After Community Benefits Deal, City Council Approves Controversial Gowanus Rezoning

The New York City Council voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday to approve the controversial Gowanus rezoning, officially setting the project in motion after years of planning and debate. The move, which instantly increases the value of property in the district, will bring 40-story apartment towers to a polluted area larger than Hudson Yards. The deal includes affordable housing as well as a wide variety of benefits such as repairs to nearby NYCHA housing, sewer improvements and affordable artist studios.

“It shows that many people will accept growth within their neighborhood if they are a real part of the planning process and see it as a way to achieve shared values,” said Council Member Brad Lander, who represents the bulk of the district set to be upzoned. “This rezoning began nearly a decade ago in grassroots community conversations. It was strengthened through robust conversation in literally scores of meetings. It was strengthened through the advocacy of the remarkable Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice, a diverse coalition of public housing residents, environmentalists, artists, small businesses and community leaders.”

Those conversations, known as Bridging Gwanus, were at the time criticized by local residents as top-down sessions that falsely created the appearance of local, grassroots support for buildings higher than about eight stories. More recently, local group Voice of Gowanus, state and federal pols and Community Board 2 oppose the rezoning. Community group Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice favors it, and Community Board 6 and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams both approved the upzoning “with conditions” — namely the community benefits agreement Lander brokered with the city.

Lander touted the rezoning’s precedence, saying it’s the first rezoning to undergo a racial impact study and the first rezoning in a “whiter, wealthier neighborhood,” although the largely industrial area, which is prone to flooding, is somewhat more affordable than adjacent brownstone neighborhoods Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill and Park Slope. Thanks to Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, new residential buildings will include affordable apartments that are income targeted and rent stabilized.

Earlier this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio reached an agreement on the rezoning with Lander and Councilman Stephen Levin, who represents part of Gowanus, and community groups including the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice just ahead of the Council’s Land Use Committee vote. The agreement included parts of the three core demands laid out by GNCJ, which Lander and Levin both said needed to be included for the project to win their approval.

Those agreements included $200 million to fund improvements and repairs at Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens, two New York City Housing Authority complexes within the boundaries of the 82-block rezoning, and $174 million to improve sewers along the flood-prone 4th Avenue, as well as a vote of confidence that the United Stormwater Rule will ensure that Combined Sewer Overflow levels do not increase even as tens of thousands new residents move into the neighborhood in coming years.

The city will also work with a third party to develop and run a task force that will keep an eye on the city and private developers over the course of the rezoning to ensure promises made during negotiations are met.

Levin noted the “unprecedented” conditions of the NYCHA improvements during Tuesday’s meeting.

“Every single apartment at Gowanus and Wyckoff Gardens is going to be refurbished by NYCHA, not through [the Rental Assistance Demonstration program], and not through privatization of any kind of private development or infill,” he said. “But just as an investment from NYCHA, which is extraordinary and unprecedented.”

While the $200 million is less than the $274 million NYCHA estimated is needed to repair the buildings, the agreement includes funding to reopen the long-shuttered community centers at the NYCHA complexes. The deal will also include Gowanus and Red Hook in “cloudburst” studies that will analyze flooding and storm events in the neighborhoods, begin implementing flood-mitigation measures, and monitor water quality and compliance with the Unified Stormwater Rule.

“These commitments include new city-owned parks and open space, strong policies to mandate better waterfront design and stormwater management, support for sustainable public space maintenance, critical investments in sewer infrastructure, and long-term planning for flood mitigation as the neighborhood looks toward a changing climate,” said Gowanus Canal Conservancy Executive Director Andrea Parker in a release.

The rezoning is expected to bring more than 3,000 units of affordable housing to Gowanus, including the 950 affordable apartments slated for Gowanus Green, a city-owned site currently known as Public Place, after remediation of the lot is completed and 43 units at Mercy Home, which is planned for 4th Avenue. Just ahead of the Land Use vote, Lander and local arts collective Arts Gowanus reached an agreement with a number of developers to enter a Community Benefits Agreement, which will see more than 150 affordable artist studios in new developments.

A second arts group in Gowanus, Gowanus Artists In Alliance, raised the alarm about a 30-story tower set to be built next to the Old American Can Factory, which was landmarked in 2019. The tower had previously been slashed from conversations about the rezoning, they said, and the tower’s inclusion came as a “shock.”

“The Can Factory has 80 organizations and studios with 300 workers, and construction on this scale would mean displacement, for some while the construction is under way, but permanently for others such as music recording studio BC Studio,” GAIA said in a release.

BC Studio owner Martin Bisi told Brooklyn Paper that long-term construction would displace him from his studio for years, as he can’t record with the sounds of construction going on right next door.

“If I get displaced, I’m displaced into a much less affordable neighborhood, particularly for commercial space,” he said. “So the chances of my recording studio staying in Gowanus, or even Brooklyn, or even New York City, become lessened.”

Council Member Carlos Menchaca, who represents the neighboring District 39, including Red Hook and Sunset Park, was the lone “no” vote.

While he was the only member to vote against the rezoning, Menchaca was not the only member who was opposed to the project. Council Member Kalman Yeger, who represents parts of southern Brooklyn, said he was voting with Lander and Levin to honor the informal tradition of “member deference,” or voting with the desires of the council member who represents the district a project is planned for — a sentiment he expressed while explaining that he would be voting “no” on the contentious rezoning of the Blood Center in Manhattan alongside Council Member Ben Kallos, despite the majority of the council choosing to approve it.

“For the same reason that I’m going to vote with Councilman Lander on the Gowanus, which I don’t think is actually a very good project,” he said during the meeting. “But I respect his work and I respect Councilman Levin’s work, even when I disagree with both of you, which is as frequent as you can imagine.”

The rezoning has been met with opposition from local elected officials and community groups alike – in September, Representative Nydia Velázquez and Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon called on de Blasio to halt the rezoning after the federal Environmental Protection Agency raise concerns about the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The DEIS used outdated data and inconsistent modeling to predict the impact the rezoning would have on flooding and combined sewer overflow, the EPA said in a letter, and the two lawmakers said a new statement should be issued before the rezoning moved ahead.

That didn’t happen, and the final statement did not use updated modeling.

Last month, advocacy group Voice of Gowanus announced that they had hired lawyer Richard Lippes as legal counsel as they prepared to oppose the rezoning. Following the vote, the group said they are planning to follow through with their legal plans.

“As Brad Lander celebrates a massive violation of state and federal law today — one that endangers the safety of our community and the environment, and bends to the interests of big real estate, we note that a certain lady has not yet sung when it comes to the Gowanus rezoning,” they said in a release. “See you in court.”

Even before the vote, developers filed plans for more than a score of projects, including residential skyscrapers, reported The Real Deal, which mapped the proposed developments.

The council vote is the last formal step in the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Process — Mayor de Blasio can step in, but only if he were going to veto the council’s decision in the five days following the vote.

“Rezoning Gowanus — and unlocking a high-opportunity, transit-rich neighborhood in the heart of Brooklyn for new generations of New Yorkers — is a transformative step toward building a recovery for all of us,” he said in a release following the vote. “Thanks to years of hard work from city agencies, elected officials, advocates and Gowanus residents, we’re finally bringing this neighborhood the jobs, housing and open space it deserves.”

“This is exactly the kind of thing we came here to do. And it’s such a great pleasure to do this right as we’re finishing these eight years together.” — Additional reporting by Cate Corcoran

Editor’s note: A version of this story originally ran in Brooklyn Paper. Click here to see the original story.

Related Stories

• Lander Announces Deal With Gowanus Locals, Rezoning Poised to Commence
• City Council Hears From Locals, Pols on Controversial Gowanus Rezoning
• City Planning Greenlights Controversial Gowanus Rezoning

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