Inclusionary Housing Program Not Making So Much Housing

According to a new study by Brad Lander’s office, the City’s inclusionary housing program hasn’t created as much affordable housing as the City predicted. That’s not really a surprise, and neither is it a surprise that most of the inclusionary housing generated has been on the Williamsburg waterfront and on the far west side of Manhattan at Hudson Yards. It’s not a surprise because those two areas are some of the few places where the incentives are deep enough to compel participation in the program. In most of Greenpoint & Williamsburg where the program was put in place, the incentive is really not that great, particularly once the market heats up.

Except on the Greenpoint waterfront – it will be big there.

Via WNYC

McGuinness Rezoning

09/10/2012 | Comment

Mcguinness render

231 McGuinness rendering
Michael Kwartler and Associates
[photo: Greenpointers]

Greenpointers has a report on a proposed rezoning for the block of McGuinness between Calyer and Greenpoint – aka, the “Blockbuster” site (remember Blockbuster? back in the 20th century they used to rent movies), across from Key Food.

CB1’s Land Use committee held a hearing on the project last week (which I missed), and the full board will presumably vote on the application at this Wednesday’s full board meeting.

The proposal itself is to rezone this block of McGuinness from M1 to R7-A (which would allow a building of the scale depicted above – hopefully this zoning placeholder will be developed into something a little insipid design-wise once the rezoning is approved). As Greenpointers helpfully points out, R7-A is the “type of zoning [that] is found along the avenues in the East Village”. It also happens to be the type of zoning that is found along the west side of McGuinness from Calyer south to Driggs (north of Greenpoint Avenue, the west side of the street is zoned R6-A, a slightly smaller medium-density zoning). The blocks from Calyer south were up zoned in 2009 as part of the larger contextual rezoning of inland Williamsburg and Greenpoint (City Planning looks to put higher density residential on avenues in part to encourage commercial development and in part make the use of inclusionary housing bonuses more viable – and yes, this application includes an expansion of the inclusionary program to this block).

This particular site was left out of the 200-block 2009 rezoning only because that rezoning focused solely on height limits and did not involve any use changes. Had the 2009 rezoning allowed change of use anywhere, it probably would have allowed it here (the owner of the property had already started the process, at least informally, before 2009).

So the main question here is not whether the property should be rezoned from manufacturing to residential like the rest of this side of the boulevard, but whether it should be rezoned to match the medium-density blocks to the north or the medium-to-high-density blocks to the south.

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.