BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Gale Brewer, the Manhattan Borough president, has split sharply with Community Board 2 over the massive St. John’s Partners project.
While C.B. 2, at the end of June, recommended approval of the three-block-long development plan at Houston and West Sts., Brewer on Monday announced that the project “isn’t good enough.”
The “Beep” recommended a flat-out denial of the developers’ land-use and air rights-transfer applications to build on the Lower West Side site, which would involve buying and using $100 million worth of air rights from Hudson River Park. In order to allow the project, the city must rezone the site to allow residential use.
“A worthy plan for the St. John’s Terminal site would have more and better affordable units, a true neighborhood retail plan, and accessible public spaces that residents will actually use,” Brewer said. “We don’t need to choose between a massive project with massive flaws or letting Pier 40 fall into the river — I firmly believe we can do better with this site.
“I believe government should find creative ways to fund the operation and maintenance of its own property assets,” Brewer stated. “All too often, though, it appears that the default financing mechanism is to cede that responsibility to a private developer. … Here, in order to fund necessary and urgent repairs to Pier 40 and have a real chance to create affordable apartments in this neighborhood, I am told I must accept this project at this height and density. But I believe looking at the project in this manner sets up a false premise which I cannot accept.
“Funding repairs to the pier benefits the neighborhood, but also benefits the developer by enhancing the value of the market-rate apartments,” Brewer said. “This raises the larger question of what the neighborhood is receiving in return for the increase in height and density and whether those benefits outweigh adverse impacts to open space, transportation, and the very real, albeit temporary, impacts during construction.
“I do not think the amount, location and design of the proposed affordable housing is adequate,” Brewer noted, “and I believe significant changes to the site plan in regard to parking, open space, retail and public access are needed to truly stitch this development into its surrounding neighborhood and to ameliorate the impacts cited above.”
Brewer specifically said the affordable units should be more equitably distributed throughout the project.
Under an amendment to the Hudson River Park Act, the money from the sale of the 200,000 square feet of air rights would be poured back into Pier 40 — the 14-acre pier across from the proposed development site — to repair the ailing pier’s metal support piles.
St. John’s Center Partners issued the following statement on Brewer’s recommendation on the St. John’s Terminal rezoning, calling it “another step in the process.”
“We thank the borough president for her and her staff’s work and value her input. After Community Board 2’s conditional support for the project, this is another step in the process. We look forward to the upcoming review by City Planning, and continuing the dialogue with stakeholders and the city to make this vital project — offering hundreds of new affordable housing units, urgently needed resources to save Pier 40, and the opportunity to create a vibrant, mixed-use development — a reality.”
Two months ago, Board 2 voted overwhelmingly, with one abstention — by veteran board member Doris Diether — to back the project. The board issued a lengthy resolution with a range of recommendations, including changing the massing of the project, and also urging the developer to allocate funding for area public schools. Tobi Bergman, the board’s chairperson, said it would be a losing battle to fight for the developer to include a public school in the project, given the nearness of other existing and planned public schools. The board also urged that no further air-rights transfers from Hudson River Park to C.B. 2 “receiving sites” be allowed, and that the final phase of the South Village Historic District be designated.
A rendering showing what uses are planned in the St. John’s project. A rendering of Ian Schrager’s planned wave-shaped building, 160 Leroy St., which is not yet under construction, is shown just north (to the right) of the St. John’s project. Pier 40 is at upper right.
C.B. 2’s and Brewer’s recommendations on the mega-project are part of the seven-month-long Uniform Land-Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, for the plan. Both the board’s and Brewer’s recommendations are only advisory, not binding, though.
Asked for his reaction to Brewer’s formal position on the ULURP, Bergman said her criticisms ultimately will help “result in a better project.”
“To me,” Bergman said, “it is always a close call between ‘deny unless’ and ‘favor with conditions.’ The borough president’s statement is excellent and supports many of the conditions included in the C.B. 2 recommendation. I think if City Planning and the applicant pay attention to the recommendations and get to work, the result will be a better project for everyone.”
There was a very large turnout at a City Planning Commission public hearing on the project on Wed., Aug. 24. Brewer and C.B. 2 were among those offering testimony on the proposal. Following City Planning’s eventual binding vote on the project, the City Council will weigh in, also with a binding vote.
Under the new project plan, the St. John’s Center — the onetime terminal of the High Line elevated railway — would be razed and replaced with five buildings. Four of these would be residential and one commercial, possibly a hotel.
The tallest building would rise 430 feet, sporting 34 floors, and the smallest 240 feet, with 21 floors.
The total project’s size would be 1.7 million square feet, with 1.3 million of that residential, and 400,000 square feet commercial.
Of the St. John’s Center project’s roughly 1,586 residential units, 476 would be permanently affordable. Of that amount, 175 would be earmarked for low-income seniors; the rest of the affordable units would be for low- and moderate-income families.
Affordable apartments would be allotted by a lottery — with preference given to Community Board 2 residents — to be run by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Although 30 percent of the project’s total residential units would be affordable, due to differences in unit sizes, only 25 percent of the total residential F.A.R. (floor area ratio) would be affordable.
