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Toll Bros developer eyes Gowanus Canal’s uncertain future
Sep 30, 2009 | 801 views | 7 
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David Von Spreckelsen, a Toll Brothers Senior VP, at the Gowanus Canal
When David Von Spreckelsen first began exploring the neighborhood, he thought its urban grittiness and the canal itself were the very things that made it cool.
“I liked it from the first moment I saw it,” said Spreckelsen, a senior vice president at Toll Brothers City Living, the development company planning to build a major residential complex on the canal.
When he first considered the neighborhood for a new Toll Brothers development around 2001, Von Spreckelsen said he wasn’t the only developer interested in the area, which is sandwiched between upscale neighborhoods and close to public transportation.
“I didn’t think that I was a total cowboy out there,” he said in an interview. “It seemed to me that it wasn’t a crazy idea.”
Trips to the notoriously foul-smelling area revealed it didn’t even smell that bad, he said, or at least no worse than the East River, or the ocean. “I went down there over and over again and I never smelled anything,” he said.
Von Spreckelsen still doesn’t.
Standing on a dock alongside the canal eight years later, during a recent interview, he spoke of the canal’s potential, and the fun of canoeing its waters (something he’s done more than once with his children).
Nearly a decade after he first envisioned revitalizing the area, however, his development dreams are far less certain.
Von Spreckelsen has said repeatedly Toll Brothers would abandon its plans for the canal if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) places the site on its Superfund list. The EPA is expected to make a decision by the end of this year.
While the canal’s future hangs in the balance, Toll Brothers remains the sole proposed development to receive individual rezoning approval. It is likely Toll Brothers has also already invested more there than any other developer.
If Von Spreckelsen wasn’t a total cowboy at the outset, he might be one now.
In the six months of tense debate over the benefits and pitfalls of a comprehensive federal cleanup, Von Spreckelsen has stuck closely to his belief that a public-private partnership is the best option for revitalizing the canal.
Toll Brothers has committed to cleaning its properties, which are bounded by Carroll Street and Second Street to the north and south, and the canal and Bond Street to the east and west. The company would also build a separate sewer system to divert storm water from the city’s combined sewer system, which during heavy rains can flood the canal with raw sewage.
Under the city’s alternative cleanup plan, the canal’s flushing tunnel and pumping station would be rebuilt, and sections of the waterway would be dredged. “To us that is enough,” Von Spreckelsen said.
By contrast, he said the federal government’s plans to dredge the sediment on the canal bottom do not address its combined sewer overflow (CSO) problems.
And according to an Environmental Impact Statement on the project commissioned for Toll Brothers, Von Spreckelsen said after a federal cleanup the canal would be reclassified as fishable, but still not swimmable.
“My understanding is you would be able to eat fish [from the canal] more often,” Von Spreckelsen said.
He said this result makes sense for pure environmentalists, but not the greater majority of borough residents, like himself, who are hoping to see the area revitalized.
Von Spreckelsen - who is moving to Boerum Hill from DUMBO - said if he lived in the area and took a passing interest in the issue, he would be opposed to a Superfund listing.
“It's hard, because I’m [also] a developer,” he said. “But I’ve lived in Brooklyn more than 20 years and I think [a Superfund cleanup] is bad for the area because it's going to have a negative impact for a long time.”
Von Spreckelsen said he didn’t think he was placing his development goals ahead of the greater good of the environment. Critics of the alternative cleanup plan say the city is desperate not to lose developers like Toll Brothers who are interested in the area, but would be scared off by a Superfund listing.
If the EPA’s dredging plans would make a big difference, “then you could make the argument that I’m putting my development plans ahead of the environment,” Von Spreckelsen said. “But they’re really not going to do anything.”
Von Spreckelsen would find many who disagree, most prominently EPA officials, who are keen to clean the canal their way.
The debate will be rendered moot once the EPA makes its decision. Until then, a period of waiting expected to end by late December, at the latest, Von Spreckelsen is free to speculate on the canal’s future, as he did leaning on a railing of the Carroll Street bridge overlooking the water.
Before taking the subway back to his Brooklyn Heights office, Von Spreckelsen was asked just how much Toll Brothers has spent thus far on a project that might very well never materialize. He straightened up and smiled.
“That’s the one question I won’t answer,” he said. If the EPA lists the canal, it could remain a mystery.
Could it be that the company is using the Superfund designation as a way out of their option to buy the land. They may be looking for a way our given the current finances of the company.
The reporter should have been asking a few questions about the financials of the company and how that fits with their development plans.
How is it this man can think that his perspective represents any majority outside of the mayor's office? Under the EPA Comment Period, more than 800 comments were submitted and more than 80% of them favored a Superfund Cleanup! (All those comments are in the public record.) Even the more conservative Park Slope Civic Association voted to support the Superfund Cleanup.
And when the mayor's office organized their first counter-superfund meeting down at the Gowanus Yard--complete with PA system-- less than a dozen people showed up, and half of them worked for the city, while the other half were Superfund supporters going to see what was being presented in that meeting. The supporters of the mayor's alt-plan can be counted on your fingers. (And didn't their City Council candidate, Heyer come in third in the primary, clearly loosing in his own neighborhood?)
Both environmentalists and a majority of citizens of Brooklyn support an EPA Superfund cleanup for the Gowanus. The problem is that the minority position, backed by the mayor, has all the power and financing to control even the discussion going on in the press.