More testimony on the Toll Brothers' Gowanus Project given on March 4th in front of City Coucil's Zoning and Franchises Sub-Committee. This testimony is from Gary Reilly, Carroll Gardens resident and Council District 39 candidate.
Dear Councilman Avella,
I am a resident of Carroll Gardens and an active member of the civic community, as Transportation Chair of the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association and as a non-board member of two Community Board 6 committees.
I have been greatly disturbed by the process by which the matter of the Toll brothers rezoning has come before your committee. First off, to my mind there is no justifiable reason that the Toll Brothers site should be considered separately from (and ahead of) the broader rezoning of the Gowanus Canal area. City Planning is currently pursuing a process to rezone the broader area, yet the Toll Brothers site has been carved out and rushed ahead of the broader process. Why? When I studied Land Use law at Rutgers, the general consensus was that spot-zoning individual parcels made for bad planning and bad policy. For that reason alone, I believe the committee should vote down this proposal. The Toll site should be considered only as a part of the overall rezoning.
Second, one of the primary selling points that Toll Brothers used in pursuing this rezoning was the promise of affordable housing. However, it has recently come to our attention that there is no requirement for affordable housing on the parcel in question. Toll Brothers wants the parcel rezoned with no strings attached, and then may or may not deign to include affordable units in their development according to the vagaries of the market. Students of land use decisions know that without enforceable contractual requirements attached to a rezoning, public benefits such as affordable housing are almost never provided. Toll Brothers will reap a tremendous windfall on their investment in this site if the Council approves this rezoning. Nothing would stop Toll from selling off their approvals to a third party and realizing an instant profit. For a zoning change as dramatic as the one proposed here, doesn't the community deserve some guaranteed benefit?
Again, my position is that the Toll site should be rolled into the broader rezoning of the Gowanus area such that the scoping of the overall changes to the zoning map are appropriately considered as a whole. But even if the Toll site is considered on its own, I believe it is not too much to ask that if the Council approves a zoning change, that we have a specific, enforceable requirement for affordable units. To simply rezone the property with no strings attached and hope that Toll brothers will do the right thing would be folly.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Best,
Gary G. Reilly, Esq.
Related Reading:
Gowanus Area Resident Speaks Out Against Toll Brothers' Project
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