City Reveals Plans for Bigger, 100 Percent Affordable Gowanus Green Development

A long-in-the works residential development will be bigger and more affordable than originally planned and also have a school, city officials said Thursday. The Gowanus Green project along Smith and 5th streets in Gowanus will be 100 percent below-market rate housing.

“Gowanus Green helps realize the city’s commitment to fair housing and equitable growth at a moment when safe, affordable housing and public open space is more important than ever,” said Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Vicki Been in a November 19 statement.

The massive mixed-use campus is part of the proposed Gowanus rezoning and will add almost 1,000 housing units to a historically polluted lot along the canal, with prices tagged to different income levels of Area Median Income. As planned, the site will also include a public park, which the city said in March it will develop, in order to allow the housing to be fully affordable.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development — the city’s lead agency for the project — and their cadre of private development partners unveiled the income levels for the 950 units, 883 of which will be rentals and 67 co-ops.

Half of the apartments, or 475 units, will be priced at up to 50 percent AMI, which equates to a salary of $51,200 for a family of three. Within this tranche, 15 percent of rentals will be earmarked for formerly homeless households.

Ten percent of the apartments, or 95 units, will be targeted at households making a “moderate income” between 51 to 80 percent of AMI, topping out at $81,920 for a family of three.

The remaining 40 percent of units will go to the highest income brackets in the project, which includes both rentals and all of the co-ops. The rentals will be tagged at up to 120 percent of AMI, or $122,880 for a family of three, while the homeownership apartments will be have income caps of 130 percent of AMI, or $133,120 for the same size household.

Some 115 units of the campus, or just above 12 percent, will be set aside for seniors aged 62 years or older.

While some of the higher-priced units stretch the meaning of the word “affordable,” advocates of the project said the development will provide hundreds of much-needed apartments below market rate right next to public transit and near the wealthy brownstone neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Park Slope.

“950 units of affordable I think can make an incredible difference in the lives of thousands of people and I’m so excited to welcome so many new people into this neighborhood,” said Ankur Dalal at a virtual presentation on November 19 about the project to Community Board 6.

But opponents of the plan have voiced concern about risks of building housing and a school above the polluted site.

“The community has really serious health and safety concerns about this development plan,” said Jack Riccobono of the group Voice of Gowanus, a coalition of activists which also opposes the larger rezoning of the neighborhood.

The six-acre project site used to house a Citizens Gas Works plant which was decommissioned in the 1960s before the city seized the lot in 1975 via condemnation, designating it a “Public Place.”

The gas company later became part of what is now National Grid, and the utility company started cleaning the soil in summer 2019 under the state’s Brownfield Program.

Coal tar — a toxic byproduct of gas production that is common in and around the Gowanus — has seeped 150 feet deep into the ground at the site over the years.

National Grid is tasked with removing the gunk at a depth of 22 feet, before placing a cover on the entire site and installing a canal-side bulkhead to keep the remaining pollutants from oozing into the waterway, according to a city environmental expert.

“This remedy protects public health and the environment by removing contamination and by boxing in contamination remaining beneath the site, preventing it from spreading further,” said Mark McIntyre, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation. “This is a standard approach for remedies at former gas plant sites.”

The utility company is required to monitor the remedy after its completion in summer 2021, and the Gowanus Green developers may have to do more remediation of shallow soil before they start construction, McIntyre said.

The six-building campus is set to range in height between nine and 28 stories tall and will also include a commercial strip on the ground floor along Smith Street. Developers include Hudson Companies, the Bluestone Organization, Jonathan Rose Companies, and local nonprofit Fifth Avenue Committee.

The building complex will capture 100 percent of its stormwater runoff using retention tanks, green roofs, rain gardens, and so-called bioswales, according to HPD.

Along with the 1.5-acre waterfront park, the new public school will likely not be funded by the developers.

The original Request for Proposal the city sent out for the project in 2007 did not include a school and had 25 percent market-rate housing, but officials mandated the developers at the time fund and maintain the park.

Local Council Member Brad Lander in March said that the funding for the open space would have to now come out of the city’s pocket in order to allow the developers to build a completely below-market-rate project.

A senior city planner for the Gowanus area declined to confirm that at a Thursday virtual presentation to locals, saying only that the Parks Department would design the new lawn and own it, but not who would foot the bill for construction and maintenance.

“The maintenance piece is something that I think is wrapped up with the funding questions around the park, which we’re still looking into as an agency and development team,” Department of City Planning’s Jonathan Keller said during the CB6 meeting. “I wish we had all the answers for you tonight but we’re going to have to wait until those are clearer down the road.”

With regards to the school, the developers only said they would provide the space for a future school, and a borough representative for HPD added that the city would have to build the education facility.

“The developer is not designing the school, that would be on the city,” said Lin Zeng. “We at some point would have to involve the School Construction Authority on that.”

The city officials and developers declined at the meeting to give a timeline for the project, saying the schedule depended on public approval and other red tape.

“A lot of things have to happen, including the zoning approvals,” Keller said. “Working out from there it’s a little bit TBD.”

[Photos by Susan De Vries unless noted otherwise]

Editor’s note: A version of this story originally ran in Brooklyn Paper. Click here to see the original story.

Related Stories

• Locals Envision Park Instead of Affordable Housing at Contaminated City-Owned Gowanus Green Site
• What’s Going on With Gowanus Green
• Gowanus Residents Want to Halt Rezoning Until in-Person ULURP Meetings Can Resume

Sign up for amNY’s COVID-19 newsletter to stay up to date on the latest coronavirus news throughout New York City. Email tips@brownstoner.com with further comments, questions or tips. Follow Brownstoner on Twitter and Instagram, and like us on Facebook.