One of the last large pieces of public waterfront in Greenpoint is about to become three apartment towers, the tallest 600 feet. The fight over it is not the usual build-it-or-block-it; it is a math war over what the public should get back for handing over public land, and the local councilman is holding the leverage.
The City Planning Commission approved Monitor Point in a 10-to-1 vote on May 13, clearing 1,150 apartments at 40-56 Quay Street, 40 percent of them, about 460 units, affordable. But the commission’s yes is mostly advisory. Under the City Council’s tradition of deferring to the local member, Greenpoint’s Lincoln Restler effectively holds a veto, and he has been a declared no since a January public hearing, calling predominantly luxury housing on the last big public waterfront parcel a bad deal.
Restler’s argument is about the land, not the height. The site is public land tied to the MTA, which the developer Gotham secured by agreeing to relocate the agency’s subway-cleaning facility on the site, and Restler says on public land the city should be squeezing out far more affordability. He has the standing to say it: he represents what he says is the council district that has produced more housing than any other in the city, which makes him hard to wave off as a nimby.
Gotham pushes back that the math cuts the other way. President Bryan Kelly argues that if the MTA simply moved out, the site could be developed all market-rate with no affordability requirement at all, so 40 percent affordable is a gain, not a giveaway. The 460 affordable units, by the project team’s account, grew from an initial 288 during the review, evidence the pressure is already working.
Underneath it sits a 20-year-old broken promise. The 2005 Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning committed the city to building the 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park, and it still is not finished. Restler and opponents of the deal are tying their support to finally completing that park, which turns Monitor Point into the leverage point for a debt the city has owed the neighborhood for two decades.
The decision is imminent and local. The full City Council vote is set for June 25, and because of member deference, Restler’s position is close to decisive. If you have a stake in what gets built on that waterfront, the Council’s land-use hearings are public and are where the affordability number and the park commitment get nailed down before the vote.
Featured image: Tdorante10 / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
