• Cooperage Hotel Plan Questioned

    WEIDEMAN.jpg

    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.

  • Does TNR Have the Funding to Build Greenpoint Hospital?

    The Daily News reports this morning that TNS Development – the group that won the bid from the City to build affordable housing at the Greenpoint Hospital site – may not have the funding lined up to do the project. Specifically, TNS’s bid to the City included almost $4 million in funding from Borough President Marty Markowitz – money that Markowitz says he has not been asked for and probably wouldn’t give if he was asked for it:

    ‘I have not received any request for funding … nor have I made any commitment to this organization.’ [Markowitz] wrote in a letter this month to Housing Preservation and Development officials.
    ‘Your development staff should be familiar with my past … appropriations to realize that the sums being requested exceed the funds I have provided to individual housing projects during my tenure.’

    This confirms what I have been hearing for some time now: that TNS probably does not – and will not – have the funding to do the project.

  • Broadway Triangle, Still Up in the Air

    In the Greenpoint Gazette, Juliet Linderman recaps the current status of the Broadway Triangle rezoning. The judge hearing the case has continued the stay on the project in light of the ongoing investigations of Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Services Corp., one of the groups selected to develop the city-owned sites in the Triangle. In the meantime, the tax abatements that were to help fund it have expired, eliminating at least one reason for quick action.

    I’ve said before that the courts – not the land-use process – are the proper place to decide the issues of who got what and who got left out – the process issues. But the plaintiffs suit with regard to the land-use issues is foolish.

    the lawsuit wagers that the preliminary planning meetings were exclusive, and that the overall structure of the affordable housing complexes—low-density with a disproportionate number of multiple-room dwellings—are designed specifically for Hasidic families, and neglect the needs of black and Hispanic area residents.

    “Low-density” in this case means the same density as every other rezoning that has happened over the past decade in North Brooklyn (OK, with one exception), and roughly the same density as all of the high-rise projects nearby (the tower in the park configuration of these projects yields a surprisingly low density). And the zoning – the R6s and R7s – does not dictate unit size. That is decided by the developers (which goes back to the issues that should be decided in court).

    And for all the attention on Ridgewood Bushwick and UJO, it’s worth remembering that the vast majority of the Triangle is privately owned. If history is any guide, those sites will not be built with affordable housing, but they will be built to the maximum building envelope allowed under zoning. And to whatever price and configuration the market will bear.

  • Swells Angels

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    Photo: Joel Raskin for Outside Magazine.

    Outside magazine, on the waterfront:

    The next three hours constituted the single most thrilling ride I’ve ever had in New York—no small boast in the land of the runaway cab. Anthony raced us past the sunbathers on Manhattan Beach. He brought us within yards of the Statue of Liberty’s sandals. We saw the city from new and exciting angles: under the Brooklyn Bridge; in the shadow of a hulking cruise ship docked in Red Hook while crews scrubbed the balconies; bobbing next to the buildings of Wall Street… Back at the Brooklyn waterfront, we topped out at 50 miles per hour — a terrifically uncomfortable speed…

    Vroom, vroom.

  • Making 'Fair Share' Fairer

    Gotham Gazette has an excellent piece out about the changes to “fair share” proposed under the City’s Charter revision. In a nutshell, it will give neighborhoods like North Brooklyn (home to five or six City Sanitation garages, about half of the city’s commercial waste haulage, numerous brownfields, power plants and a sewage treatment plant).

    Currently, the City Charter has a provision that is intended to take into account the impact of Sanitation garages, sewage treatment plants, and the like on a community. The provision is intended to encourage a more equitable distribution of city facilities across community districts. But the current Charter provisions only require that the City take into account facilities on City-owned sites, leaving out the environmental and social impacts happening on privately-owned land. The proposed Charter revision would take into account all “state, federal and private facilities that handle solid waste and transportation in the city facilities map”.

    This is a big step forward. It certainly is not a perfect fix – the fair-share provisions only require review, not an actual fair-share distribution (witness the City’s recent approval of expanded Sanitation facilities in CD1), and the new provisions don’t take into account all impacts on privately-owned land – but as Gotham Gazette says, it is a good first step.

  • NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan

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    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).

    reach13.jpg

    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

  • 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

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    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.

  • 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

  • Primary Battles Pit Upstarts Against Democratic Party Kingmaker Vito Lopez

    Some of the hardest fought races for Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Brooklyn are for jobs most people have never heard of and know nothing about.

    The Daily News has a good, comprehensive summary of who running for what at the Brooklyn level.

    Primary day is this Tuesday, September 14.

    VOTE!

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