Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Court fight over Brooklyn rezoning

From NY1:

Views of the harbor and Lower Manhattan skyline can be seen from the hills of Sunset Park. But some community groups fear the vistas will be blocked if the city's rezoning plan goes through since developers could create taller buildings along the avenues. And that's just one of many reasons the group is suing to stop the plan.

"We know that this plan is going to destroy or community," said Wendy Cheung of the Chinese Staff and Workers' Association. "This rezoning plan is going to upzone. It's going to encourage luxury developers to come in and push people out."

Similar to other recent neighborhood rezonings, City Planning wants to put height restrictions on the residential blocks to preserve Sunset Park's low-scale character. At the same time, it wants to encourage higher density construction on the avenues, particularly 4th and 7th Avenues.

While the group supports the part of the plan that calls for height limits, it says the plan favors developers more than the mostly Latino and Chinese residents. They say it encourages retail chains over mom and pop stores and provides only limited incentives for affordable housing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Go build it in CB1. Those people are stupid and greedy enough to accept anything.

Anonymous said...

If there are any doubts about the concerns of these Sunset Park residents, just look at how the LIC towers robbed the LIC residents of their magnificent midtown views.
We should all support the residents of Sunset Park 100 percent, and provide any assistance that may be required.

Anonymous said...

It took 20 years for sunset park to become liveable again,don't ruin it!

BestViewInBrooklyn said...

The problem is, of course, that some rezoning has to happen in order to rein in the irresponsible and dangerous (and ugly, but that's less important) demo and building that's going on now. The current rezoning proposal doesn't go far enough in several areas, and it allows for some sections of commercial areas to be more easily overtaken by large chains.

Thanks for publicizing this more.