The Monitor Point development (three high-rise residential towers planned for Greenpoint’s last undeveloped waterfront property, next to Bushwick Inlet Park) cleared a major hurdle on June 25 when Councilmember Lincoln Restler reversed his long-standing opposition and announced his support, after the developer agreed to boost affordable housing to 50 percent, add senior and supportive housing, and expand public open space, according to the Brooklyn Downtown Star.
When complete in the 2030s, the project (a joint venture between the MTA and the Gotham Organization) will include 1,324 total residential units, up from the originally proposed 1,150. Of those, 662 will be affordable. Half of those affordable units will be deeply affordable, meaning they are accessible to the lowest-income New Yorkers. Another 161 units will be affordable senior housing, and 110 units will be supportive housing for formerly homeless individuals. The amended plan also adds publicly accessible green space, a widened waterfront esplanade, two public bathrooms, and improved resiliency infrastructure including bulkheads and stormwater retention systems, the Brooklyn Downtown Star reported.
The additional units were not free: the development team secured them by reducing the amount of retail space in the project and shrinking the planned Greenpoint Monitor Museum, one of the public amenities originally proposed for the site.
Negotiations shifted far from where they started. When the public review process began in January, Gotham Organization and the MTA proposed just 25 percent affordable units. That figure climbed to 40 percent earlier this year, and landed at 50 percent after extended talks with Restler and the City Council.
Restler had been a vocal opponent throughout. He and a large group of Greenpoint residents had rallied under the slogan “public land for public good,” insisting that any development on MTA-owned land must primarily serve the public interest. As recently as May 27, at a hearing before the City Council’s Land Use and Zoning Subcommittee, Restler called the project a “bad deal” for his community, the Brooklyn Downtown Star reported. His reversal came as a shock to some of the activists who had stood alongside him.
“This was a challenging negotiation that took many, many, many hours,” Restler told the Brooklyn Downtown Star. “And I held firm on what I believed was necessary for this to be a good deal for our community.”
At the June 25 hearing, Restler described the final concessions as “a direct response to our feedback” and credited input from “hundreds, actually thousands of neighbors.” He said in a separate interview that “there was no single policy that got us there – it was a series of creative approaches that yielded this outcome.”
Several labor unions and nonprofits had supported the project unconditionally since the beginning, while Restler held out for structural changes to the affordability mix.
Not everyone views the outcome as a win. Save the Inlet, a community group that has raised resiliency concerns about the site, described the project’s impending approval as a “gut punch,” according to founder Katherine Thompson. Thompson raised concerns about financing, arguing that without a comprehensive plan to fund the additional affordable housing, there is nothing to guarantee the developer will actually build it. She also cited elevated flood risks along the Greenpoint waterfront and rising sea levels as reasons the project is still problematic.
“I always want to support affordable housing,” Thompson told the Brooklyn Downtown Star. “But right now, we oppose this project, not because we’re opposing affordable housing, but because of where it is. It’s just in the wrong place.”
The full City Council is expected to vote on Monitor Point at its Stated meeting on July 16.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily image
