Housing or Greenspace?

The 40 Quay Street question

To say that there is a housing crisis isn’t news.  NYC has declared housing emergencies since 1971. Affordable housing is in crisis the most, as it suffered a significant  loss of 400K units between 2000 and 2012 while average rents during this period increased by 50% in North Brooklyn.

Monitor Point (at 40 Quay Street) will bring “approximately 1,000 mixed-income rental homes [of which] at least 25% [are] dedicated toward affordable housing units for renters in low-income bands, which is a higher percentage of affordability than what’s currently required,” according to the Gotham Organization, the developer.

The lack of greenspace is another crisis and has been a community need for North Brooklyn for decades. New Yorkers for Parks in their 2021 Open Space Profiles displayed a significant lack of greenspace on their data-driven map of Brooklyn Community Board 1 (BkCB1).

Long before that, residents and local elected officials rallied for more greenspace. It took community members over ten years of advocating to expand Bushwick Inlet Park (BIP) to the 28 acres that was promised by Mayor Bloomberg in 2005.

40 Quay Street borders BIP and in 2019 Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park (FBIP) denounced the MTA sale of the land to the Gotham. At that time, BkCB1 and local electeds proposed that utilizing this land as a park was the best option for the community in a letter to then-Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Steve Chesler, co-chair of FBIP, stated then, “The MTA’s claim that it is acting in the community interest is contradicted by the fact that Greenpoint/Williamsburg’s Community Board 1 emphatically rejected the proposed MTA development in a resolution last year.  Public land should be used for the greatest, most sustainable public benefit and, here on the shore of the Bushwick Inlet, that is as park space.”

There is another concern: the MTA needs money. This past January the MTA revealed they are facing a $33B budget shortfall. The sale of 40 Quay brings the MTA $40M of needed revenue and Gotham will construct a new New York City Transit facility in East Williamsburg. Relocating the transit facilities will nearly eliminate MTA vehicular traffic in the neighborhood.

In addition to housing, Gotham states that Monitor Point will “contain substantial publicly accessible open space, including a waterfront public walkway connecting Quay Street to Bushwick Inlet Park.”  The development’s name was inspired by the USS Monitor an ironclad warship built during the Civil War which launched from the location. The development will also house a new site for the permanent home of the Greenpoint Monitor Museum.

Other benefits of this development were mentioned at the MTA’s unveiling of the proposal on October 20, 2021. “Monitor Point will create permanent union building maintenance jobs, more than 1,000 construction related jobs, and ongoing land lease payments as a direct benefit to the MTA. It will produce a new mixed-income community, with a multigenerational permanently affordable housing component; and create a waterfront linkage between Greenpoint and Williamsburg,” said Bryan Kelly, Gotham Organization president of development.

Plans for Monitor Point include construction of 600-foot and 450-foot towers.  Because of this Gotham needs to apply for zoning changes. Mr. Varun Sanyal, vice president of Gotham will present at BkCB1’s Land Use Committee meeting on April 1 at 6 p.m. at Polish & Slavic Center (176 Java Street, basement auditorium).  Community Board review is the first step of the zoning approval process.

There is concern that the building’s size will have a negative impact on wildlife, especially that which lives at, migrates to, or visits Bushwick Inlet Park. Save the Inlet organization, a collective of individuals and supporting organizations (including FBIP) who are dedicated to protecting the ecosystem of Bushwick Inlet, informs, “The property’s current zoning, as-of-right, is R6, which permits a much smaller buildout. An upzone to an R8 designation will increase the buildable square footage these developers can use by almost 10 fold.”  If Gotham wins rezoning, they worry, “At 600 and 450 feet, the towers will block light and air flow, and loom over the park. Reflective glass is the #1 killer of migratory birds. 45–60 stories of reflective glass looming over a migratory bird sanctuary will be devastating.”

Save the Inlet also brings up 2024’s NYC Department of City Planning report on new housing density. The data documented that BkCB1 has built 26,253 units during 2010–2023, which is more new housing than other community districts.

“It is reckless urban planning to continue to saturate this neighborhood with buildings and people, and overwhelm our natural spaces and public parks, and local infrastructure. Both Mayor Adams and Brooklyn Borough Reynoso have stated that housing development must be more equally distributed across the city and the borough instead of a handful of neighborhoods such as North Brooklyn shouldering the overwhelming majority,” states Save the Inlet’s website.

To find out more information or to voice your concerns on this issue go to the Gotham Organization’s informal presentation at Brooklyn Community Board 1 Land Use Committee Meeting on April 1 at 6 p.m. at Polish & Slavic Center (176 Java Street – auditorium in basement).