(Photo: Jack Delaney)
BY JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com
GOWANUS — A $200 million renovation of two NYCHA complexes, originally promised in the 2021 rezoning of Gowanus, is finally proceeding. But while many tenants are relieved, some argue that the process has been unnecessarily disruptive — including one woman who says a contractor misplaced her mother’s ashes.
On Thursday, September 17, residents of Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens gathered in the auditorium of P.S. 133 for the latest meeting of the Gowanus Oversight Task Force, a largely volunteer-run body charged with ensuring that the community receives a laundry list of benefits that were attached to the rezoning.
At a meeting last August, attendees raised concerns that outreach to NYCHA tenants was falling short, and that the anticipated repairs seemed to have stalled indefinitely after a company, Mega/Technico Joint Venture, was selected to carry out the work in 2024. “We can’t keep going around in circles,” Monica Underwood, a co-founder of the Public Housing Civic Association, said at the time. “You have to find a way to reach people and bring them in, or else it’s going to be the same crap, over and over.
But more than a year later, the mood had shifted to cautious optimism. The first of the renovations’ eight phases began construction in February, focusing on modernizing kitchens and bathrooms and remediating lead. The project does not require residents to move to a different NYCHA campus — a major sticking point in discussions with local leaders — and some tenants noted that the company’s early roll-out of example apartments was reassuring.
“I have lived here long enough to see plans come and go, and residents are tired of hearing about what might happen someday,” Valerie Bell, president of the Wyckoff Gardens Resident Association, told The NYCHA Journal this spring. “When people walked into that model unit, they could finally see something real. It meant something. It showed respect for our time and our voices, and it showed that the work is finally moving.”
Yet as the renovations have progressed, not everything has gone smoothly. Katrina Gorham, who lives at Gowanus Houses, explained at the meeting that 100 boxes of her belongings are still missing after they were packed up this summer by a moving company, ZeroMax, hired by NYCHA to help tenants relocate while their apartments underwent repairs. Other residents raised issues with post-renovation leaks and mounds of dust left behind by workers.
“The solution will need to take into consideration that this is a pattern, and not just one resident experiencing an obstacle or challenge,” said Council Member Shahana Hanif, whose office sits directly across from Gowanus Houses. “We’ve already seen some changes, and we know that this partnership is very well capable of getting this right.”
Michelle Basic Moore, NYCHA’s vice president of comprehensive modernization, noted that unlike at other complexes where privatization is being pursued to fund repairs — a controversial program known as RAD/PACT — the renovations to Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens were reliant on the $200 million from the rezoning, along with a smattering of state funds for elevator upgrades.
“The city said they were not giving us any more money, many times,” said Basic Moore. “But we got some state money, and we were able to pull this all together.”
For more information, you can track the projects’ progress online at gowanusmod.com and wyckoffmod.com.
