ISO Private Developer for Public Place
After years of inaction, the city is now planning to do something with a huge contaminated lot on the banks of the Gowanus Canal. On Monday, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced that for the next three months it will be accepting proposals from developers to turn the site at Smith and 5th…
After years of inaction, the city is now planning to do something with a huge contaminated lot on the banks of the Gowanus Canal. On Monday, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced that for the next three months it will be accepting proposals from developers to turn the site at Smith and 5th Streets into a large mixed-use development. According to the press release, there are lots of requirements to comply with. In addition to conforming to HPD’s New Construction Sustainability Requirements (you know, green stuff), all proposals must include plans for at least 400 apartments, at least half of which must be affordable to low-, moderate-, and middle-income; there also has to be an unspecified amount of senior housing. In addition, HPD’s looking for a plan that includes lots of open space and community facilities. Before you get all excited and whip out your drafting implements, don’t forget that a lengthy, expensive environmental cleanup (which is being done by Keyspan) that has to happen before any building can even begin. What sort of public or community facilities would you like to see here?
Press Release: City Announces New Development for Public Place [HPD]
Here is Your Public Place Vision [Gowanus Lounge] GMAP
Public Place to Get Cleanup at Last [NY Daily News]
This is all a joke, isn’t it?
Low income and senior housing along the Gowanus waterway. Even if they cleanup the loacl project land, nothing is stoping the ever increasing pathogens in that waterway.
Why can’t this community function? Why is the voice of the people always pushed aside like this? How can these guys make any claim that this project plan “meets the needs of our community”?
This greatest need of this community is to address the CSO’s and other ongoing polution and this site should be used to that ends before any other considerstions for other uses are made.
I live in the nabe – would love to see the whole thing made into a park and scrap the housing, market-rate and affordable. Only green space we have anywhere nearby is carroll park, which doesn’t have a patch of grass
IF THERE ARE ANY MEMBERS OF THE SURROUNDING COMMUNITY THAT ARE CONCERNED AND WOULD LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW THE COMMUNITY CAN HAVE A VOICE IN THIS PROJECT PLEASE EMAIL ME AT —
dogheart7@macconnect.com
Sounds like the market-rate units here will be a great financial investment for families. Not only would you be buying on a former toxic dump site, but you will be right by one of the most toxic bodies of water outside China, and you will be living in a building that is 50% housing project.
The cleanup is being paid for and handled by Keyspan. So if you trust thet then what is most important is that the resulting development work well with the existing communities.
How will this Project impact Schools, transportation and quality of life while working within the context of the character of the neighborhood?
Neither the developer nor the city (or taxpayers) is paying to clean up this site. The clean up costs will be paid by Keyspan, because the activity that polluted this site was a coal gas generating plant owned by a predecessor corporation of Keyspan. So all the developer and city have to worry about are building a project that meets the community’s needs. The site will have affordable housing or the elected officials on the task force won’t support it. But as long as someone else is paying for the remediation, the economics should work out.
$700 million seems crazy, even the worst heavy mineral mining operations don’t go over $200,000 per acre for cleanup.
Plants are already growing on the site so the toxins are not unmanagele.
bio-remediation, puhleez. plant it with sunflowers for a few years. why is everybody so ass backward?
Gowanus Lounge suggests that the clean-up of this site would cost $700 million.
How was that number determined? What was the basis for reaching that staggering sum?
The property is 5.8 acres, or about 250,000 square feet.
At $700 million for the clean-up, the expense is $2,800 PER SQUARE FOOT.
That strikes me as a rather high cost for reclaiming this land, no matter how much hazardous material has seeped into it.