Building on the green canal
Gowanus rezoning gets go-ahead from local panel, with conditions
BY BEN VERDE
Community Board 6’s Land
Use Committee voted to approve
the Gowanus rezoning
plan on June 17 with a lengthy
list of conditions, marking the
fi rst approval the controversial
scheme has garnered as
it snakes its way through the
city’s Uniform Land Use Review
Procedure.
The committee voted 8-5 to
approve a resolution to support
the plan, after debating amendments
for over two hours.
“I think we’ve done something
that was long needed,”
said board member Jerry
Armer. “We’ve taken a city rezoning
plan and made it better.”
The rezoning seeks to allow
for large residential development
along the currently lowscale
corridor of Gowanus, and
is expected to allow for over
8,000 new units of housing if approved
— a dramatic change to
the mainly industrial neighborhood
of warehouses and artist
studios and one namesake, noxious
canal.
Land Use Committee members
at the Thursday night meeting
expressed varying opinions
on the plan as it stands, but
most acknowledged a desire to
improve upon the plan by voting
to pass it with amendments,
as opposed to voting to deny it,
in hopes that their suggestions
will make the rezoning more
suitable to the community’s
needs — namely creating jobs
and improving fl ood resiliency.
Among the amendments
approved by the committee include
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ones that would require
the city to make a fi rm commitment
to increase public space,
to conduct a study on coastal
fl ooding in Red Hook and Gowanus,
and to give preference
not only to residents of Community
District 6, but also to
those of its surrounding, more
diverse districts, in any affordable
housing lottery that comes
of the rezoning.
Others questioned the
need to push the rezoning
through with so many relevant
elected offi cials leaving
offi ce at the end of 2021,
A potential rendering of what the rezoning would allow near the Carroll Street bridge. Gowanus Forward
including Lander, Levin,
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Borough
President Eric Adams.
“We’re getting a new administration,
how do we
know that those coming in
will listen to your conditions?”
asked Blake.
The contentious rezoning
plan has been in the works for
a decade now, and has come
to encompass several debates
over affordable housing, contaminated
soil, fl ood zones,
and money for repairs to public
housing.
From here, the proposal will
go before the full community
board on for another advisory
vote, before going before the
borough president.
The committees’ vote
comes after adjacent Community
Board 2 — which contains
roughly two blocks of the rezoning
area — voted to deny the
proposal.
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