Tag: 65 commercial

Ugliest, Scariest, Most Horrible

The last thing Greenpoint ever wanted was a wall of buildings. This is the ugliest, scariest, most horrible plan.

It would have been great if all these people cared back in 2004 or so when all of this was getting approved. Olechowski is right – there was a lot of activism within the community to get a better plan out of the rezoning (going back to the mid 1990s), but what was approved is what was approved.

And except for the height of 77 Commercial, just about everything here is what was approved in 2005. And the height of 77 Commercial has an actual community benefit attached to it – a new park next door at 65 Commercial. Whether that is a trade-off worth making is another question.

City Seeks Developer to Finance Parks on Greenpoint Waterfront

The Daily News is a bit confused about the air-rights sale at 65 Commercial Street.

The sale of the air rights themselves is not a “new plan” – it was one of the points of agreement between the Bloomberg administration and the City Council back in 2005. What is new is that those same points of agreement earmarked the funds from the sale of the air rights was supposed to go towards a $2 million tenant legal fund and a $10 “waterfront affordable housing and infrastructure fund”. As I understand it, the tenant legal fund was funded by the City a few years back, when it became clear that the air rights transfer was not imminent. But I don’t believe the infrastructure fund was ever funded.

The headline of the News, and some of the quotes from “a developer who asked to remain anonymous” in the article also imply that this is a wide open RFP. It is actually quite a narrow one – there are only two developers who can reasonably use the air rights from 65 Commercial, and they are the owners of the adjacent properties to either side: 77 Commercial Street to the east and the massive Park Tower site to the west. A small market, indeed.

Transmitter Park and the 2005 Rezoning

08/22/2012 | Comment

Everyone (see below) is reporting that Transmitter Park is finally set to (re)open this Saturday as an actual (as opposed to ersatz) park. Which is great news, and long overdue.

But everyone also seems to be confusing an important detail about the 1.6-acre park – it was not “promised” as part of the 2005 rezoning. Rather, it was a commitment that predated the rezoning by a number of years. The Post, which first reported the opening, is just one example (I’m not picking on the Post here – they actually come closest to getting the facts straight):

[The] Bloomberg administration has yet to deliver roughly 50 acres of parkland that officials promised North Brooklyn residents in 2005 while pushing through a controversial rezoning plan which has brought thousands of high-rise apartments to Williamsburg and Greenpoint’s waterfronts… When it opens, the project at the former WNYC radio transmissions tower site on the river’s edge between Greenpoint Avenue and Kent Street will be first of this promised green space fully delivered.

The 2005 rezoning actually proposed to add about 38 acres of open space as part of the sweeping transformation of the Greenpoint/Williamsburg waterfront. Of that, about 28 acres was new parkland proposed by the City, 5.6 acres was in the form of new waterfront esplanades (à la the Edge & Northside Piers), and 4.8 was new open space that was added in last-minute negotiations between the City Council and the administration (this includes the someday park at 65 Commercial and additional parkland at Barge Park).

On top of those 38 acres, the City’s environmental impact statement (EIS) identified about 9 acres or so of parks and open space that was already planned. Some of that planned open space came in the form of public esplanades for developments such as Kedem Winery, Schaefer Brewery and 184 Kent Avenue (the latter two of which have been completed). But the baseline (“future without proposed action” in EIS-speak) also included the 6-acre East River State Park site, the .2-acre Manhattan Avenue street end park and the 1.6-acre Transmitter site.

This is all clearly laid out in the EIS that the City itself prepared in 2005 (to the extent that anything is clearly laid out in an EIS):

Within the Greenpoint sub-area, there are two open space resources that are expected to be developed by 2013 (see Figure 5-3). The WNYC Transmitter Site, located at the western terminus of Greenpoint Avenue at the East River, is slated for development by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) by 20131 as a waterfront park. The site currently contains a one-story building used by DPR for maintenance, and formerly contained two transmitter towers (now removed). The approximately 1.6-acre site would cater to passive recreation use and is scheduled to have a pier constructed in approximately 2 years.

So while Transmitter Park was identified in the EIS, it was identified as a park that was already “on the books”, not as one of the parks that was part of the package that the City “promised in exchange for permitting luxury housing along the waterfront“. If you do include those “future without proposed action” sites in your calculation, the total additional parks and open space goes from 38.2 to 47.0 acres. (There actually have been other additions since 2005 – notably, the 4.5-acre McCarren Park Pool, which was not included in any of the City’s 2005 EIS calculations.)

In other words, the opening of Transmitter Park is not a case of the City following through on its commitments from the 2005 rezoning, it is a case of the City following through on its commitments from years before the 2005 rezoning.

Regardless of how you count the numbers, I’d also argue that Transmitter is not the “first” park to come of the 2005 rezoning. The Manhattan Avenue Street End park was completed a few years ago, as was the soccer field at Bushwick Inlet Park.

But no matter how you count it, the opening of Transmitter Park is a big deal.

More coverage here:

City to Open Transmitter Park This Weekend [DNAinfo – who also needs to demote Lincoln Restler]

Long-Awaited Greenpoint Park To Open This Saturday [L Magazine – and Brooklyn Magazine]

New Open Space to Open in Greenpoint [Brooklyn Paper]

Greenpoint WNYC Transmitter Park Will Finally Open Saturday [Gothamist]

Better Late? B’klyn Park Finally Opening [Post]

1. Which I think means that the City is ahead of schedule in opening the park, though it’s not clear what “2 years” refers to in relation to the pier.↩

City Won’t Promise to Finish Two Long-Stalled North Brooklyn Parks

06/19/2012 | Comment

As the Brooklyn Paper reports, the Bloomberg administration has refused to commit to any goals or deliverables on the acquisition or construction of Bushwick Inlet Park or 65 Commercial Street. (I guess everyone has given up on the expansion of Barge Park?)

Financial mismanagement and planning gaffes have also stood in the way of both planned open spaces.

Bloomberg officials originally valued [the soccer field block] on the southern edge of the 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park at about $12 million, but a judge ruled that the area’s residential rezoning meant its value was almost eight times higher.

The city eventually settled with the property owner and bought the parcel for about $93 million, according to court papers and Council testimony…

Money to build a park at Commercial Street dried up too.

In 2007, city budget hawks removed $13 million of the $14 million allocated to the park’s development and spent it on other projects.

Contrary to the headline, I don’t think anyone expects that this administration will finish either of these parks before January, 2014. But the administration can ensure that the parks will be built someday by negotiating contracts to buy all of the Bushwick Inlet properties and by moving the MTA off the Commercial Street lot once and for all.

Neither of those actions will ensure that the parks are completed anytime soon (as I said elsewhere, we are looking at decades), but they will ensure that North Brooklyn has a clear path to getting the parks we were promised seven years ago.

77 Commercial Street Sells

04/13/2012 | Comment

According to the Real Deal, Manhattan-based Chetrit Group has purchased the 95,000 sf warehouse at 77 Commercial Street in Greenpoint. The property is one of the northernmost waterfront parcels that were rezoned to residential in the 2005 rezoning, and the potential development on the site could in a big, bigger or biggest development scenario.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. What is the market for housing at this location, and how much of a market is there? First off, the site is, in the words of the broker on the deal, “‘not the most centrally located’ site in Brooklyn”. This site is basically at the very end of Manhattan Avenue, a long walk from either the bus, subway or ferry. The property does have 220 feet or so of water frontage, and will have great views and (hopefully) a beautiful city park next door. But – that water frontage is all along the mouth of Newtown Creek; a lot of those views are of Queens (and eventually more towers across the creek in Hunters Point South); and, the City has yet to acquire the adjacent property for a park, let alone fund clean up and capital costs. (It’s also worth asking when the developer plans to building – they’ve completed one project in the area, at 175 Kent, but have at least one other large development site, at Union and Metropolitan, that they’ve been sitting on for a few years now.)

The second question is how big will the developer go here? The base zoning – as with all the waterfront parcels rezoned in 2005 – is relatively low, but there is a sizable floor area incentive under inclusionary zoning for a developer to add 20% affordable housing (without any public review). Beyond that, though, there are also a ton of air rights available from the adjacent parcel at 65 Commercial Street (300,000 sf, according to the Real Deal). Those air rights come with strings attached – in addition to a full ULURP review, the purchasers are supposed to build an additional 200 units of affordable housing (15% of the new affordable housing committed to by the city). And the rights are supposed generate at least $12 million (in 2005 dollars) to create a $2 million “Greenpoint Williamsburg Tenant Legal Fund” as well as provide $10 million to help offset costs associated with creating inclusionary housing on other waterfront properties.

Which raises a third question (largely related to the first one), is there even a market for these air rights? Either with this developer, or the developer of the other adjacent parcel at 37 Commercial.

65 Commercial Street Update

04/08/2011 | 2 Comments

Below is a copy of the letter from MTA Chair Jay Walder to Deputy Mayor Robert Steel, confirming the MTA’s acceptance of alternate sites for the Paratransit and EMS vehicles currently located at 65 Commercial Street. Of note is the MTA’s commitment to use the Maspeth Paratransit site for vehicle storage only, not as depot. In other words, vehicles won’t be going in and out on daily basis, which should make the use of the site (which, after all, is zoned as parking lot in a manufacturing zone) less of an issue to local residents.

BTW – if there is an unsung hero in all of this, it has to be Rami Metal, who, as the Greenpoint rep for CM Yassky and his successor CM Levin, has kept after this issue for years.

LetterfromWaldertoSteel.pdf

MTA Ready to Leave 65 Commercial

04/08/2011 | Comment

In a letter to the Mayor’s office, the MTA has finally agreed to move the operations currently housed at 65 Commercial Street. The sticking point on the move – which the MTA agreed to almost exactly 6 years ago – was the MTA’s refusal to accept the compensatory sites offered by the City. Today, the MTA finally agreed to move part of their operations to a site on the Southside beneath the Williamsburg Bridge, and the remainder to a lot in Maspeth, Queens.

So Greenpoint is one step closer to having the new park that the City (and the MTA) promised in 2005.

What’s Going on at 65 Commercial?

03/10/2011 | Comment

A few weeks ago, all of the powers that be in North Brooklyn seemed to be aligned behind a single vision – getting the MTA to live up to its commitment to get out of 65 Commercial Street. Now, any deal to turn 65 Commercial seems about to founder on the rocks.

65Commercial protest

Photo: Queens Ledger

65 Commercial Street is the MTA property in north Greenpoint that was rezoned to parkland in 2005. As part of the agreement between the City Council and the Mayor’s office to allow the zoning to go forward, the Mayor’s office got the MTA to agree to give up the property in exchange for comparable land nearby.

For almost 6 years now, the MTA has been dragging its feet, claiming the land swaps offered by the City weren’t comparable and generally doing anything they could to not live up to their end of the bargain. Local politicians, especially David Yassky and Joe Lentol, pushed the City and the MTA to come to an agreement and turn this property as parkland. Steve Levin, who succeeded Yassky in 2010, took up the banner and kept the pressure on. Just last month, District Leader Lincoln Restler organized a protest at the site that drew renewed attention to the issue, and included the support of Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez.

Levin and the Mayor’s office, meanwhile, were pushing the MTA behind the scenes, and finally, in January, the MTA agreed to a series of swaps that would finally start the process of turning 65 Commercial into a park. The first swap was that the MTA would take about 42,000 square feet of former parkland under the Williamsburg Bridge, between Wythe and Berry, as the new location for their emergency response vehicles (ERVs). This aspect of the deal seems to have been in place for some time (I had heard about it going back at least a year, if not much longer). The sticking point all along was where to put the MTA’s 150 or so Access-a-Ride vehicles. Finally, in January, the City reached a deal for the MTA to take a block of property in Maspeth for these vehicles.

So now we have the structure of a deal in place, and all of the local pols on board – problem, solved, right?

No. It appears that the deal – and Greenpoint’s future park – is in jeopardy from two different directions.

First, at this week’s CB1 meeting, Velazquez staffer Evelyn Cruz announced that the Congresswoman is opposed to BOTH land swaps (both of which are to (and from) sites in her district, so these are issues that she should weigh in on). The Maspeth site for the Access-a-Ride vehicles is in an area that is zoned and used for heavy industry. The vehicles are already traveling through the district, and many will continue to travel through CB1 as well. So the distribution of burden there is shifting slightly, but all within an area that already has the burden. Yes, it would be ideal to get the vehicles out of our lives for good – less traffic, less pollution, less congestion for both Maspeth and Greenpoint – but shifting the burden a mile or so away, to an area that is zoned for such a use, seems reasonable given that where the vehicles are located today is zoned for parkland.

In other words, don’t throw out the good for the perfect. And focus on the real problem, which is where the second monkey wrench comes in.

This one is coming from the Mayor’s office, and it concerns the second land swap – putting the ERVs on a former playground site underneath the Williamsburg Bridge. If the City gets it way on this, it would basically screw over the Southside in favor of Greenpoint.

The Berry/Wythe site under the Williamsburg Bridge once held a playground, and it is still zoned for parkland. But the playground was closed in the early 1990s because paint stripping on the Williamsburg Bridge was covering the playground in lead-paint chips. At the time, the City agreed that the park would be reopened after reconstruction on the bridge was complete.

Here’s the thing – that piece of property is a horrible place for a playground. It is directly under the bridge, upland from the water. If it gets more than an hour of sunlight a day, I’d be amazed. What would make a great park is the DOT/DCAS site two blocks to the west – what I’ve taken to calling Williamsburg Bridge Park. Yes, part of it is under the bridge too, but all of it is on the water. And all of it extends down to Broadway, so eventually, there could be a waterfront esplanade running from Broadway to Grand Street. If Parks doesn’t like open space under a bridge, that area could be used for recreational structures or community facilities. But all of it should be publicly accessible.1

Instead of a substandard park inland, the Southside could get real waterfront access, a larger waterfront esplanade and substantially more open space. For a neighborhood that has one of the worst ratios of per capita open space (a ratio that will drop when Domino gets built), this would be a huge step forward.

Because the Berry/Wythe site is mapped as parkland, the City can’t just take it away – under State law, it has to provide comparable new parkland to offset the loss of this parkland. As I noted above, swapping Berry/Wythe for the DCAS/DOT site would to just that – and more. The neighborhood – the immediate neighborhood – would get more and better parkland, open space, recreation space, in the process reinstating park space that was lost almost 20 years ago and making up for some the reduction in per capita open space from the huge rezonings of the past 6 years. Win-win.

But what the Mayor’s office is saying is that the new park space at 65 Commerical Street – all the way up in north Greenpoint – is the offsetting open space. Remember, 65 Commercial was promised as incremental park space as part of the 2005 rezoning – specifically to mitigate the impact of all the new residential development. The Berry/Wythe parkland should have been part of the baseline that 65 Commerical added to. The City committed to replace that parkland years before the rezoning was even a glimmer in anyone’s eye. To now say that 65 Commercial is Berry/Wythe is a cruel bait and switch that ultimately pits the open space interests of Greenpoint (a community that is sorely lacking for open space and a publicly-accessible waterfront) against the Southside (a community that is sorely lacking for open space and a publicly-accessible waterfront).

The Williamsburg Bridge site is a reasonable place to relocate the ERVs, and Velazquez should support that. The City has made commitments both to Greenpoint (65 Commercial) and to the Southside (reopen Berry/Wythe), and if it is going to close Berry/Wythe, it has a legal obligation to replace that parkland. What every local politician – our Congresswoman, State Senator, Assemblyman, both Councilmembers and our district leader – should be fighting for is an equitable land swap that benefits both the Southside and Greenpoint. Giving up unused, unlit parkland beneath the Williamsburg Bridge is a smart way to do that. Pushing for a good deal on 65 Commercial, even if it means keeping Access-a-Ride vehicles in the district, is also a smart way to do that.

Again, we’re in danger of sacrificing the good for the ideal – let’s not go there.

_____


1. There’s been a rumor going around that this DCAS/DOT property is where the MTA was headed – that was never the case. As I’ve said, the Berry/Wythe land swap has been on the table for ages, and there was never any discussion of the waterfront site as part of a 65 Commerical swap. Ever.↩