THE COST OF AIR
City adds MTA station air rights sale to Gowanus rezoning
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
City planning gurus added
the sale of more than a football
fi eld’s worth of publicly-owned
air rights to the Gowanus rezoning
application, documents
reveal.
Offi cials plan on hawking
51,000 square feet of newly-generated
development rights at
the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority’s Garfi eld Substation
at 276 Fourth Ave., near
Garfi eld Place, according to the
rezoning’s lengthy Draft Environmental
Impact Statement.
According to the documents,
the transit power station
would remain active, but
the sale of valuable air rights
newly-generated by the rezoning
could allow an adjacent
landowner to build up, adding
that area to their development
along the proposed Fourth Avenue
corridor.
The lot’s current zoning
only allows for manufacturing
uses.
The Garfi eld Substation is
10 COURIER LIFE, MAY 7-13, 2021
one of only two so-called dispositions
of public property
that are rolled into the massive
rezoning proposal, which
promises to enable the creation
of 8,500 new housing units, including
some 3,000 below market
rate, in the gritty neighborhood
by 2035.
The other is the much more
high-profi le Gowanus Green
development, which would allow
for a 950-unit affordable
housing complex on the publicly
owned and toxic Public
Place site at Smith and Fifth
streets.
Offi cials with the Department
of City Planning, the
rezoning’s lead agency, have
widely touted the sale of Public
Place as a way to boost cheaper
housing in the area sandwiched
in between wealthy Park Slope
and Carroll Gardens in presentations
to locals dating back to
2019.
Despite numerous meetings
with local Community Board
6 since reviving the rezoning
last fall after a pandemic pause,
DCP reps did not disclose the
Garfi eld Substation air rights
sale until dumping the 26-chapter
DEIS — a mandatory document
under the city’s Uniform
Land Use Review Procedure
analyzing potential impacts of
the rezoning — on April 19, and
presenting the full scale project
to the City Planning Commission
later that day.
The rezoning was also
stalled in court for three
months after a group of opponents
under the moniker Voice
of Gowanus sued the city claiming
virtual ULURP meetings
amid the pandemic were illegal,
but a Brooklyn Supreme
Court Judge let offi cials proceed
with some conditions last
month.
The roughly 6,000-squarefoot
lot of the substation is
owned by the Department of
Citywide Administrative Services
and leased to New York
City Transit, according to the
DEIS.
The city’s quasi-public business
boosting arm the Economic
Development Corporation
requested the air rights
sale be included in the Gowanus
rezoning, according to
the documents.
The Garfi eld Substation at 276 Fourth Ave., near Garfi eld Place. Photo by Kevin Duggan
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