Business owners criticize EDC’s $3 billion remediation and redevelopment plan for a new Willets Point. Image: NYC EDC.

Concerns over displacement of businesses dominated hearing. On June 13, 2007, the City Council’s Land Use Committee and its Economic Development Committee held a joint oversight hearing on the proposal by New York City’s Economic Development Corporation to redevelop 61 acres of Willets Point in Queens. The site, located directly east of Shea Stadium, is mostly privately owned and currently home to a mix of automobile related, light industrial and manufacturing businesses. EDC estimates that 250 businesses employing about 1,300 people operate from the area. Much of the site lacks paved roads, sewers, or sidewalks and is heavily contaminated from illegal dumping, leaky underground tanks, and spills.

EDC President Robert Lieber presented a redevelopment plan for the area, which would remediate the environmental contamination and raise the grade to bring the area out of the 100-year flood plain. After gaining control of the property, EDC would seek to rezone it from industrial (M3-1) to mixed-use (C4- 4) with a special district overlay, remap many of its streets, and create an urban renewal plan to guide future development. EDC plans to start the public approval process in fall 2007, allowing it to select developers to implement the plan in summer 2008. (more…)

Owner claimed soil cleanup and structural repair made smaller building infeasible. Prior to the City’s 183-block rezoning of North Brooklyn, Selik Realty sought BSA approval to convert a three-story manufacturing building on North 7th Street and Meeker Avenue in Williamsburg into residential units and to add four additional stories. When the site was rezoned in May 2005, residential use became permitted as of right, but Selik maintained its BSA application, seeking approval of a building exceeding the new zoning’s floor area and height limits.

The proposal, a 77,180- square-foot building with residential and retail uses and a total height of 80 feet, exceeded the floor area limit by 20,200 sq.ft. and failed to provide a needed setback. Selik argued that the existing manufacturing building was not easily adaptable to residential use and that removal of arsenic, lead and mercury in the soil rendered an as-of- right building infeasible. To support this claim, Selik submitted a $2.3 million cost estimate for the soil remediation and structural reinforcement and a letter from the City’s Department of Environmental Protection requiring clean up of the site prior to its development. (more…)

Controversial garage given short-term lease by Commission frustrated with garage’s continued problems. The Department of Sanitation sought approval for the continued operation of its Brooklyn District 3 Garage at 306 Rutledge Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Sanitation has operated this garage under a long-term lease with the private owner since 1945. Even though it is located in Brooklyn’s Community District 1, the garage primarily serves adjacent District 3. With its last lease, granted in 1998, the City Council limited approval to seven years and required bi-annual status reports on the potential relocation of the garage as a consequence of residents’ persistent complaints of trucks parked on neighborhood sidewalks and within on-street parking, and of noise, odor and rodents.

In 2001, Sanitation received City approval for a garage on Nostrand Avenue to replace the Rutledge Street facility, but litigation stalled its construction. When constructed, the new garage would be located in and serve Brooklyn’s Community District 3. (more…)

BSA reduced building size, but included parking for each unit. The owner of 114 Walworth Street in an M1-1 district of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, sought a variance to construct a six-story, 47-unit residential building with 24 parking spaces on a vacant 17,500-square-foot lot with 175 feet of frontage on Walworth Street. The site, formerly occupied by residential buildings, has remained vacant since the buildings were demolished.

The applicant argued that Walworth Street’s narrow 50-foot width with only 24 feet of paved roadway, coupled with the unrestricted on-street residential parking on both sides, made it impossible for trailers to back onto the site. The site’s slope, two adjacent residential buildings and potentially contaminated soil conditions made conforming development infeasible. The only way to create functional manufacturing or commercial use on the site, the owner argued, would be to create one flat floor plate requiring a combination of excavation and decking at a considerable cost. (more…)

Applicant claimed new evidence of increased remediation cost. Basile Builders Group applied to BSA for a rehearing on a variance, denied in 2002, for a residential development at 2353 Cropsey Avenue in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. The original application sought to construct a four-story, 45-foot tall residential building that would have exceeded size, lot coverage and height restrictions and failed to provide sufficient open space or side yards. In its denial, BSA found that Basile failed to prove three of the five required findings, namely that the site had unique circumstances, an as-of-right building was infeasible, and the building was similar in size to neighboring structures.

Claiming that the cost to clean up environmental contamination was unknown in 2002, Basile submitted a new remediation study, which estimated a $900,000 site clean-up cost. Based on this cost, Basile sought the rehearing and approval of a new, slightly larger, six-story residential building, asserting that the increased floor area was necessary to cover the considerable remediation cost. (more…)