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Broadway Triangle plan moves forward

By Aaron Short
Community Newspaper Group
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The Brooklyn Paper / Bess Adler
A city plan to rezone the Broadway Triangle to encourage the development of affordable housing has moved forward. Some locals say that the plan doesn’t create enough below-market-rate housing.
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Councilman Diana Reyna, left, opposes the plan.

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The City Council’s Land Use Committee passed the controversial Broadway Triangle plan this week, all but clearing the way for approval from the full body — despite continuing outrage from a Bushwick councilwoman who opposes it.

The Council’s Land Use Committee gave the approval in a surprisingly close 12–6 vote on Monday, clearing another hurdle for a plan to rezone a 31-acre industrial site in East Williamsburg to encourage the development of housing, some of it much-needed below-market-rate units.

Before the vote, Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D–Bushwick) made one final plea for her colleagues to send the proposal back to the drawing board.

“This rezoning is asking for the minimum in economic development and job creation and will displace businesses in the area,” Reyna said. “All that I have been asking for is a plan that includes the community.”

But Councilman Dan Garodnick (D–Manhattan) said he supported the rezoning because it will “revive an area that has been underutilized and to create more affordable housing for a community that everyone agrees is in great need of it.”

Councilman Al Vann (D–Bedford-Stuyvesant) offered the oddest statement in support of the rezoning, which has been bitterly opposed by several community groups who claim that they were cut out of the planning process in favor of two politically connected groups.

“I agree that the process was flawed in that surrounding communities and their representatives were not adequately consulted,” Vann said, “[but] I feel a greater loyalty to respect the preference of the community board and councilmember [David Yassky (D–Brooklyn Heights)] whose district is being rezoned.”

After the vote, Reyna said she had no hopes of influencing the full Council to reject the rezoning when it votes in the next few days. Instead, she said opponents will now focus on a lawsuit, filed in September, that argues that the rezoning violates the Fair Housing Act.

“We have our community who stood firm on rejecting a process that excluded them, called for transparency and gave our community an opportunity to organize, come together,” said Reyna. “How can you deliver a government for the people if people stand aside while decisions are being made on their behalf?”

©2009 Community Newspaper Group

←Boerum Hill: Lutheran synod finally speaks out about Bethlehem church battle
→The Butcher of Flatbush Ave. Extension: A ‘Streetcar’ you’ll desire

Reader Feedback

tahjah from bed-stuy -bushwick says:
bed-stuy and bushwick is the best place ever no matter how dirty it may look its not that bad and its a great place to grow up even when some things do happen
Dec. 9, 2009, 12:09 pm
tahjah from bed-stuy -bushwick says:
never under estamate the places if you've havent seen it for your self
Dec. 9, 2009, 12:11 pm
Fred from Williamsburg says:

I think Reyna is confused. Many people that live in the Broadway Triangle area in question support the City's plan for affordable housing. One (calculated) mistake that she and her group have made is to present themselves as "the community" when in fact they are more accurately described as a coalition in support of Los Sures and St. Nicholas, two other community groups that wanted to develop this land.

When people weren't convinced about Reyna's argument regarding a lack of process, mostly because all they saw was process, community board meetings with votes in support for the City's plan, hearings by the Borough President, hearings by the City Planning Commission, hearings by the City Council, she changed her argument.

After it was lack of representation for people in the next Community District. But why are Reyna and Marty Needleman speaking for Bed-Stuy? What have Bed-Stuy's electeds said? Supported the City's plan. Part of the problem is that Reyna is not a capable advocate, since much of what she says makes little sense.

Now there's a lawsuit with little merit, whose aim is simply to delay. Let's hope the Judge assigned sees beyond this cynical attempt to abuse the Court system.

Here's to affordable housing now for a community that needs it.
Dec. 10, 2009, 7:22 am
anywho says:
Fred:

Being a crony suits you. It is because of people like you that Vito and his crew run roughshod all over North Brooklyn. I guess putting puzzles together was not your childhood strength.

That money that is being allocated to fund Broadway Triangle did not come from thin air, IT IS TAX PAYER MONEY and Vito Lopez commandeered it for his own fiefdom.

No matter how noble the cause, if the process and/or the people are involved are corrupt, then everything that comes forth is corrupt. That is the basic argument.

Take Broadway Triangle and shove it up your butt.
Dec. 10, 2009, 10:55 am
Fred from Williamsburg says:
The plan put forth is the best plan provided. The "opposition plan" was a protest gimmick, given that there is no funding stream or package of affordable housing tax credits, subsidies or direct funding that would allow for twenty five story, one hundred percent government subsidized apartments. It's that simple. It was a fiction devised to con(fuse) people into believing that there was something better than the City's plan.

You can say whatever you want about me. Who cares. But what I do know, and what you probably know too, is that the so-called coalition deserved to lose, because groups like Los Sures and St. Nicholas are not capable of taking on a development project of that scale. They can barely manage apartment buildings that they receive already rehabilitated from the City, let alone lead a development project!

That being said, the reason that the coalition lost was that Diana Reyna wasn't up to the task. She doesn't know the most basic aspects of urban planning, and can barely string a sentence together. Her version of persuading council members to vote her way involves literally crying to them. Whatever. Los Sures and St. Nicholas cast their lot with her, and now they'll have to suffer her defects.
Dec. 10, 2009, 7:53 pm
anywho says:
I can see you don't like Reyna, but the plan is still corrupt. I pray for the day that Lopez and Battaglia are in handcuffs.
Dec. 11, 2009, 7:56 am
Fred from Williamsburg says:
The plan isn't corrupt at all. Just because the result isn't what you'd like doesn't make it corrupt. Not all development projects go through an RFP process.

It must be easy for you to sit at your computer and smear people who have spent their entire lives trying to improve Bushwick. While other people fled Bushwick, they stayed and fought blight and crime during the wave of arson and drug infestation. Both Battaglia, who grew up in Bushwick, and Lopez, who had family in Bushwick before he moved there, have spent their entire lives working to improve the area, and your cheap cynicism won't change that.
Dec. 12, 2009, 8:28 am
Anywho. says:
Fred:

Keep drinking that Koo-Aid.

Love, Anywho
Dec. 12, 2009, 1:48 pm
Anywho. says:
Fred:

Keep drinking that Kool-Aid.

Love, Anywho
Dec. 12, 2009, 1:48 pm

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