A rendering of Greenpoint’s controversial Monitor Point towers, were the City Council approved last month.
GEOFFREY COBB
Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past”
gcobb91839@Aol.com
There is an old saying that “you can’t fight City Hall,” and nowhere has it rung truer than in Greenpoint, where city officials have repeatedly overridden the wishes of neighborhood residents. While researching my new history of the neighborhood, Greenpoint’s Forgotten Stories, I found that this pattern stretches back decades.
One of the chapters in my book describes the destruction of Oakland Street, which was once a pretty, cobblestoned street lined with quaint, wooden frame houses. Against the wishes of Greenpointers, the city condemned about a hundred houses on the East side of Oakland Street, forcing some 450 families to relocate, many outside the area. The city destroyed Oakland Street so that it could create the ugly six-lane McGuinness Boulevard that still cuts like a gash through the neighborhood. Borough President Cashmore even ignored residents’ pleas for a meeting to discuss the creation of the motorway, showing his contempt for local sentiment.
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 a chance to redevelop the waterfront without sacrificing Greenpoint’s historic character and created their own community plan. Developers, meanwhile, saw hundreds of acres of prime waterfront real estate capable of generating billions of dollars in luxury housing.
The outcome would help determine whether Greenpoint retained much of its working-class character or became one of Brooklyn’s epicenters of gentrification.
Mayor Bloomberg sided with developers who proposed transforming the waterfront into a wall of high-rise luxury towers.
One of the nation’s most respected urban thinkers agreed with Greenpoint residents. Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, urged Mayor Bloomberg to reject the city’s proposal and instead adopt the community’s plan. The famous urbanist argued that successful urban renewal grew gradually from the wishes of existing communities rather than from massive redevelopment projects.
Jacobs warned Bloomberg 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.”
The waterfront has since become one of New York City’s most visible symbols of gentrification, leading to a spike in rents and forcing the exodus of many long-term residents. Today the waterfront is lined with a phalanx of glass-and-steel towers that bear little relationship to Greenpoint’s traditional low-rise streetscape.
When the area was rezoned in 2005, residents were promised that they would benefit by finally receiving waterfront parkland. Bushwick Inlet Park, nestled along the East River, was designated and planned as part of that rezoning, pleasing Greenpoint residents.
Jane Jacobs, whose famous book, the Death and Life of American Cities, challenged the notion that city planners know best. Photo via Wikimedia.
Controversy later centered on an 80,730-square-foot MTA-owned parcel adjacent to Bushwick Inlet Park. Many locals wanted to see it added to the park, while developers planned to build a massive, sixty-story tower that would cast a huge shadow over the park and the surrounding area. Although many residents opposed the proposed sixty-story tower, arguing that it would cast a substantial shadow over the park and overwhelm the surrounding neighborhood, Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Council Member Lincoln Restler supported the project because it included affordable housing. Once again, City Hall sided with large-scale development over the preferences expressed by many neighborhood residents.
Developers continue to build many more luxury towers, transforming what was once a low-rise waterfront neighborhood into what some residents now call “Dubai on the East River.”
Each tower represents a victory for gentrification and a setback for those seeking to preserve Greenpoint’s traditional scale.
Greenpoint has always changed, and no neighborhood can remain frozen in time. The question is whether change should be shaped primarily by the people who live there or by outside economic interests. Oakland Street, the 2005 waterfront rezoning, and today’s battles over Bushwick Inlet Park are separated by nearly seventy years, yet they tell remarkably similar stories. The city has repeatedly ignored the wishes of Greenpoint residents. For many Greenpointers, that history explains why the old saying still rings true: you can’t fight City Hall.
