DCP promotes zoning changes
DCP's Sustainable East New York planners recorded the community's visions at 45 outreach sessions with residents of East New York, Broadway Junction, and Brownsville over the course of 2011 and 2012.
“Atlantic Avenue currently does not meet the needs of the community in use and employment and divides the communities of Cypress Hills and East New York,” says Ralph Blessing, the Sustainable East New York project manager, adding that those needs can be met by rezoning Atlantic Avenue and other corridors to accommodate manufacturing, residential and commercial uses and to increase allowable density. As suggested by residents, homes on side streets would be left intact.
“There's a desire to preserve the residential character of the small-scale homes but there's also a desire for more affordable housing,” says Shai Lauros, director of Community Development at CHLDC.
Blessing says zoning changes will help local businesses, spur retail development that will create jobs, and make way for affordable housing using programs such as inclusionary zoning. In that voluntary program, a developer agrees that a certain percentage of the new units will be rented at a price targeted to specific income levels. In exchange, the developer can build at a higher density and qualify for city subsidies.
Lauros says that increasing allowable densities will make affordable housing easier to finance. Although developers sometimes go through the lengthy and expensive process of pursuing land-use variances for individual parcels, large-scale rezoning will significantly incentivize development, she says.
A 2008 report by the Pratt Institute for Community Development reported that since 2005, the Bloomberg Administration has lost over 2,000 acres of manufacturing land through zoning changes, with another 1,800 acres more if additional proposed zonings were approved.
Wilkins says that the light manufacturing industries that exist today on Atlantic Avenue could coexist with new commercial and residential buildings. In the planning process to come, he wants to make sure DCP lives up to its promises to let the manufacturing businesses already in the area continue to thrive.
“Let's make sure if [manufacturing businesses] chose to, they can stay, in harmony with what's taking place, but they have the first right of refusal. And if that's not the case, then the tale is wagging the dog,” he says. “They were there first when no one wanted to be there.”
Plan draws praise, some concerns
Manuel Burgos, a community board 5 member, is supportive of the zoning changes. “I like what it's doing,” he says. “The rezoning is along commercial corridors that I have always thought are severely underdeveloped.” He adds that the project would finally address pollution in the area, such as runoff from auto lots.
Nathan Bradley, chair of community board 5, says that he is looking forward to additional affordable housing, improvements to transportation, energy efficient buildings, healthier food options, and better streetscape design, but he has some concerns: that additional bike lanes in industrial areas will not be safe, and that DCP is not yet considering the additional services the neighborhood will need when there are new people there.
Joyce Simmons, chief of staff for Councilman Charles Barron, says the project is promising but that she wishes it extended farther south, where, she says, there are other blighted streets and vacant lots in need of attention. “If you divide East New York and say this is the sustainable area and this is not, you are going to have some issues,” she says.
Blessing says DCP chose the northern portion of East New York and Cypress Hills so that the study correlated with CHLDC's Brownfield Opportunity Areas study, because the two efforts could benefit from mutual planning. DCP and CHLDC are jointly applying for a state grant to fund the application process for zoning changes.
But community board member James Tillman says the focus on the district's north makes him suspicious. He points out that Cypress Hills is the next stop off the J and L line after gentrifying Bushwick. “It just reeks of gentrification,” he says.
Seeking a balance
It is no secret that the proposed mixed-income housing would attract more professionals to the area. Community residents express varying degrees of worry about how an influx of more affluent New Yorkers could affect those native to East New York. Bradley and Wilkins say that while they understand attracting a mixed-income community is important to neighborhood revitalization, they will be on the lookout to ensure the area remains affordable to current residents.
In neighborhoods across the city, community leaders are asking whether the type of affordable housing programs planned for a rezoned East New York have succeeded elsewhere. Since 2005, the inclusionary housing program has created almost 2,400 affordable units in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and the West Side, but only 400 throughout the rest of the city, according to a report released this August by Councilman Brad Lander. And what counts as “affordable” housing may not actually be affordably priced for local people.
Lauros says that since homeowners are less vulnerable to gentrification than tenants, increasing homeownership is another way to prevent displacement, but continuing foreclosures, a lack of appropriate funding options, and the low incomes and employment instability of potential homeowners in the area make that a challenge in Cypress Hills.
Ultimately, she says, creating a sustainable mixed-income community without displacement will be a test for the incoming mayor. “I think that the city needs to think radically different and with much more innovation in order to address this as an issue across the city,” she says.
