Calls for Reining in Development at Carroll Gardens Meeting
Three plans for preserving Carroll Gardens’ character were on the table last night at the Scotto Funeral Home on 1st Place. Councilman Bill de Blasio hosted a town hall meeting that drew an overflow crowd of about 150 residents, most responding to the controversy surrounding the planned 70-foot development at 360 Smith Street. Proposals for…
Three plans for preserving Carroll Gardens’ character were on the table last night at the Scotto Funeral Home on 1st Place. Councilman Bill de Blasio hosted a town hall meeting that drew an overflow crowd of about 150 residents, most responding to the controversy surrounding the planned 70-foot development at 360 Smith Street. Proposals for Carroll Gardens—a neighborhood that’s apparently unafraid of a few new rules and regulations—include downzoning, landmarking, and a moratorium on construction over 50 feet. In light of community concerns, de Blasio said City Planning has committed to studying most of the area west of Bond Street for downzoning. After being pressed by a member of CORD (Carroll Gardens Organization to Respectfully Develop), which organized a petition calling for a moratorium on new buildings over 50 feet, de Blasio said he would also look into putting a moratorium in place while downzoning was in the works. Bob Furman, the president of the 4-borough Neighborhood Alliance, completed the preservation triple-play by speaking about approaching the Landmarks Preservation Commission in order to designate the entire neighborhood a historic district. Although all three proposals will clearly require a lengthy gestation period with the city, CORD’s push for a building moratorium was obviously a crowd favorite. It’s unclear to us what the legal basis and process for implementing a building moratorium are. Is there any precedent for such a move?
Aside from chewing on questions of height limitations, residents repeatedly brought up the pending rezoning of Gowanus and plans for the redevelopment of the Public Place site. Attendees voiced concerns about the possibility that high-rises will be built on the Public Place site as well as the timeline for cleaning up toxic sites along the canal. Beyond that, several community members said the neighborhood’s infrastructure wouldn’t be able to support the influx of new people that could result from allowing increased density as part of the Gowanus rezoning. While no concrete resolutions came out of the evening, de Blasio said the meeting was the first in a series that would deal with development issues in Carroll Gardens. Check out more coverage on Gowanus Lounge, First & Court, and Curbed.
While a developer can build “as-of-right” the people, through their government law inforcement, can withold access to sewage hookups if the system is determined to be lacking in necessary capacity.
A resedential development without sewer hookups wouldn’t be of much value to the property owner and developer.
We are all in this together when private property rights expect to make use of communal services. The lines are not so clearly drawn and the community does indeed have a say in what should and can be build.
NY State Law and Federal Clean Water Act
1:01, I’ll take your post to say, “I don’t actually know any examples of construction moratoriums being applied in New York City.” I own a copy of the zoning handbook. No mention of moratoriums in Chapter 8, “How Zoning is Administered & Amended,” or in the glossary. You can ignore everything I’ve said on the topic, and I’ll grant you that, at best, you have an uphill battle. Good luck.
Wow 2:34! The city would be a better place if there were no land use regulations? The statement is so outrageous that I can interpret it as nothing less than intentionally provocative.
g man,
You can use google to learn about the use of the moratorium. Municipalities do it all the time. Or you can purchase the zoning regulations handbook downtown.
Good point 11:18
Let’s not forget that it is the big developers also who favor restrictive zoning. Keeping the supply of development sites low keeps land values high and reduces the potential pool of buyers. This ensures that the investments they already have continue to generate substantial returns.
If zoning laws were eliminated tomorrow, the price of land would drop precipitously and the housing shortage would be over in just a few years. More people would make money from real estate and more people would happily be in larger homes, but the rich developers wouldn’t get anywhere NEAR the return on their equity they get today.
Zoning laws hurt homeowners and hurt citizens. No one benefits but the rich developers.
8:16, I am always interested in broadening my knowledge, so please tell me what precedent setting construction moratoriums you are referring to. Could be a useful tool in other situations, if applicable.
You state, “once you tip the balance and give the ‘as of right’ developers carte blance,” but of course developers don’t have carte blanche. They must comply with zoning, the building code, etc. To characterize this as “carte blance” is to show just how out of sync some people are with reality, however distasteful that reality may be.
You’re right, “it is not the community’s fault if the city of NY understaffs these critical offices and meanwhile zoning regulations and therefore community protections continue to lag.” Well, maybe it is. Elected officials (hopefully) respond to the priorities of their constituents.
More to the point, it is the community’s responsibility — and also that of the local representatives — to not wait until there is a “crisis” (if that is what it is; I am just trying to capture the tone of the activists) to understand what can be built under the current zoning.
What is happening is a reflection of the current economic climate, and not so much the current political climate, although politics are always involved. 11:18 seems to imply that the two years that it may take to down-zone the neighborhood somehow correlates to the next round of elections. It took three years for City Planning to rezone Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, with no elections on the horizon.
My comments, at the outset and now, may seem harsh or even heartless. Please consider them as dispassionate. I am sharing what I know about these types of issues.
Lack of infrastructure in the event of future development?
How about addressing the present dearth of community facilities that necessitates a neighborhood meeting taking place in a funeral home.
What a joke.
“Strange that deBlasio would consider extension of the LH1 District currently covering much of Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill while simultaneously supporting Two Trees’ Atlantic/Court application to undermine the very same. Can’t imagine he’s much of a champion for contextual zoning OR landmark districts based on his blindness at that particular corner of Brooklyn.”
Strange indeed. The downzoning and even the landmarking will not stop the powerful developers though it will push some development to other places. Those places are full of politically well connected people who may or may not be involved in the organized community opposition to “out of scale development”. Landmarks routinely gets rolled by the developers who are after all their friends at the many cocktail parties they are invited to in the course of the heavy lifting at Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Also, even though six floors seems huge to the suburbanites moving into this neighborhood it is not. This is appropriate density that creates efficiencies for other infrastructure developments in transportation , education, power and water. Density in fact makes all the other infrastructure possible. Thats why we have sewers and the suburbs have septic tanks.
It is really a political machine in action here. Politicians push downzoning. Coincidentally it has to take two years (when is the next round of elections?). The candidates can ride to the rescue from evil things like new buildings just in time for the voting. Then after the downzoning takes place and the citizens realize the substantial property rights they have given away and they want to improve their properties just as they have for the last one hundred years then they will need variances. The citizens will have to go back to the same politicians for help with the variances then. The Swiss never made watches that functioned this well.
DeBlasio wants to be Borough President and took a real beating from the anti-AY folks. All politicians prefer to be all things to all people when given the opportunity.
The people in the small frame houses in the South Slope are beginning to wake up to the enormous property values they lost in the down-zoning there. Carrol Gardens has a much more typically brownstone character and the neighbors are well educated white people. Apparently well educated people with so much money they can let a million or so in property rights slip away from them without noticing.
Building/Alterations moratoriums in NYC do have a historical precedent and an interim moratorium makes complete sense in CG simultaneous with a downzoning study by City Planning for Carroll Gardens(which they have agreed to do)
in the meeting last night everyone heard how understaffed the offices downtown are (city planning AND landmarking)…the waiting lines for downzowning and landmarking are too long as a result
it is not the community’s fault if the city of NY understaffs these critical offices and meanwhile zoning regulations and therefore community protections continue to lag behind
while savvy developers quickly cash in
sure an owner may be as of right, but a community has also rights and these include rights to infrastructure which supports new, well planned, reasonable-sized development
that is not what has been happening in the current climate of neighborhoods all across Brooklyn thanks to the current political climate
once you tip the balance and give the “as of right” developers carte blance in a neighborhood setting with no simultaneous plan for infrastructure study and development for the already existing community, then you have gone too far, and taken rights away from the existing constituents and tax base
then the vital balance between exisitng community and new growth is lost!
and then any community has every right to demand city and thus public oversight and review of impending large scale projects which threaten the community’s own quality of life
yea- and that ekerd drug looks so great! i think CG missed their chance. building some nice tall buildings would fit right in.