Council Wants Answers on Mamdani Housing Plan Rollout
The City Council has questions for the city’s head planner on how she plans to realize the Mamdani administration’s lofty housing goals.
The Land Use Committee put Sideya Sherman, director of the Department of City Planning, and Michael Sandler, deputy commissioner at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, through hours of questioning Wednesday on how the housing plan, known as Block by Block, will be implemented.
Many Council members representing areas that appear on the “bottom 12” list of lowest affordable housing producers sought clarity on how the fast-track rollout would hit their districts in the new year, with Upper West Side Council member Gale Brewer vowing to sue over the untenable requirements placed on her neighborhood.
Lower Manhattan lawmaker Christopher Marte wanted more granular details about a megaproject planned for 100 Gold Street in his district, which could end up as one of the densest residential developments in the country at a proposed 4,000 units.
Marte had agreed to support the redevelopment of the city-owned site next to the Brooklyn Bridge, the current location of HPD and other city agency offices, in exchange for keeping a plan to build affordable senior housing away from the hotly contested Elizabeth Street Garden site. But now that the Economic Development Corporation has unveiled plans for GFP Real Estate to build out its megaproject, Marte has doubts about the potential knock-on effects of an upzoning.
“My fear is that you guys are allowing unprecedented development,” Marte told Sherman and Sandler. “A 30 [floor area ratio], like what’s being proposed at 100 Gold … allowing that to be mapped all throughout Lower Manhattan without having a proper discourse with other stakeholders in the community makes it seem like you’re using 100 Gold as a Trojan horse to map the rest of the neighborhood.”
He also cited concerns about inadequate infrastructure and school seats to accommodate such a large upzoning, recommending that the zoning amendment should be separated from 100 Gold and to plan for the community more broadly.
“Obviously with the lifting of the FAR cap, it’s certainly creating a new Manhattan skyline, a new city skyline,” Sherman said. “It’s creating an opportunity to build in ways that we haven’t before to really meet our housing crisis.”
Any future projects with that level of density will need to undergo a separate rezoning process before the City Council, according to DCP Executive Director Edith Hsu-Chen, who noted that 100 Gold would hold a scoping meeting on Oct. 29.
What we’re thinking about: Do you think Lower Manhattan will get more high-density residential development like 100 Gold? Let me know at ben.miller@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: The iconic Guggenheim Museum building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright opened 67 years ago on Oct. 21, with thousands of onlookers lining up down the block to catch a glimpse of the architectural marvel and its inaugural exhibition in the spiraling rotunda, which featured works by Kandinsky, Chagall and Brancusi, among others.
Elsewhere…
— Ken Griffin, Vornado and Rudin closed their joint-venture agreement on 350 Park Avenue after months of speculation that the Citadel CEO could abandon the plans after Mayor Zohran Mamdani took aim at the executive in a video announcing the pied-à-terre tax filmed outside the building where Griffin owns a penthouse, the New York Post reported.
— New York Attorney General Letitia James is taking credit for housing planned for development over the Atlantic rail yards, part of the long-delayed Pacific Park project, even before those units or the necessary platforms have been built by LCOR and Cirrus. She also told the New York Editorial Board that she wants to see more housing built atop Sunnyside Yard and Coney Island’s rail yard, contingent on federal funding.
— A city program to provide low-income New Yorkers fighting eviction with free legal counsel has correlated with a lower frequency of emergency room visits across 10 ZIP codes where the program first rolled out, according to The City Reporter’s coverage of a new study from the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The Right to Counsel program was first introduced to neighborhoods including Crown Heights, Tremont and Harlem in 2016, then went citywide in 2020. There were at least 26 fewer ER visits per 10,000 residents across the first 10 areas where the initial pilot rolled out between 2016 and 2020, but the study period ended before the program expansion and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Closing time
Residential: The most expensive residential sale recorded Wednesday was $3.5 million for a 2,848-square-foot condominium at 1 Hanson Place in Fort Greene. Orrie King and Beth Doran with Compass had the listing. The unit last sold for $3.2 million in February of 2022.
Commercial: The most expensive commercial transaction was $19.5 million for a 30,000-square-foot development site at 2185 Coyle Street in Homecrest. The Real Deal reported on the transaction from ABS Partners and AAG Management to Gilbane Development last week.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $9.9 million for a 4,800-square-foot co-op at 227 West 17th Street in Chelsea. Kristi Ambrosetti with Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing.
— Matthew Elo
