This is kind of amazing. The original ULURP review for Broadway Triangle was in 2009, and community meetings were in 2007 or 2008. Since then, it has gone through litigation and happily reconciliation, and now is getting built out. (By last, I assume they mean last affordable site.)
We do need to get developers to stop naming projects like they are on mews in Olde Nieuw Amsterdam – Bartlett Crossing? Please.
Pfizer has sent a letter notifying Community Board 1 that they have reached an agreement to sell the last remaining large parcels of land from the drug giant’s ancestral home. The agreement is with a group called 306 Rutledge Street II LLC, a “company acting on behalf of investors who have deep roots in the local community”. The LLC, which has a mailing address of 173 Wallabout Street, appears to have formed within the past week or so.
I have been told that these investors are not the coalition of community groups who had offered Pfizer $10 million for the properties, with plans to develop the sites as affordable housing. Although Pfizer’s letter offered few details, they specifically did not mention housing, affordable or otherwise.
State Supreme Court Judge Emily Goodman has granted a preliminary injunction that bars the City from moving forward with the development of affordable housing in the Broadway Triangle area. The suit, brought by the NY Civil Liberties Union, Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady and the Broadway Triangle Community Coalition, alleges that the City’s 2006 rezoning of Broadway Triangle violates the Federal Fair Housing Act, in that it would increase racial segregation in the neighborhoods surrounding the Broadway Triangle. Judge Goodman, in granting the injunction, ruled that the “plaintiffs had demonstrated the likelihood that they would succeed at trial on the merits of the case” (in other words, the case itself has not yet been litigated).
The Broadway Triangle rezoning covers a small swath of land north of Flushing Avenue and west of Broadway. The area that the City rezoned lies within Community Board 1, but borders directly on CB3. Most of the area that was rezoned is privately owned, but a number of City-owned parcels were set aside for the development of affordable housing. 50% of that affordable housing would be set aside for residents of CB1 (such set-asides are standard in the City). The plaintiffs contend that because Williamsburg (CB1) is predominantly white (about 60% according to the evidence presented by the plaintiffs), and Bedford-Stuyvesant is predominantly (77%) black, that the set aside would perpetuate and increase the racial segregation between the two neighborhoods. A demographer retained by the plaintiff found that only 3% of residents in the new housing would be black.
The plaintiffs’ argument – accepted by Judge Goodman – is that the City is required under Federal law to conduct an analysis on the racial impact of all rezonings. Judge Goodman wrote in her ruling that there “can be no compliance with the Fair Housing Act where defendants never analyzed the impact of the community preference”.
The issues on which the injunction was issued are ones that (to my recollection) never came up during the protracted fight over the Broadway Triangle rezoning, and certainly never came up in any of the other large and small rezonings in North Brooklyn that were enacted by the City over the past decade. On the merits, it stands to reason given the demographics of the two neighborhoods that the set aside would favor whites applying for affordable housing. But many other rezonings have created (or could create) “dramatic racial disparities”.
As NYCLU’s press release notes, this ruling has implications far beyond Broadway Triangle:
This decision puts the city is clearly on notice: When it proceeds to develop housing – whether in the Broadway Triangle or anywhere else – it must evaluate the potential impact on segregation and develop projects that include the entire community and will create more integrated neighborhoods.
So the bigger question is, how does this effect other rezonings (past and future)? Is a racial analysis required for all housing types (affordable and market rate)?
Scouting NY scouts the former Pfizer plant, which straddles East Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy. The pharmaceutical giant was founded in Williamsburg in 1849, and operated there until about a year or two ago when (despite taking $46 million City tax incentives to bring jobs to NYC) the company closed up and left. But not before demolishing the oldest building on the site, their ancestral home.
Shanghai Stainless Steel over on Gerry Street turns out to be a major supplier of the city’s food trucks. Ernie Wong, the second generation proprietor (and a great guy) is leading the way.
Interesting scoop by Dan Bush – I would love to know what the settlement offer was that the city supposedly rejected. Was it just reopening the bid process, or was it to upend the entire rezoning?
Two years after abandoning an attempt to redevelop its sprawling former manufacturing complex in Brooklyn, drug giant Pfizer announced Monday that it had reached a surprise agreement to sell a piece of that property to Acumen Capital Partners of Long Island City.
Surprise move indeed. Then talk for a long time was that this site (the massive industrial building on the south side of Flushing Avenue) would be used for a non-profit industrial development and jobs training project – along the GMDC or Navy Yard model. The good news, though, is that Acumen is a developer of light industrial properties, and their acquisition of the building has the potential to bring a lot of jobs to the neighborhood.
For a company with a 159-year history in the neighborhood, Pfizer has managed to leave town very quietly. In the process, they have demolished significant historic buildings, taken tens of millions in tax credits from the City, and killed a 1,000+ local jobs.
But what about the rest of their property north of Flushing? Will that become affordable housing? Or does Pfizer have another surprise up its sleeve before it packs up its tent and quietly leaves town?
