help our neighbors in Williamsburg fight skyscrapers

puca

Fabulous Concerned Citizens of New York and of the World,

There is a developer -driven rezoning of Greenpoint/Williamsburg going on. This rezoning goes to it's final vote May 12th (in just a few days!), and we beg of you to click and send our new letter to city council, which highlights some of the many, many detrimental to our community flaws in this rezoning plan.
Please, click on or copy and paste into your browser

http://welovecitycouncil.williamsburgwarriors.org

today, and tell your friends, neighbors, co-workers, and anyone you happen to bump into to do the same.
The Williamsburg Warriors thank you for your dedication to protecting such a diverse, creative, special community. The fight is not over. Don't give up.
Warrior on!

<-CLICK AND SAVE!!! http://www.williamsburgwarriors.org <-learn more, and catch up on all the Warrior action!!!

Below is the Letter we're asking you to sign on to (you can edit it as
you see fit on the site):

This Wednesday, you will be asked to vote on therezoning plan of Williamsburg/Greenpoint, Brooklyn.Despite the recent claims about the plan’s provisions for affordable housing and open space, every aspect of the plan is non-binding. In addition, the plan will have serious repercussions on local infrastructure,
residents, and small businesses. Developers have conceded nothing in this plan; local residets will be forced to concede their community.

For more specific details, please read the full text
of the letter below.
On May 11th, the City Council will be asked to vote on
the rezoning plan of Williamsburg/Greenpoint,
Brooklyn. If you look at this plan on the surface it
doesn't seem so bad: We get parks and open space,
affordable housing, and an industrial retention fund.
But that's the problem with how politics and policy
are practiced. We lose the forest for the trees.
We, the community of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, are
for community-minded development, not against
development itself. We need a balanced and holistic
plan for development that considers the big picture
and pushes our vibrant community to new heights,
rather than push us out with 40-story luxury
high-rises and high rents. The award-winning 197-A
plan, the community plan, developed by this community
over 10 years, has been completely thrown by the
wayside. The Municipal Arts Society (MAS) performed a
study proving that it was possible to lower the towers
to within a 20-story range (very tall for our
community) and still have enough affordable housing
and a more than decent return for the developers (an
estimated 30-40% return on investment -- millions upon
millions of dollars). The Independent Budget Office
(IBO) took a look at the MAS study and said it looked
feasible, yet the study has been tossed out the
window. Why? It is inconceivable to have 10 years of
community planning replaced by one week of
behind-closed-doors deal-making that was far from
representative of the community's wishes, the community plan.

The city representatives have called the developers' plan "historic" because of the high percentage of inclusionary (i.e. NOT mandated) affordable housing. But they have chosen to ignore how much the community would lose with this hyper-development plan. As you'll see on page 11 of the developers' plan, the so-called "Preservation Option" gives too much discretion to developers over building affordable
housing in our community. Current residents fear that
the lack of local affordable housing would turn the
new waterfront development into a "Gold Coast." The
resulting secondary displacement will drive out
long-time residents and small businesses. Residential
and commercial rents will skyrocket, small businesses
won't be able to survive.

In the current outline, the waterfront esplanade – the
main goal of both Greenpoint and Williamsburg’s 197-A
plans — will be built by private developers and
eventually turned over to the city’s Parks Department.
This means that the public will have no say in what is
built on the esplanade (e.g., bike paths, playgrounds,
etc.). There is also no concrete timetable regarding
if and when the developers will actually allow the
esplanade to become fully open to the public.

Luxury towers up to 40 stories all up and down our
precious 3-5 storied waterfront brings fear to
residents' hearts. This over-development, 40,000
estimated new residents -- a more than 25% population
increase, would bring such an influx of new residents
that existing infrastructure that is presently not
anywhere near sufficient, would surely collapse. The
density of this development is flat-out irresponsible.
Here’s a few of the many reasons why:
• Any new open space that becomes parkland will be
even less per capita because of the extreme population
increase. Also, the plan states: “If the city won the
2012 Olympics, the waterfront between N. 9th St. and
the edge of the Bushwick inlet would become parkland."
That "if" word is the word we've worried about all
along. If the park doesn't happen, that area will
still be M3 and open to noxious uses.
• We are already without a firehouse right next to
where they plan these towers. Response times in our
community are already 42 seconds over the Borough of
Brooklyn's average of 3:55 sec for structural fires
and 50 seconds over the rest of Community Board 1. The
city is in direct violation of CEQR (City
Environmental Quality Review) mandates regarding fire
service delivery.
• There is no local hospital or emergency services and
the Woodhull Hospital, all the way in Bushwick, would
not have close to the capacity or services needed in
an emergency. It could easily be considered a Homeland
Security risk, given the fact that we have a low-level
radioactive storage facility on our waterfront
(RADIAC) and many other environmental disasters
waiting to happen.
• The L train, our primary subway line, is being used
as the test train for MTA's new "robot-driven" trains,
which will only increase train service minutely (at a
hearing the MTA said only ONE more train per hour).
This will increase exponentially the dangers to
passengers in case of disaster. Think of a fire in the
Brooklyn side of the tunnel, and it's not hard to
imagine how completely devastating that would be.

The lofty rhetoric about the "historic" nature of this
plan is dubious at best. If you pass this developers'
plan, once the smoke and mirrors have cleared it will
be obvious that the plan benefits no one but the
developers and those in their pockets. The Land-use
Committee has congratulated itself about the most
"historic" rezoning ever, but don't buy it without
careful investigation. Have you on the City Council
actually taken the time to read the fine print of what
you are putting your name behind? Our newly formed
citywide coalition is watch-dogging all rezoning and
over-development in the city and will be watching you
and your actions very, very closely. We ask for you to
look to your hearts, your conscience and your love of
community, and on May 11th, do the truly historic
thing, and seal your legacy for the community and the
city by voting down the developers' plan. You must be
accountable to the people of NY, and not to 5
developers who are simply looking for the biggest
possible return. The citizens of New York City are
watching, and waiting to see you represent the people
and make us proud

captain m

When this was posted before we kind of made fun of the hipsterness of it but I came across some other info and read up on it and the plan is bad. "Developers" suck