Pier 6 Plans in Disarray After State Pulls Out of Affordable Housing Negotiations
The future of affordable housing and market-rate towers at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6 is uncertain following the collapse of talks between the city and state.
Will the Pier 6 towers ever get built? More drama erupted Tuesday over the controversial and much-delayed plan to build more housing in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Only this time, instead of being about the park, the kerfuffle focuses on questions about Mayor de Blasio’s finances and his relationship with Governor Cuomo.
What happened
The state unexpectedly pulled out of negotiations to approve the de Blasio administration’s controversial efforts to include affordable housing in the development, it was widely reported Tuesday.
The reason, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Empire State Development Corporation: A possible financial conflict of interest, coming amid an ongoing probe of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s finances. Specifically, Brooklyn Bridge Park Corp. selected a development team including RAL Development Services a month after RAL contributed $10,000 to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Campaign for One New York in May 2015.
The surprise pullout came after city and state officials had apparently already agreed on a plan, according to the Wall Street Journal.
What it means for Pier 6
Brooklyn Bridge Park said it plans to continue with the development, but declined to specify whether it will include affordable housing.
Without state support, Brooklyn Bridge Park may be unable to legally move forward with the plan to include 117 units of affordable housing in the 339-unit luxury development. But it may be able to build exclusively market-rate towers.
“Brooklyn Bridge Park is required to be financially self-sustaining, and we’ve exhaustively demonstrated that we need the funds from the Pier 6 project to meet that mandate,” Brooklyn Bridge Park President Regina Myer told Brownstoner in an emailed statement. “Simply put, not moving forward with the proposed development would put the future of a park enjoyed by millions from across the city at risk.”
The mayor, for his part, is forging ahead with plans to include affordable housing.
“We’re going forward…we have an obligation to build affordable housing,” New York City Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen said Tuesday, the New York Times reported.
Why state approval may be needed
Following a lawsuit over the towers, a judge said the park could include affordable housing in the development if it amended the park’s General Project Plan to allow affordable housing. Right now, the plan requires all housing in the park to sustain the park financially.
A change to the plan requires the ULURP process, which the state’s Empire Development Corp. is overseeing. Part of the process requires state approval.
Or so it seemed. But the city apparently now believes it can amend the General Project Plan it — at least that’s what Deputy Mayor Glen told the New York Times.
Local opposition
Meanwhile, a group of Brooklyn residents, activists, community organizations and local politicians continue to oppose any additional housing in the park, market rate or not.
“We believe the best solution for the park now is to finish the mission as a park without any new housing whatsoever,” powerful local organization the Brooklyn Heights Association, Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund and People for Green Space Foundation told Brownstoner in an emailed statement regarding what they referred to as, “a back room deal, now apparently sidelined, between the city and state to permit unnecessary development on Pier 6.”
The groups contend the park has all the revenue it needs to continue operating and this new development is unneeded.
They are “astonished and dismayed” by the events this week, the groups continued, including Glen’s statement the city plans to “proceed with this development without ESD’s approval of a modification to the General Project Plan. Doing so would be a clear violation of the Plan’s requirement that no housing be built unless needed to support the Park.”
A little background
The collapse of the deal comes in the midst of Cuomo and de Blasio’s heated feuding, and after a year of state-imposed delays on the development and the aforementioned lawsuit.
It seems another lawsuit — over who has the right to modify the General Project Plan, at the very least — is likely, the Times noted.
Plans call for partners RAL Development Services, Oliver’s Realty Group and architect firm ODA to create a 26-story tower with 116 market-rate luxury condos and a 12-story tower with 188 rentals, 131 of which will be affordable.
Renderings of the proposed design show ODA’s signature theme of assemblages of boxes. ODA is also designing a 28-story tower at 436 Albee Square in Downtown Brooklyn and an eight-story apartment building on part of the site of the former Nassau Brewery in Crown Heights, among other Brooklyn projects.
Proceeds from the development will go to fund the park: The partners plan to pay the city $98 million, as well as a “modest” yearly rent, according to the Times.
— By Cate Corcoran and Hannah Frishberg
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