Williamsburg-Greenpoint Rezoning & 197-a

At first glance, 197-a looks like one more addition to the alphabet soup of bureaucratic programs and acronyms and reminds one of 421-a. Both are important parts of how business is done in neighborhoods around the city, and particularly around Brooklyn. Yesterday Brownstoner noted that 197-a would get some teeth under a new bill introduced in the City Council. (421-a is the “developer tax break” that gave huge tax abatements to developments like the Richard Meier building at Grand Army Plaza and that has been slightly reigned in with some changes that will take effect later this year.)

197-a Plans are community-developed, but are routinely ignored because there is no requirement that they be followed. A case in point is the Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning that allowed waterfront highrises. Here’s are some excerpts from a long piece written by activist Phil Depaolo who is a veteran of many zoning and development battles in North Brooklyn:

After more than a decade of work, community groups in the Brooklyn waterfront neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg had reached consensus on plans to revitalize their industrial waterfront. The Greenpoint and Williamsburg 197-a Plan proposed a mix of low to mid rise housing in the neighborhood, so it would be affordable to tenants in this working class neighborhood. The 197-a plans proposed that the mix of industry and housing be brought down to the waterfront, but without the noxious industries like waste transfer stations that have concentrated in the area in recent years. And they wanted public access to the waterfront.

The massive rezoning of Greenpoint and Williamsburg that the City Council approved in May 2005 bears little resemblance to the community plans. Ever since the City Council voted for the Greenpoint and Williamsburg 197-a plans in 2001, they failed to lift a finger to implement them. City agencies went into hiding. There were no budget requests to create public access on the waterfront, no initiatives to preserve industry, and no new housing. Instead, the city turned the other way as developers illegally converted industrial properties to unaffordable lofts, and did little to stop the legal conversions. Then the City Planning Commission and City Council approved a sweeping rezoning of the waterfront that opened the way for 10,000 units of high rise housing, and conversion of industrial properties to residential use. Brooklyn’s Community Board One and the Brooklyn Borough President voted against the rezoning…

The details are complicated, but community planning with teeth would seriously changed the city’s planning and zoning process.

Bklink: Community Planning with Teeth?

A new bill being introduced in the City Council could give some teeth to community-based planning for rezoning and other initiatives. The legislation, which is an offshoot of a Municipal Art Society effort, would give extend the influence of what are known as 197-a plans. Currently, the plans developed by the community have no legislative weight.–Brownstoner

Controversial AIA Zoning Amendments Are Toast

Those zoning text amendments drafted by the American Institute of Architects that would have allowed bigger buildings and were greeted by a lot of opposition once they were widely known, have been dropped. Queens Crap posted the full text of the AIA letter to Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden yesterday. The changes were complex, but would have allowed bulkier, taller buildings in many neighborhoods. Many opponents felt it was an attempt to introduce technical, yet very important, changes without much public discussion and a number of community groups fought to get the amendments dropped.

Upcoming: Workshop on Brooklyn Bridge Park

We don’t know a lot about the session that’s being planned to talk about Brooklyn Bridge Park, but we do know that it sounds like it’s going to be interesting. Groups that are working to develop the park in a manner that is different from the official Empire State Development Corp. model are holding it. Here’s the info:

You’re urged to attend the Brooklyn Bridge Park workshop on plans for Pier 6 and the Atlantic Avenue gateway, which will be held at Long Island college Hospital on Thursday, February 28, 2008, between 7 and 9 PM. in the main floor conference rooms B & C. The meeting, sponsored by the Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association in collaboration with the Cobble Hill Association, the Sierra Club, the Willowtown Association, Brooklyn Vision and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund, will be moderated by Ethan and Fred Kent of the Project for Public Places, internationally known architects and urban planners. This will be an opportunity for you to hear a variety of views and to present your opinions in a representative and unfiltered forum. Come at 6:30 PM for refreshments and sign-in.

For those that have only casually followed the long running saga of the big real estate development and open space project, there have been bitter disagreements about how to develop the park and the amenities that it should include. (The image here is a rendering showing the bulk of the luxe condo towers that would be built at the foot of Atlantic Avenue as part of the development.)

Battle Over Green Streets in Gerritsen Beach

Of all the things we would expect to find a fight about, the city’s “Green Streets” program is not one of them. Yet, there’s a battle about a plan in Gerritsen Beach, where GerritsenBeach.Net, which does superb work covering issues in that neighborhood and environs, has been writing about the fight, which includes some heavy-duty politicking. He emailed us to say:

I just wanted to let you know about something over here in my neck of the woods. Do you know green streets? Those are the streets that have gardens and/or trees in a median. Well my neighborhood is actually against this plan and is now turning against Marty Golden, the one who wants this. More or less we got him elected. He’s all alone on this project playing politics…A lot of people are using the term war against green streets. There is going to be a town hall tomorrow. Its a very large battle over a 1 mile stretch of land.

A war against green streets? Should be an interesting meeting. It takes place today (2/13) at 7:00 pm at P.S. 277 at 2529 Gerritsen Avenue.

Bklink: Brooklyn Greenway

Community Board 1 will be making a decision about whether to support the Brooklyn Greenway along Kent Avenue and West Street. Because the waterfront esplanades that aren’t wide enough, the bikeway would have to go on the street and, as a result, some parking would have to be eliminated. A letter from the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative says, in part, “We have undertaken a parking study and determined that the number of spaces that would be affected can be re-created on adjacent streets by updating parking regulations in industrial areas that are now becoming residential…Building the dedicated bikeway would add over 200 new street trees on these streets, situated on new planted medians that will separate cyclists from moving traffic. It will mitigate the truck route quality of the streets, turning them into places that will be more attractive to pedestrians and conducive to thriving new retail activity.–Green Brooklyn

Imagining Flatbush 2030

There was another meeting in Flatbush last night as part of the Imagining Flatbush 2030 effort to create a neighborhood-based framework for future planning. The Municipal Art Society has produced this video from an earlier session. It starts out with Mayor Bloomberg talking about the PlaNYC 2030 effort and moves on to discussions in Flatbush, all with a music soundtrack. MAS calls it an attempt “to incorporate more Jacobsonian ideals of livability” in the city’s PlaNYC 2030.

A Lofty Gowanus Expressway-Free Vision of the Future

Someday, current day Brooklynites (or their grandchildren) might be able to walk and bicycle on a huge greenway where the vile Gowanus Expressway once stood. Ideas to tear it down and bury it have been floated, but above is a new vision in today’s Daily News that was obtained by Jotham Sederstrom. He writes:

The notoriously congested Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn would be demolished and replaced by 4 miles of greenery under a plan being floated by a leading architectural group, the Daily News has learned.

Designs drafted by the American Institute of Architects call for replacing the deteriorating Third Ave. expressway with a glitzy cable suspension roadway on First Ave. and filling the gap with miles of trees and bike paths.

We figure the odds of us living long enough to see this magnificent vision realized are slim, but there’s always hope for future generations.

Help Re-Invent Grand Army Plaza

There’s an interesting competition underway to solicit ideas for reenvisioning and reimagining Grand Army Plaza. Per Streets Blog:

The Grand Army Plaza Coalition (GAPCo) and the Design Trust for Public Space are launching an “Ideas Competition” called Reinventing Grand Army Plaza. Building on GAPCo’s on-going effort to re-envision this historic Brooklyn crossroads, the Ideas Competition will solicit new, creative proposals for Grand Army Plaza’s re-design. Top submissions will be exhibited in the summer of 2008 at the Brooklyn Public Library or the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

GAPCo is soliciting ideas to put together a briefing book for those entering the competition. Click over to Streets Blog for all the information.

Upcoming: Flatbush 2030 Vision Meeting

The “future visioning” effort for Flatbush called Imagine Flatbush 2030 is coming up on Wednesday, December 12 at 6:30 at the Brooklyn College Student Center. The effort is a joint venture of the Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC) and the Municipal Art Society. Sustainable Flatbush describes it as:

a community visioning and dialogue process — designed to get you together with other Flatbush community members to collectively create a more sustainable neighborhood. If you care about the environment, community health, protecting diversity, ensuring affordable housing and a whole host of other community issues, this is the meeting for you!

Given that a lot of Brooklyn communities aren’t planning for 2009, let alone 2030, it’s a very interesting undertaking. (Click on the image above to see it at full size.)