In addition, members of the committee voted 14 to 3 in favor of asking for a supplemental Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for the project as well as asking Lightstone to commit to:
*have 30 percent of the units be affordable
*reducing the over-all height of the buildings to eight stories as opposed to 12 stories.
*follow Community Board Responsible Contractor Conditions (which include union labor)
The matter will go in front of the full Community Board on October 10th, where a final vote will be taken.
Here is the information:
Community Board 6 General Board Meeting
October 10th
at 6:30 PM
Prospect Park Residence
1 Prospect Park West
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Though the full Community Board mostly aligns its vote to the committee's vote, Gowanus residents are not taking a chance.
They are currently collecting signatures on a petition that they will present to members of the Board on Wednesday evening.
A statement reads:
Even though the turnout at the Public Hearing was larger than any other hearing in the neighborhood in recent memory, and even though the number of folks opposed to the project outnumber those who were for it 3 to 1, and even though the CB6 Land Use subcommittee voted to urge the Department of City Planning to TABLE the Lightstone Group Proposal for Bond and Carroll Street 12 to 2, it now lies with the larger body of CB6 to determine whether this recommendation will be passed along to DCP. We are hoping that they will listen to the community and approve the recommendation. But we want them to know that there is widespread community support for this motion. And since the Lighstone Group has hired at least 3 lobbying groups to actively work on this, targeting the Department of City Planning, NYC Council members, and others, we feel it was very important to take this action in order to make sure that the community's voice, and not just that of Lightstone lobbyists, are heard. (You can go here and enter "Lightstone" to see the companies they have employed for this and who their targets are: http://www.nyc.gov/lobbyistsearch/ )
The petition can be found here: http://savegowanus.org/petition
Please make time to attend this important Community Board 6 meeting and to sign the petition.
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9 comments:
In the renderings, the windows reflect sky open sky. In reality, if developers had their way with Gowanus, there would be no open sky to be reflected.
How does forcing a private owner to subsidize 3 in 10 apartments help "Save Gowanus" or forcing them to use the shake down mafia controlled Unions?
How is this even the Community Boards place to make these requirements?
Is this America?
No wonder it costs so much to build apartments in New York. All these requirements only make everything MORE expensive for those who do not ask for hand outs.
Learn economics!
I do agree that the buildings should be lowered to 8 stories. 12 is just too high for the neighborhood. I do not agree in increasing the affordable housing to 30%, that is just ridiculous. Also ridiculous is the demand for union labor. What's wrong with the hard working non-union laborers? Isn't it bad enough they don't have all the benefits of union workers? Why deprive them of work. I was raised in a family of non-union laborers and such policies would have put my family out of work.
"Shrugging off critics’ concerns, Ethan Geto, a spokesman for Lightstone, said that there were still hundreds of empty seats in area schools, and that the new development would add only three passengers per subway car at rush hour."
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This is a quote from today's NY Times. WHERE are these hundreds of empty seats???? Certainly not at PS 58, where the kids had to do their class play in a hallway next to the bathrooms because the stage is being used as a classroom - because of lack of space.
Certainly not at PS 261 or PS 32 either - all are at or approaching capacity.
Why is 12 "just too high" for the neighborhood? How can you ethically justify eliminating housing in a city with an ongoing housing crisis just because you think it's "just too high"?
Also, you don't think people thought the 6- and 8-story tenements all over Brooklyn were "just too high" and "out of character" when they were built over farmland? Do you wish Brooklyn had remained farmland?
People in this city can be so petty and selfish.
Parents with kids won't live in the 1 bedroom apartments proposed to be built. The current approved Toll Brothers' plan can build the two and three bedroom apartments that increase school age kid population.
12 stories is approved. If Lightstone were to modify the approved plan to 8 stories, then interior courtyards are in total shadow and Lightstone would need to conduct a new environmental impact statement.
This is a "minor modification because Lightstone is changing the type of apartments - everything else remains the same.
With the new 170 shelter residents moving in down the block, is that "affordable" housing for the community?
Or why stop there.....maybe add another NYCHA Project to the area.
The demands of the self entitled class knows no bounds.
We need new representation for the area , or the bad old days of the 70s will still be back sooner then you think.
Can't wait to see the type of person that would pay money to live on a Superfund site. LOL. Another reason we're moving out of the area.
The height should be much less than 8 stories.
Just across the street, on Bond St, developers are building under the R6B limited height zoning and making money doing that. They too are putting in the expensive screw-based pilings to support their buildings atop the stream that runs along the west side of Bond St.
Any developer who needs to build 12 stories here to finance their effort is either very greedy or just incompetent.
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