“Community Boards are currently being asked to do more with less,” wrote a task force of district managers and administrative staffers in a report released last month. “Especially in the last year-and-a-half, community boards have been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis.”
Once a seemingly promising structure to ensure that real estate groups don’t run roughshod over local neighborhoods in development deals—and still a common practice in other cities—CBAs are now disdained by many New York City community groups and developers alike. The mechanism’s demise is a lesson, development experts say, in both the strength and limitations of demanding concessions in exchange for neighborhood-changing construction projects.
While developers will seriously benefit from a chance to build market-rate apartments in one of the city’s most coveted zip codes, the de Blasio administration says the new construction will also create about 900 apartments deemed affordable under the mayor’s signature Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) policy.
‘This plan did not start in a developer’s office, or at City Hall. It started through community planning, a series of public conversations that generated core principles for what inclusive, sustainable growth in the neighborhood would require.’
“This is the biggest rezoning this administration has done over our eight years,” the mayor said ahead of Tuesday’s vote on the plan, which will upzone an 82-block swath of the Brooklyn neighborhood to add an estimated 8,500 new apartments.
Opponents argued to councilmembers that the plan to add about 3,000 new units and change land use rules in a 56-block swath of Lower Manhattan would incentivize demolition to make way for luxury housing, usher in big box retail and forever alter the artistic character of the iconic SoHo and NoHo neighborhoods.
Councilmembers Brad Lander and Stephen Levin had both previously expressed support for the plan, but said their ultimate approval depended on the city committing to repairs at the Gowanus and Wyckoff Gardens Houses.
‘Our city has long suffered from a lack of housing and mistrust from our elected officials. But by reaching out to people who disagree and remain circumspect of city proposals, I believe that a pathway to understanding and producing opportunities for working-class families is the connection to lower the rhetoric and find ways to work together.’
The need for new housing, especially affordable, in these high-opportunity neighborhoods is much more acute than the need for more commercial space.
‘Buildings cannot go up around NYCHA developments while residents see their futures go down,’ Adams said outside the Gowanus Houses Friday.
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