Feel Betrayed By Councilman Brad Lander Yet Regarding The Proposed Gowanus Rezoning? We Do!

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Community Board 6's Chair Peter Fleming

CB6's Land Use Committee Chair Mark Shames

NYC Department of City Planning's Gowanus Project Manager Jonathan Keller

NYCHA resident and Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition For Justice member Karen Blondel

One of the local residents addressing concerns about rezoning

Representatives of New York City Department of City Planning (DCP)'s Brooklyn office presenting the Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal to Community Board 6's Land Use Committee last night.

The entire meeting and presentation can be accessed on You Tube here.


Dear Neighbors,
Do you remember back in 2008, when the Department of City Planning worked on the first Gowanus rezoning study?  Back then, the City was pushing for buildings that rose approximately as high as the Lightstone development at 363-365 Bond Street adjacent to the canal, which moved ahead under a special spot rezoning from manufacturing to mixed-use, though the overall rezoning of the area was halted when the EPA declared the Gowanus Canal a Superfund site in 2010.

To many in the neighborhood, the Lighstone development is all wrong for this FEMA Flood Zone evacuation area. Shortly after Hurricane Sandy flooded basement and streets in Gowanus in 2012, Councilmember Brad Lander urged the developer Lightstone Group to withdraw its plans to build its complex.

In a December 2012 letter to David Lichtenstein, the CEO of Lightstone, our Councilman wrote:
“I believe it would be a serious mistake for you to proceed as though nothing had happened, without reconsidering or altering your plans, and putting over 1,000 new residents in harm’s way the next time an event of this magnitude occurs.”

Yet the 700-unit Lightstone complex, which rises to 12 stories was built, hundreds of residents moved in, and in the past few years, Brad Lander has been pushing for the Gowanus rezoning to resume.

In 2013, together with several other local elected officials, Lander's office launched Bridging Gowanus, "a community planning process to shape a sustainable, livable, and inclusive future for the Gowanus neighborhood-in the face of ongoing change, the Superfund clean-up, and real estate pressure."

Over a few years, hundreds of community stakeholders gave hundreds of hours of their time to take part in Bridging Gowanus on the promise that this visioning process would provide them with a real chance to jointly shape a vision for the future of the neighborhood and would inform the NYC Planning Department of the wishes of the community.

Many were shocked when the final 'visioning' report falsely claimed that the community was open to high rises from 8 to 18 stories to achieve the goals set forth by Bridging Gowanus.  In reality, most residents thought that the worse case scenario for the neighborhood were more 12-story buildings like Lighstone.

To Lander, higher buildings are a trade off for providing more parkland, more schools, more affordable housing and protection of manufacturing zones in Gowanus.  "We did ask people to think hard of the tradeoffs that are necessary," Brad Lander commented. "These kinds of investments and achieving the level of preservation we just talked about costs a lot of money."

By the time the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) was commissioned to create a framework for a 'sustainable, inclusive, mixed-use neighborhood", the building density in the area had increased again. Along 4th Avenue, the framework called for 22 story buildings, though thankfully, it called for a "moderate" scale" along the canal.

That was not enough for investors and developers, who immediately cried foul. The density mentioned in the Framework did not "allow enough density along the canal to offset what they say will be the high cost of building on those sites," despite the fact that most landowners have or will clean up their polluted parcels under the New York State Brownfield Clean-up Program, which offers highly lucrative tax  breaks and tax credits, which are paid by taxpayers.

It appears that real estate pressure did have a huge influence on City Planning.
Last night, DCP's Project Manager for the Gowanus rezoning, Jonathan Keller, presented the agency's  recently released Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal to the community.

The proposal now calls for approximately 22 story buildings along the canal,  and close to 30 stories on Public Place, the City-owned site along Smith Street near 5th Street.

Councilman Lander's response to the ever increasing proposed density?
“I know that not everyone is excited about the idea of new residential and commercial development at heights taller than the surrounding brownstone neighborhoods, but I genuinely believe we are on the way to getting the balance right.”  (Brooklyn Eagle)

Most residents seemed shocked last night. This proposal almost doubles the density of what had been planned for the area in 2008.  Despite the participation of local residents in the Bridging Gowanus visioning process, this re-zoning plan guarantees few of the things that the community really cared about: artists lofts, maker spaces and parks.

How exactly the area will accommodate thousands of new residents when our infrastructure is already at a breaking point remains unclear.

The plan offers no contract with the community that would truly guarantee us new schools, new investments in our sewers, or increased subway service.

It does guarantee years of construction and a radical change to Gowanus and surrounding neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens.

Many in the community gave Brad Lander the benefit of the doubt when he promised us a better, more inclusive planning process, one that would lead to a better rezoning.

Instead, it is leading us to one that seems driven by developers and politicians, which in this City is business as usual.

I hope people will remember as he prepares to run for New York City Comptroller in the 2021 election.