Bending the Rules for a Bank on Bedford

Last night Williamsburg residents got to hear about a developer’s plans to bring a large bank and residential development to a prime stretch of the Northside. A lawyer representing the owners of 118-130 North 4th Street—between Bedford and Berry—made a presentation to Community Board 1 in order to try to get board members’ blessings for the construction of a new building that would include a 5,000-square-foot Commerce Bank branch fronting Bedford Avenue (as per the Bricolage rendering, above). The North 4th property is part of an Urban Renewal Area established in 1969 that prohibits any uses aside from manufacturing, which means the developers have to go through ULURP in order to build a new mixed-use structure, a stricture that expires in 2009. In exchange for bypassing the industrial-use requirement, the developers intend to offer 20 percent of their planned 72 units as affordable housing. A few board members expressed reservations about the bank’s design (the phrase it looks like a mall was said several times), though at least one person noted that Williamsburg increasingly needs services like banks and supermarkets. The developers’ lawyer emphasized that the design is still preliminary, and it’s likely that it’ll get tweaked in the coming months. What do you think of it in its current form? GMAP P*Shark