They Will Build It, But Will They Clean It?

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Full House at last night's Friends Of Bond Street meeting

Craig Hammerman, Community Board 6

Councilmember Tony Avella of Queens

Phil DePaolo of the New York City Community Council

The two Toll Brothers' representatives

Last night's Gowanus Neighborhood meeting at Mary Star Of The Sea Senior Housing was quite impressive. Organized by the Friends Of Bond Street to help the community organize for the March 13 Public Scoping Meeting at City Planning, it was not only well attended, well organized and incredibly insightful, but also showed Carroll Gardeners are a force to be reckoned with. I was impressed by my fellow neighbors: smart and well informed, they were ready to take on the Toll Brothers' and their Condo Complex along the shores of the heavily polluted canal.

Craig Hammerman, acting outside his job as our Community Board manager,
gave a very clear presentation on the City Environmental Quality Review Process which this development will have to go through. Every thing should be considered: the impact the project will have on the transportation system, on local schools, on the electricity requirement from an already taxed system, local streets and mostly on the canal itself, to name just a few.

The building site is currently zoned for manufacturing. Though the city has been hot to rezone the entire area along the Gowanus to residential and to open it to developers, the Toll Brothers want City Planning to spot-rezone to get their project off the ground faster.

When asked by a C.O.R.D. member if this rezoning could happen before the long awaited down-zoning of Carroll Gardens and why that should be, Craig Hammerman gave the floor to Tony Avella, N.Y. City Council Member from Queens and chairman of the Land Use Committee.
Councilman Avella is quite an impressive speaker who does not mince words. His answer was stunningly honest: Mayor Bloomberg is pro-development and in a fight between developer and local residents, the developer will win. Under Bloomberg, a neighborhood down-zoning will be put on the back-burner, a zoning change in favor of construction will be pushed through City Planning. The reality is that there is just too much money in development. Avella urged the community to work together and to present a united front.
That our own Councilman Bill DeBlasio was not present at all last night did not go unnoticed. Bravo to Mr. Avella for having made the trip to our neighborhood when our own representative couldn't or wouldn't.

Another bravo to Phil DePaolo of the New York Community Council, who also attended last night's meeting. He suggested that the community act fast: " The clock is ticking already. This process goes very fast once it gets started. " The frustration in Carroll Gardens is not unique. He sees it all over the city in every community he visits.

Two Toll Brothers' representatives were also present at the meeting. They stated that they are not currently the owners of the property in question, but that they are in contract. However, they will not close on the lot until it has been rezoned. The two representatives grew a bit testy when asked if they would reconsider and abandon the project if the neighborhood was against it. One of the men asked if the neighborhood would rather continue living with a dirty canal than with the development, to which quite a few people said: yes.
One resident answered: "because you are not going to make it cleaner for me to swim in."

One thing became very clear to me last night. If all these developers think that they are speaking to the community by entering into a dialog with Buddy Scotto, self proclaimed mayor of Carroll Gardens and tireless proponent of development along the canal, they are mistaken. This is not Buddy's Carroll Gardens any more!


Blogger Found In Brooklyn also was at the meeting. Here is her take on last night's meeting.

Surprise visit by the Toll Brothers at Gowanus Community Meeting.