Gowanus Canal

A team led by the Hudson Companies will give rise to a mixed-income village along the banks of the once-toxic Gowanus Canal, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced today. The Gowanus “Public Place” will have 774 units of housing (541 below market rate) among a complex of buildings, and comes as the city eyes a transformation for the once (and still, to some extent) industrial area.

The winning team, which also includes the Bluestone Organization, the Fifth Avenue Committee and Jonathan Rose Companies, beat out Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins-owning, constantly building CEO of The Related Companies.

Mr. Ross, who built the Time Warner Center, has had a big string of defeats in the competitions on publicly-owned land. Related’s Pier 40 proposal has been all but tossed out, the company lost its bid for the West Side rail yards after News Corp. pulled out as an anchor tenant, and now this.

Toll Brothers has its own residential project lining the Canal, as does Whole Foods, which is trying to put a supermarket on a brownfield.  read more »

The vice president of Toll Brothers David Von Spreckelsen and another company representative unexpectedly appeared at a neighborhood meeting in Gowanus, Brooklyn, last night to defend the 575-unit residential project the builders plan to develop along the polluted canal.

Friends of Bond Street organized the meeting to rally public opposition to Toll Brothers' planned development before the public scope hearing takes place next week.  read more »

The Center for an Urban Future, a New York City-based "think tank dedicated to independent, fact-based research about critical issues facing New York's future," released a study yesterday urging the city to redevelop two buildings in Sunset Park, smack-dab in the newly minted southwest Brooklyn industrial business zone.
The I.B.Z., you'll remember, is Mayor Bloomberg's much-lauded solution to the steady, incremental loss of industrial jobs and spaces the city's been suffering from due to real-estate speculation and residential conversions. The southwest Brooklyn I.B.Z. stretches from Atlantic Avenue at its northernmost point to 65th Street at its southernmost, all along the East River and surrounding the Gowanus Canal.
But, according to the C.U.F., industrial vacancy rates remain at historic lows. Adding to problem, when industrial buildings are converted to residential developments, blue-collar jobs are lost--or shifted out of the area--and typically, these conversions are not affordable to lower- and middle-class renters.
So, it makes sense for the city to keep a manufacturing base, which is where the C.U.F.'s recommendations come in.
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Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn has just sent out the word on two forums tonight. Whether you want to call it Atlantic Yards or "Atlantic Yards," you can do a bit of forum-hopping around Brooklyn tonight.

The full release is after the jump.  read more »

While condo conversions of industrial buildings are all the rage, Brooklyn Community Board 6 took a stand against the latest attempt at gentrification in the Gowanus neighborhood last night at its full board meeting, denying a variance for 255 Butler Street, at the corner of Nevins.

The planned $27 million development would create 53 market-rate apartment units in the 90,000 square foot building, owned by Nathan and Benjamin Akkad, at the foot of the Gowanus Canal. Currently, the Akkads are moving their business to facilities in Red Hook, leaving the Butler Street building empty.

Community Board 6 district manager Craig Hammerman told The Real Estate that the board ultimately rejected the application because it didn’t meet several criteria necessary under the city zoning code to gain a variance: The developers’ hardship claim was suspected of being self-imposed; there was no genuine effort to find an as-of-right use for the property; and the building wasn’t unique in its design and zoning.

While the community board’s vote is merely advisory, it carries great weight with the Board of Standards and Appeals, which will make a final decision on the variance request. The hearing has not yet been calendared.  read more »

-Matthew Grace