Allegations Claim City Development Will Disintegrate Neighborhood
By Samuel Newhouse
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
SUNSET PARK – In recent years, residents of Sunset Park have pushed for improvements in this quiet neighborhood between Park Slope and Bay Ridge. But with a large rezoning now on the table, the area’s historical immigrant community is realizing that some beautification could cause more harm than good.
That is one issue at stake in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on behalf of Sunset Park community organizations, trying to delay a proposed 128-block rezoning. Petitioners in the lawsuit — all members of the Committee to Protect Sunset Park — say the rezoning will bring large chain-stores to the neighborhood, and displace low-income residents.
This rezoning comes in the wake of legal efforts by the city to close adult bookstores and sex shops near the Brooklyn waterfront in Sunset Park. Some of these stores allegedly used loopholes to skirt city zoning laws, disguising themselves as non-adult businesses while operating near residences, schools and religious centers.
But now, it seems that the community’s attempts to improve the neighborhood could ironically have a destructive effect with accelerated gentrification, which rezoning opponents say would displace the large low-income Latino and Chinese communities.
“[The city] cleans up the neighborhood, and displaces the residents who have been asking the city to clean up the neighborhood for years,” said Bethany Li, of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), which is filing the lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court with attorney Rachel Hannaford of South Brooklyn Legal Services.
The lawsuit claims that the Department of City Planning (DCP) did not take a hard enough look at the effects this rezoning could have on the community.
“We want it to stop until [the city does] an environmental impact statement, and gives us some kind of assurance that low-income housing is part of the rezoning,” said Ruben Sosa, a petitioner in the lawsuit and member of the Sunset Park Alliance of Neighbors (SPAN).
Li said that the DCP’s prediction that this rezoning would not create a “significant impact” on the neighborhood was inaccurate. She listed the development of a “regional” shopping center along 10 blocks on Fifth Avenue and of hundreds of new residential units as possible results of the rezoning.
The DCP’s environmental assessment statement was not sufficiently comprehensive, Li said. She said that an environmental impact statement is legally required before the City Council can vote on the rezoning.
“This lawsuit is premature as the City Council has not yet acted on the proposed rezoning for Sunset Park,” responded Carrie Noteboom, senior counsel at the New York City Law Department. “The zoning amendments actually seek to preserve the low and mid-rise character of the neighborhood in addition to providing opportunities to build affordable housing where appropriate.”
Noteboom said that the proposal was developed after “extensive discussion with the community board, elected officials.”
SPAN member Sosa, however, told a different story.
According to Sosa, the movement to rezone Sunset Park was something that SPAN started by gathering signatures for petitions. It was intended to guarantee the development of affordable housing for low-income residents, which Sosa said was the “number one point” of community support for rezoning.
However, Sosa said, once it reached Community Board 7 and City Council Member Sara Gonzalez, SPAN was cut off from rezoning plans, “even though we did all the legwork.” The main goal, affordable housing, was no longer central to the proposal.
“We consider the board and Sara to be in the pockets of the developers,” Sosa said.
Low-income Latinos and Asians make up over 90 percent of the Sunset Park community, according to Wendy Cheung of the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association.
“It’s a really critical time for people to come out. It’s our community,” Cheung said.
“Developers want to build up a bunch of a high-rises,” she said. “This will cause the eviction of families making $25,000 to $30,000, total.”
Cheung said that the [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg administration has “pushed through the most rezonings in the city’s history … We know that his interest isn’t in protecting low-income people of color.”
“In Bay Ridge and Park Slope, rezoning was protective,” she said. “Why is it that the neighborhood between Bay Ridge and Park Slope is not getting a plan that protects them?”
Cheung also cited the destructive effects on the Lower East Side and Chinatown neighborhoods in Manhattan after a rezoning last year, which led to some low-income tenants being evicted.
“We have members who were pushed out of the Lower East Side and came to Sunset Park, and want to know, are we going to be pushed out again?”
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© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2009
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