At a nearly five-hour City Council hearing on May 27, Greenpoint Councilmember Lincoln Restler and a crowd of neighborhood activists spent the afternoon trying to sink Monitor Point, the plan to put three high-rise towers, retail and a museum on Greenpoint’s last undeveloped stretch of waterfront. The hearing, held before the Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises at 250 Broadway, was first reported by the Brooklyn Downtown Star, whose reporter watched Restler open with a line that set the tone: “Who wants to take their lumps first, the MTA or Gotham?”

The MTA went first. Restler had come with more than half an hour of questions for the development team, which pairs the MTA, which owns the site, with the Gotham Organization, the developer. His core argument, one he and Save the Inlet activists had made through hearings all winter and spring, is that Monitor Point hands public land to a private developer for mostly luxury housing.

“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.”