City Hall has unveiled new plans for two housing high-rises it wants to build in Brooklyn Bridge Park — and park honchos intend to vote on the revised blueprints next week, despite losing state support for the project last month.
The revamped proposal for the properties at Pier 6 calls for slightly smaller towers with fewer units — especially fewer below-market units — and nixes a planned pre-kindergarten space.
Here are the full details of the updated plans — which the park’s board of directors will vote on at a public meeting on Tuesday.
• The taller of the two towers, previously 29 stories containing 192 units, will now be 28 stories with 126 units. They will all be condominiums.
• The shorter tower will remain roughly the same height at 14 or 15 stories, but will have with 40 market-rate units instead of the planned 30, and 100 below-market-rate units instead of 117. These will all be rentals.
• A planned pre-K space in the smaller tower is gone. The city is in talks to find a different location for it “nearby,” according to a spokesman.
• Half of the so-called “affordable” units will be earmarked for households earning around $134,640 a year — for a family of three — a quarter to those making $106,080, and the remaining quarter for those earning $65,250.
The city was supposed to seek Albany’s approval for the Pier 6 towers under the terms of a 2014 lawsuit settlement with local activists, but state officials pulled their support last month, claiming they wanted more time to probe donations the developer had made to Mayor DeBlasio prior to scoring the gig.
Before things went pear-shaped, the city had been hammering out a different plan with state officials that would have included even shorter building, fewer units, but more below-market rentals than originally planned, according to a New York Times report.
But now the city claims it has done its duty simply by “seeking” the state’s okay, and is vowing to go it alone with the latest proposal.
If the majority of the Brooklyn Bridge Park board’s 17 members — whose ranks include Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, who supports the development, and Councilman Steve Levin (D–Boerum Hill), who does not — vote in favor of the new plan, the city will then consider that authorization for the builder to begin work, according to a spokesman.
But that may not be the only hurdle — local activists said last month that they will sue to stop the towers if the state doesn’t step in.
Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation Board of Directors public meeting at New York University Dibner Pfizer Auditorium (5 Metrotech Center, between Lawrence and Bridge streets Downtown). June 7 at 9 am.
