A Deal Is Struck For Waterfront In Brooklyn

After months of tense negotiations, the Bloomberg administration and the City Council hammered out a plan early yesterday morning to remake a 174-block area of northwest Brooklyn.The deal turns an idea that has been debated for more than two years into a reality that city officials expect will transform the industrial Brooklyn waterfront into a thriving enclave of apartment buildings, offices, stores, and parks.“It was not easy,” the deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff, said. “Everybody pushed very, very hard for what they believed in, and at the end of the day, the great thing about this negotiation is everybody won.”The plan, which cleared its last hurdle yesterday when it was approved by the council’s Land Use Committee, uses what is called “inclusionary zoning” to increase the number of low- and moderately priced apartments. It also makes room for the creation of 54 acres of park space.Both sides of City Hall expect that financial incentives put in place for developers will mean that 33% of the 10,818 new apartments, or more than 3,500, will be “affordable.” That figure is up from the 23% in the mayor’s original proposal.The new blueprint will allow developers to erect 40-story towers if they volunteer to build affordable housing, and 32-story buildings if they do not. The latter portion of the deal was altered to decrease the allowable height for developers that don’t set aside a portion of their apartments as affordable.A Brooklyn council member, David Yassky, who represents part of the area and had been lobbying to require developers to include affordable housing, called the agreement a “transformative” plan. The Democrat and said it was the most important development change since the state’s Mitchell-Lama Program, enacted in 1955 to provide government-subsidized housing for middle-income New Yorkers.Mr. Yassky said the incentives, including the elimination of certain tax exemptions for developers who don’t include moderately priced apartments, all but guarantee that lower- and middle-income residents will not get squeezed out.The deal appeared to be on the brink of collapse just hours before it was announced. It won over many affordable housing activists, who just a few months ago were complaining that the plan would not be adequate. Some of those activists even stood with Mayor Bloomberg yesterday as he announced the details to the press.The deal was not without its critics, however. Some community leaders were upset with the prospect of 40-story towers in their backyard, saying buildings of that height would destroy the character of the neighborhood. Historically a working-class area, the neighborhood has in recent years become a trendy place to live.The owner of a Williamsburg gallery, Beka Economopoulos, said the proposal that the community presented to the city was “railroaded.”For the last few weeks, community activists, including Ms. Economopoulos, have been rallying at or near City Hall with cardboard shovels and bright orange signs, demanding that their concerns be taken into consideration.“We want a balanced rezoning,” Ms. Economopoulos said yesterday afternoon, shortly after the final plan was announced. “That means not just affordable housing. It means reducing the height of the towers. We asked for a height cap at 15 to 20 stories. That was already a compromise. We’re a three-story neighborhood.”A preservationist and community board member, Ward Dennis, stood on the steps of City Hall yesterday and pointed to surrounding buildings. Buildings of that size, he said, gesturing upward, would be misplaced in Williamsburg and Greenpoint.“Our plan is not anti-development,” Mr. Dennis said. “We’re not saying don’t build on the waterfront. We’re just saying they should be in scale with the neighborhood.”In separate news conferences, both Mr. Bloomberg and the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, who are political opponents, said the deal was a victory that would preserve, not destroy, the area. Like the supporters, they characterized it as a plan that would allow the city to reclaim a long neglected waterfront.They also said they crafted a plan to ensure that the waterfront is staggered with buildings of varying heights and that the tallest construction will not be permitted inland – a measure designed to ensure that the neighborhood is not overwhelmed.The new green space includes a 27.2-acre park and some smaller ones sprinkled throughout the area. The city also committed to refurbishing McCarren Park, and to include soccer fields, a revamped bathhouse, and other amenities. Also, a bus depot in northern Greenpoint, that belongs to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is to be converted into a 3-acre park.Under the agreement, a new esplanade, to be paid for by developers and turned over to the city, will snake around the waterfront and replace an essentially inaccessible, dead area that has unobstructed views of the Manhattan skyline.The deal also calls for the City Council to kick in $20 million and the administration to earmark $2 million over the next four years to preserve light-manufacturing jobs in the area, like those at the Aurora Lampworks.A Queens council member who is chairwoman of the Land Use Committee, Melinda Katz, and Council Member Diana Reyna, said the plan would retain jobs and lead to thoughtful future development. Ms. Reyna, a Democrat who represents Williamsburg, said it was a “monumental, historic level of achievement.”The project is even larger than the much-discussed rezoning of the Manhattan’s West Side. And though neither side of City Hall likes to talk about it, it represents another deal that Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Miller have agreed on.Though Mr. Miller did not attend the late-afternoon news conference that the mayor held, the council members who attended praised the negotiating team from the administration as highly qualified.Mr. Doctoroff, who along with his one of his staff members skipped the five borough bike tour Sunday to work on negotiations, said no plan will please everyone but this one “harmonized” priorities from all sides.The deal is expected to win approval May 11 from the entire City Council.

A Deal Is Struck For Waterfront In Brooklyn

A Deal Is Struck For Waterfront In Brooklyn

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