Both Use Green Building Techniques, Incorporate Affordable Housing
By Sarah Ryley
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
GOWANUS — Two development teams remain in the running to convert the toxic Public Place site along the Gowanus Canal into a park and mixed-use community, a city official confirmed.
Public Place is a heavily contaminated, 6-acre site that stretches from Smith Street to the Gowanus Canal. The city has owned the land for 20 years, but it’s been of little value until recently, when Brooklyn’s real estate boom started pressing against the edges of the exclusively manufacturing district along the canal. City Planning is considering allowing housing on some of those blocks for the first time, expected to be decided sometime this year.
In July of last year, the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) released an official Request for Proposals seeking a developer for Public Place and received six responses, according to a source involved in the project.
HPD spokesman Seth Donlin confirmed that the two finalists are: The Related Companies partnering with Monadnock Construction Inc., Catholic Charities and Donna Walcavage Landscape Architect; and The Hudson Companies partnering with Fifth Avenue Committee, Jonathan Rose Companies and The Bluestone Organization. The Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation is a partner with both teams.
“The two are very similar in a lot of respects,” said the source. “They both have a sizable amount of affordable housing units, significantly over what was already required, and a significant amount of open space.”
City guidelines require that at least 50 percent of the housing built on Public Place, said to range between 500 and 1,000 units, be priced below market rate, not including at least 100 units earmarked for seniors. Developers are also required to provide open space with public access to the waterfront, a community facility and ground-floor retail.
Employees from both development teams declined to give specifics on their proposals before the city unveils them at a community meeting, expected to take place late next month.
Last November, Patrick Plunkett, director of acquisitions for The Related Companies, told the Eagle Handel Architects designed their proposal, which he said, “is really progressive and environmentally friendly, with a very interesting energy efficiency plan.”
With environmental contamination the most pressing issue for the neighborhood, both proposals are expected to incorporate innovative, green building techniques. Decontaminating the site alone is expected to take roughly two years, and will be handled by National Grid, the company that bought out KeySpan Energy.
The four teams not chosen as finalists are Two Trees Management, Strategic Development with Avalon Bay Communities, The World-Wide Group, and Harlem-based Artimus Construction with Project for Public Spaces.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net
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