In 2005, the legendary urbanist warned that building residential towers in Greenpoint was an “ugly and intractable mistake.” 20 years later, her words are prophetic.

By Geoffrey Cobb

gcobb91839@aol.com

Author, “Greenpoint 

Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past”

As gentrification increasingly transforms Greenpoint I reflect on a 2005  warning that has proved prophetic. The warning came from Eighty-eight-year-old Jane Jacobs. Picking up her pen, the famous foe of Robert Moses began writing what would become one of the last great public letters of her career. Many considered her one of the most influential urban writers of the twentieth century. Although she had never received formal planning training, her celebrated 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities revolutionized urban planning. It challenged the top-down approach of planners like Robert Moses and argued that neighborhoods worked best when shaped by the people who lived in them.

By 2005, the abandoned factories lining Greenpoint’s waterfront had become the focus of one of the fiercest land-use battles in New York City. Residents saw an opportunity to rebuild the neighborhood without destroying its character. Developers saw hundreds of acres of prime waterfront real estate where luxury towers could generate billions of dollars. The fight would determine whether Greenpoint remained a working-class neighborhood or became one of the epicenters of New York City’s gentrification.

The center of the fight was West Street. Once lined with thriving factories that employed thousands of local residents, it had become a corridor of abandoned industrial buildings and rusting hulks awaiting demolition. Before the waterfront could be redeveloped, however, the area’s industrial zoning laws would have to be changed. Jacobs agreed with both residents and developers on one point: Greenpoint’s obsolete industrial zoning had to change. The real disagreement was over what should replace it. Jacobs expressed support for local community groups’ plan in her letter. The local 197-A plan proposed replacing abandoned industrial sites with housing and mixed-use development that matched the scale of existing neighborhoods, generally six to eight stories rather than luxury towers rising 30 to 40 stories. It emphasized preserving the traditional street wall and neighborhood character.

The local 197-A plans, which won approval by the City Planning Commission in late 2001 and the City Council approval in early 2002, promised to “build upon Greenpoint’s historic mixed-use character. Key to the local vision for the area’s future was ensuring that rents in the new buildings remained affordable for the mostly working-class longtime residents of the area.

Jacobs praised the 197-A plan in her letter. The famous urbanist argued that successful urban renewal grew gradually from existing communities rather than from massive redevelopment projects.

She praised the community’s blueprint for the future because it preserved manufacturing jobs, respected the neighborhood’s scale, encouraged affordable housing, while allowing revitalization to grow from the community itself rather than from outside developers. She wrote, “The community’s plan does not promote new housing at the expense of both existing housing and imaginative and economical new shelter that residents can afford. The community’s plan does not violate the existing scale of the community, nor does it “insult the visual and economic advantages of neighborhoods that are precisely of the kind that demonstrably attract artists and other live-work craftsmen, initiating spontaneous and self-organizing renewal.”

There is no evidence Mayor Bloomberg ever read the letter. Bloomberg believed redevelopment and new housing would strengthen New York’s economy. His administration proposed replacing abandoned factories with high-rise residential towers connected by a continuous public waterfront esplanade. The Bloomberg administration called for implementing a “voluntary” inclusionary zoning bonus, allowing developers to build taller structures in exchange for including low- and moderate-income units in their new buildings.

Jacobs addressed the Bloomberg proposal for high-rise residences, saying, “I will make two predictions with utter confidence. 1. If you follow the community’s plan you will harvest a success. 2. If you follow the proposal before you today, you will maybe enrich a few heedless and ignorant developers, but at the cost of an ugly and intractable mistake.”

Bloomberg and the City Council chose to ignore Jacobs’ warning. The Greenpoint waterfront was rezoned in 2005 when the New York City Council approved a historic, 184-block rezoning across the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfronts. The rezoning departed significantly from the community’s preferred 197-A plan and gave developers what they had long sought—the legal ability to transform the waterfront into a district of high-rise residential towers.

As a result of the rezoning plan adopted by the Bloomberg Administration, Greenpoint has become ground zero for gentrification. A study by N.Y.U.’s Furman Center identified the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area as the most rapidly gentrifying in the city, with a staggering 57.7% average rent surge and 41% jump in median household income between 2000 and 2014. Rapidly rising rents, that now average near the $4,485 mark, pushed many working-class residents out of the area.

In the view of many longtime residents, it was ignored because City Hall placed greater weight on large-scale redevelopment than on the community’s own vision for the waterfront. Many view the 2005 decision as the defining turning point in modern neighborhood history. In their view, it accelerated gentrification, transformed the waterfront into a district of luxury towers, and fundamentally altered the social and economic character of Greenpoint—a process that continues today.

Like Cassandra in Greek mythology, Jacobs accurately foresaw the consequences of the rezoning, but her warning went unheeded. Twenty years later, glass towers dominate the Greenpoint waterfront where factories once stood. Whether viewed as visionary redevelopment or the loss of a working-class neighborhood, the transformation closely resembles the future Jane Jacobs warned about in 2005. Her final great warning was not ignored because it lacked clarity. It was ignored because the city decided the interests of outside developers outweighed those of local residents. We are all living with the consequences of this decision.