburg and Greenpoint. The City can now move ahead with condemnation proceedings to acquire the property. And the City might be able to afford it too – with no viable power plant use (and massive environmental remediation needed), the value of the property is considerably less.

In other words, we are one step closer to a park on the Bushwick Inlet. (And from what I understand, TGE’s option on the Bayside site expires in a couple of months, so maybe this time TGE’s plan is not only merely dead but really most sincerely dead.)

Marty Markowitz has decided to split the difference on Rose Plaza. He is recommending approval (with modifications) on the basic rezoning of the Certified Lumber site (the change from manufacturing to residential use) and disapproval (with modifications) on the applicant’s special permit applications (to increase the height of some buildings, etc.).

Reading between the lines, Markowitz’s thinking seems to be that the base rezoning is consistent in height and density with other waterfront rezonings and that the applicant is providing the basic level of affordable housing (20%) in exchange.

The biggest issue for the BP on the rezoning itself was the guarantee of affordability. Even though the applicant says they plan to use the Inclusionary Housing program and other benefits to provide 20% of the units as affordable housing, those units are not guaranteed. A developer (the applicant or someone down the line) could decide that the density bonus and tax abatements are not worth the extra cost of building the affordable housing and just do a market-rate project. In response to prodding from Markowitz, the applicant has committed to a deed restriction guaranteeing that at least the 20% affordable housing will be built. Good on Marty for that.

The special permits are another issue in that they add value to the project over and above the base rezoning. With the special permits, there would be fewer towers (which represents an efficiency of scale in construction costs) and those towers would be taller (creating better views and higher psf sales prices). In exchange for that added value, Markowitz lays out a menu of modifications, which he “hopes the City Planning Commission and the City Council will give strong consideration to.”

These modifications (which also appear to be the conditions for the approval of the base zoning) include: 33% affordable housing (with the portion above the 20% as moderate- to middle-income housing); a higher proportion of two- and three- and four-bedroom units in the project; the inclusion of a supermarket in the retail portion of the project; the rebuilding of the entire Division Avenue street end (not just half, as the applicant is now obligated); and a strong, non-binding, participatory role for Community Board 1 on issues such as design, environmental clean up and the like.

With the exception of the supermarket, these modifications match very closely the issues cited by CB1. From the applicant’s point of view, the rezoning might be the most important thing, but going forward, CPC and the Council have a pretty clear – and consistent – road map for what will make this a good project. That is probably why people on both sides of the issue think this is an “excellent resolution”.

On Monday, the City Council approved the Broadway Triangle rezoning by a vote of 36 to 10, with 4 abstentions (Gotham Gazette and the Times both have excellent coverage of the vote and the process). The final agreement worked out by the council included an additional 10,000 square feet of public open space (at the cost of about 40 units of affordable housing), and vague promises to provide assistance to relocate businesses in the area. Also, Councilmember (and soon to be Public Advocate) was heard making noises about HPD’s process of sole-sourcing development rights here and elsewhere.

All of that is on top of the basic outlines of the plan that have been in place from the beginning – a substantial amount of affordable housing within a manageable and sustainable zoning envelope.

Proponents are citing a figure of 800+ plus units of affordable housing, while the opponents say that “much of the affordable housing… is not mandatory, but it is part of the city’s inclusionary housing program“. The truth lies somewhere in between. The number of units on city-owned sites is about 600 (and that is after the loss of 40 units for the additional open space). Those units are guaranteed to be affordable. The difference between 600 and 800 is the inclusionary housing program, and those units are not guaranteed. In fact, if the past any indication, it is likely that none of those additional will be built. But even if they are not, and the rest of the rezoning area is built out fully with market-rate units, this rezoning will still generate over 40% affordable housing.

Part of the reason the rezoning reaches that percentage (a number the entire community fought for in the 2005 waterfront rezoning) is that the overall zoning is contextual to the rest of the community. The R6A and R7A implemented as part of this rezoning does not seek to supersize development – it keeps development within a reasonable and sustainable density (again, something the entire community fought for in 2005).

But it’s not over yet.

The Observer was a tad premature in its assessment of the Council’s approval “seeming to conclude a saga over the large below-market rate housing site in Brooklyn that has been pushed relentlessly by Assemblyman Vito Lopez”.

That’s because last night, a judge “granted the Broadway Triangle Community Coalition’s application to halt implementation of the City’s controversial rezoning of the 30 acre Urban Renewal Area at the border of Williamsburg and Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.”

I’ve recently upgraded the blogging software that keeps this running, and it has not been without hitches. One of those, I have been informed, is that the site looks worse than ever on Internet Explorer. Since I a) don’t use Windows very often and b) use IE even less often, I hadn’t noticed. But I checked and it’s true.

Everything seems to be OK with Firefox, Safari or Chrome on Windows XP, and it’s possible that IE8 behaves properly, but IE7 (and I assume earlier versions) are definitely not OK. If the content you are viewing is half a page down and you are not seeing a little icon for the NAG party on the right of the screen, something is wrong with your browser. Switch to Firefox (or any other modern standards-compliant browser – it works fine in ) and things should be better.

But I will try to fix it.