Greenpoint City Councilmember Lincoln Restler arrived at the City Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises hearing on May 27 with more than half an hour of questions for the team behind Monitor Point and a pointed summary of his position on the deal. “There are some individuals here today that think we should take whatever crumbs this developer was willing to offer, and say thank you,” Restler said. “I’m not one of them. We can stand up and say we’re not willing to sell out our extremely valuable public land for primarily luxury housing.”
The nearly five-hour hearing at 250 Broadway capped a months-long public review of Monitor Point, the Gotham Organization’s proposal to build three high-rise residential towers, retail space, and a museum on MTA-owned waterfront land adjacent to Bushwick Inlet in Greenpoint. The plan calls for 690 market-rate apartments and 460 affordable units, with Gotham paying ground rents to the MTA over a 99-year lease structured as four 25-year periods. A final Council vote is scheduled for June 25.
Restler opened by asking MTA Deputy Chief of Staff Sean Fitzpatrick and Gotham’s team which of them wanted to “take their lumps first.” Fitzpatrick went first. Restler’s central challenge to the MTA was financial. Gotham’s estimated payment to the agency over the first 25-year lease period amounts to $39 million, set against the MTA’s $68 billion capital plan. “That is the equivalent of MTA’s operating expenses for about one half hour of one day out of those 25 years,” Restler told Fitzpatrick.
Restler then turned to Bryan Kelly, Gotham’s President of Development, pressing him on why the developer had not paused to engage the incoming Mamdani administration before triggering the formal review process. “What I suggested was that you wait two weeks to talk to the new mayor, who was about to take office, so that we could see if there was an alternative proposal that might work for all of the parties involved, and you said no,” Restler said, as reported by the Brooklyn Downtown Star. Kelly cited six years of investment and contractual deadlines with the MTA. “We have deadlines in our agreements with the MTA. We’ve made substantial investments to undertake this,” Kelly said. On the affordability numbers, Kelly offered a conditional commitment: “Council member, you’ve got our commitment to spend the next three to four weeks to try and tick that number upward. But to be clear, from our perspective, developers are executing upon a business plan. If we can move the needle, we’ll move the needle.”
Restler stated his threshold: “To earn my support, any proposal for this publicly owned land would have to guarantee true affordability in a clear majority of the housing units and an ironclad commitment with crisp timeline and full funding for the completion of the long promised Bushwick Inland [sic] Park.”
The park is central to the dispute. As part of the 2005 Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning, the City promised to build the final section of the 27.8-acre Bushwick Inlet Park on what is now the upper portion of the Monitor Point site. Twenty-one years later, most of that land remains a debris-filled brownfield. Gotham’s proposal would upzone the park’s original footprint to accommodate its towers, which opponents say makes the City’s broken promise permanent.
Flood resilience drew sharp exchanges. Monitor Point sits in a coastal flood plain exposed to storm surge and sea-level rise. Gotham Vice President of Development Simeon Maleh said the project’s engineering accounts for those risks: “The infrastructure proposed contemplates that flood zone and considers it to ensure the protection of the residents. There’ll be no critical infrastructure in the basements of any of the buildings.” Williamsburg resident Debra Funkhouser, testifying against the project, drew on Hurricane Ida as a benchmark. “Our stormwater system is built to handle 1.75 inches of rain per hour,” she said. “Hurricane Ida saw 3.5 inches of rain per hour. Basements are flooding and our subway systems and our streets are compromised. So why at this moment would we choose to put our affordable housing in such a vulnerable place? It seems irresponsible.”
Among the roughly 90 members of the public who signed up to testify, opponents included Save the Inlet activists, several longtime Greenpoint residents, and two fifth-grade students from PS 34. Veronica Zapasnik, a Greenpoint resident and mental health coach who rallied with Save the Inlet outside 250 Broadway before the hearing began, pushed back against the characterization that opposition to Monitor Point is opposition to housing. She argued that luxury towers shift rent expectations across the surrounding area. “The reality is, that when you bring in luxury towers, it does shift the benchmark, it moves it higher for the entire neighborhood. So all the smaller landlords see what’s possible, right? They see the precedents and then raise rents.” She also framed the park as infrastructure. “It’s not just about saving the birds. It’s a magical natural refuge for people to go for their mental health. We have a lot of stressed out people with anxiety. This park serves a purpose.”
Victoria Alexander, founder of Realty Collective, a preservation-focused brokerage based in Red Hook, challenged the NIMBY-versus-YIMBY framing of the Monitor Point debate. “It’s a false choice engineered by an industry that’s spent decades creating the very housing crisis it now claims to be solving,” Alexander said. Artist and lifelong North Brooklynite Marissa Bohk said: “Homebuilding monopolies are the reason for the housing crisis, not the residents who live here.”
The project drew support from Open New York, SEIU 32BJ, Local 79 construction workers’ union, and the North Brooklyn-based St. Nick’s Alliance. Both the local Community Board and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso had previously expressed conditional support for Monitor Point. The developers argued that the project’s public-private financing structure, including the cost of relocating the MTA’s existing mobile wash facility from the site, distinguishes Monitor Point from typical public-land developments and makes the market-rate component necessary to keep the project solvent. The full Council is scheduled to vote on June 25.
Featured image: Tdorante10 / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
