The developer’s failed promise to build a glass-enclosed public plaza in front of the Barclay’s Center is a bad sign for its other pledges to the community yet to be fulfilled: Most importantly, the 877 units of affordable housing still unbuilt, advocates and officials say.
District 34 voters have four candidates to choose from: Jennifer Gutierrez, incumbent Reynoso’s chief of staff; Scott Murphy, a self-described small business owner and volunteer healthcare worker; Andy Marte, an ex-substitute teacher and affordable housing specialist with RiseBoro, a community revitalization group; and Lutchi Gayot, a contractor.
The final fiscal 2021 spending plan staved off cuts to smaller housing programs, but retained a shift of roughly a billion dollars in capital spending on the mayor’s affordability plan.
The two sides disagreed on what might seem like a simple, factual question: whether or not the stakeholders’ vision for the neighborhood was a ‘downzoning.’
This year’s update left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, from loft-tenant advocacy groups, to North Brooklyn community groups worried about displacement, to elected officials who say they tried to craft a fair bill.
Bushwick residents, elected officials and other stakeholders say they expect the city’s neighborhood rezoning plan—due out Tuesday—to differ from a community-generated vision released last year on the issues of density, the preservation of industrial space and affordability levels for housing.
The plan calls for the environmental review to include ‘alternate methods for predicting secondary displacement.’
Two Councilmembers invited neighborhood stakeholders to draft a rezoning plan. But it could encounter the same misgivings that top-down plans have faced.
It’s yet unclear in what way the city will adopt or address the Bushwick steering committee’s plan, but both sides expect to be working together in a coordinated fashion.
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