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Sharing the wealth
Group demands city fund NYCHA in Gowanus rezoning
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The city must fully fund repairs
of its ailing public housing
stock in Gowanus ahead
of the neighborhood’s rezoning,
a coalition of local
community groups demanded
Wednesday.
The Gowanus Neighborhood
Coalition for Justice, a
group representing residents
from the neighborhood’s three
New York City Housing Authority
developments, along
with a slew of local civic, environmental,
and business
groups, called on Mayor Bill
de Blasio and the Department
of City Planning to rehabilitate
the ailing public housing
— before handing private developers
a windfall in development
rights.
“I’ve been living in my
apartment for over 50-someodd
years and I’m tired of
things not being fixed, I’m
tired of New York City Housing
Authority saying, ‘we got
all this allocated money,’ but
they’re not giving it to us,” said
Cherry Shivers, who lives at
Wyckoff Gardens.
The group wants the city
to pay for fixes for Wyckoff
Gardens, the Gowanus
Houses, and 572 Warren St.
as part of three key demands
from the city in exchange for
their support of the planned
neighborhood-wide rezoning,
which is estimated to bring
some 20,000 new residents to
the area and allow for up to
22-story-tall towers along the
banks of the noxious Gowanus
Canal.
The coalition also demanded
that impending developers
foot the bill for
new infrastructure to prevent
any additional sewer
and storm overflow pollu-
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Wyckoff Gardens resident Cherry Shivers said repairs to the NYCHA complex
are long overdue on Feb. 5.
tion from flooding into the
canal, echoing previous calls
from the US Environmental
Protection Agency and the local
citizens watchdog group
overseeing the cleanup.
The third demand is that the
city to designate Gowanus an
“Environmental Justice Special
District,” with stringent
oversight by a diverse local
board of residents, businesses,
and civic gurus of the area’s
many ongoing government
projects, including the federal
Superfund Cleanup, funding
to repair damaged caused by
Sandy, and investments to fix
NYCHA building roofs.
“We hope the special district
will glue all of this together,”
said Karen Blondel,
an activist with the Fifth Avenue
Committee which is part
of GNCJ.
Some 4,300 residents dwell
in the area’s three NYCHA
complexes, which suffer from
frequent outages of heat and
hot water, and general water
service, in addition to mold,
lead paint, broken fixtures,
and vermin as result of years
of underinvestment, to according
to Shivers.
“We pay our rent and we
work hard to pay rent, and then
we’re being used and abused,”
she said.
The buildings could face
up to $300 million in funding
needs, according to one activist,
who slammed the city for
excluding the developments
from the rezoning’s scope.
“We feel that this is a great
injustice, that to exclude public
housing from the process,
given the huge capital needs
that are necessary in this area,”
said Michael Higgins, an organizer
with the Fifth Avenue
Committee.
The Warren Street development
is one of nine public
housing sites in Brooklyn
currently undergoing
partial privatization through
the city’s Permanent Affordability
Commitment Together
(PACT) program, a controversial
variation on the federal
Rental Assistance Demonstration
(RAD) program, whereby
a private company manages
the building – although the
the city still owns it — and
uses private funds to finance
repairs.
The program removes the
development from Section 9
public housing and turns it
into Section 8, whereby the US
Department of Housing and
Urban Development no longer
directly funds the building’s
upkeep, but issues Section
8 vouchers to tenants to
help pay their rent to a private
management company.
The coalition cites PACT
as one of the ways of financing
repairs in the other projects,
but said the way the city
is currently converting Warren
Street is “in violation to
our vision for equity and inclusion
for this community,”
according to a statement the
group released.
Despite this status change,
the city could still channel
funds to Warren Street, according
to Councilman Stephen
Levin (D–Boerum Hill),
whose district includes all
three NYCHA developments.
“PACT doesn’t preclude
the city from ever giving capital
funding to improve on top
of that,” Levin said.
Building a better B’Bridge
City launches competition to redesign busy walkway
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The city launched an international
competition to redesign
the Brooklyn Bridge’s
notoriously overcrowded
walkway on Tuesday.
City Council and the urban
design advocacy nonprofit
Van Alen Institute set
up the contest seeking submissions
from people to revamp
the pathway across Brooklyn’s
namesake span, which
is frequently over-crowded
with tourists, commuters,
and cyclists.
The contest, dubbed “Reimagining
Brooklyn Bridge”
calls for submissions by April
5, which a nine-member jury
will evaluate.
The brief is for a new and
unconventional design that
makes the crossing safer
and more accessible, better
for the environment, and safe,
while respecting the iconic
bridge’s landmark status and
accommodating commuters,
visitors, and vendors.
The path is currently divided
in half , with pedestrians
on one side and a twoway
bike lane on the other,
and it is regularly swamped
by tourists, who make a bad
habit of congesting both sides
of the promenade, according
to one Crown Heights resident
crossing the bridge.
“Right now the traffic
isn’t that bad because of the
weather, but in the summertime
it’s atrocious,” said Monica
LeBron.
A handful of small threewheeled
mini police patrol
cars frequently take up at
least one of the lanes too.
As a result, commuters are
forced to come up with creative
solutions to get through
the squeeze, including one
Photo by Amalia Arms
biker who sang his way
through the crowd.
One Midwood commuter
said he had several accidents
while crossing the bridge on
his bike.
“The Brooklyn Bridge was
the most dangerous part of
my commute,” said Glen Stephens.
Stephens said there should
be some sort of barrier between
pedestrians and bikers to prevent
further collisions.
The jury will pick six finalists
— three aged 22 years
or older, each of whom will
receive $13,000, and three
21 years or younger, each of
whom will get $3,000.
The jurors includes conservationists,
architects, transportation
advocates, an architecture
student, a Manhattan
district leader, the president of
the Downtown Brooklyn business
boosting group Downtown
Brooklyn Partnership,
and the editor of the news site
Curbed NY, Amy Plitt.
The finalists will work
with Van Alen and Council
to further develop their ideas
for two months and will present
their proposals at a public
event in mid-July and the public
will help choose one winner
for both the younger and
the older finalists through an
online vote.
If you’re interested in submitting
a proposal please upload
it here by 11:59 pm Eastern
Time on Sunday, April 5,
2020.
For questions about the
contest, you can reach out to
competitions@vanalen.org by
March 6 and responses will be
posted on the organization’s
site the following week.
The city’s DOT previously
studied expanding the walkway
in 2016 to no avail.
The city launched a competition to redesign the
Brooklyn Bridge’s walkway on Feb. 11.
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