City to lease portion of East River pier that had housed an OEM facility. The Department of Small Business Services proposed to lease to Basketball City, LLC a 64,000- square-foot portion of the one-story shed building located on Pier 36 along the East River, at the base of Montgomery and South Streets. In 2006, plans for the Hudson River Park forced Basketball City to vacate its former location on Pier 63 along the Hudson River at West 23rd Street. The plan caused great controversy at the time when school groups and local officials sought the Hudson River Park Trust’s agreement to stop or at least delay the loss of Basketball City’s facility.

Basketball City would convert the shed building into six indoor basketball courts, locker rooms, and 75 at-grade parking spaces. The Department of Sanitation, the NYPD, the FDNY and the Office of Emergency Management currently occupy portions of Pier 36. Under the proposal, OEM would vacate its space to make way for the indoor basketball facility; the other City uses would remain. (more…)

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…)

Court finds environmental review for the Hudson Yards sufficient to cover changes to Javits plan. The plan to expand the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center underwent changes since the approval of the final environmental impact statement for the Hudson Yards rezoning plan in 2004. When in July 2006 the Empire State Development Corporation approved the changes without a supplemental EIS, four Hell’s Kitchen residents, the Municipal Art Society and the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association challenged the decision in an article 78 petition, arguing that the changes were significant and required a supplemental EIS.

The residents cited changes in the plan, which called for the private development of a 46-story office building, two residential towers of 50 and 45 stories, and a 500- car parking garage to replace the original plan for a full-block park bounded by Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues and West 33rd and West 34th Streets. The new plan would also change the location of the hotel proposed for Javits from Eleventh Avenue and West 41st Street, to Eleventh and West 35th, and moved the Javits truck loading facility from West 34th Street to locations along West 39th and West 40th. Instead of the original underground facility, the new proposal called for a multilevel, above-ground truck loading dock. The residents submitted evidence showing that the changes would cause significant traffic impacts, potentially increase air pollutants and impact neighborhood design and open space. (more…)

Tower site located on York Avenue just north of Queensboro Bridge. On May 27, 2007, Solow Management’s application to construct a new 37- story mixed-use tower on York Avenue between East 60th and East 61st Streets started the City’s land use review process when the Planning Commission certified the applications as complete. As proposed, the 211-unit residential tower would sit adjacent to a 41- story as-of-right development built by Solow in 2002. The buildings would share a one-story lobby and would have the same size footprint.

On a portion of Solow’s 62,861- square-foot development site, the current zoning prohibits residential uses. Under the proposal, the whole site would be rezoned to permit residential uses and to increase the permitted floor area. Linked with this request, Solow submitted applications to allow a 195-space public parking garage within the development and a new curb cut along East 61st Street. (more…)

Proposals due May 21, 2007. The New York City Economic Development Corporation issued a request for proposals on March 26, 2007 seeking developers to purchase and redevelop 130,000 sq.ft. of the Bush Terminal complex, located in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The site, bound by 43rd and 47th Streets on the north and south and the 51st Street Rail Yard and Bush Terminal Piers on the east and west, contains three buildings totaling 37,100 sq.ft. Four tenants on month-by-month leases currently occupy the buildings. EDC anticipates proposals will seek to demolish the buildings.

The site is located in an M3-1 zoning district, allowing heavy manufacturing, and is also in a waterfront area, imposing additional limitations on development. The RFP requests plans for industrial uses to support the goals of the Bloomberg administration’s Industrial Business Zones. 3 CityLand 133 (Oct. 15, 2006).

Current City projects in the area include redevelopment of the nearby South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and plans to establish Bush Terminal Piers Open Space, an 18- acre park to be located just southwest of the site. (more…)