The councilmember secured key concessions — including boosted affordable housing and more open space — in a last-minute deal with developers.
BY COLE SINANIAN
cole@queensledger.com
CITY HALL — Lincoln Restler, long a staunch opponent of the mixed-use Monitor Point development next to Bushwick Inlet Park, expressed his support for it at a City Council hearing last week after the developer agreed to boost the affordable housing per- centage to 50%, increase public open space, and add senior and supportive housing.
Once complete in the 2030s, the development will now include an increased 1,324 units of housing — up from the original 1,150 — 662 of which will be affordable. Half of these affordable units will be deeply affordable — accessible to the lowest income New Yorkers — while 161 units will be affordable senior housing and 110 units will be supportive housing for formerly homeless individuals. Other amendments to the plan include addi- tional publicly accessible green space, a widened waterfront esplanade, two public bathrooms, and improved re- siliency measures through bulkheads and stormwater retention.
During his comments at the hearing on June 25, Restler said that the adjustments were “a direct response to our feedback,” and expressed his gratitude to the “hundreds, actu- ally thousands of neighbors who’ve reached out to me and my office to share their perspective.”
The additional housing units were secured by reducing the amount of retail space and by shrinking the size of the planned Greenpoint Monitor Museum — one of the public ben- efits proposed for the development, which is a joint project of the MTA and the Gotham Organization.
”There was no single policy that got us there,” Restler said in an interview. “It was a series of creative approaches that yielded this outcome.”
“We look forward to the full City Council vote and continuing to work with the community as Monitor Point moves closer to reality on a true public-private partnership,” wrote a spokesperson from the Gotham Organization in a statement. “We would not have reached this important milestone without the support of the Mamdani administration, Speaker Menin, Council Member Restler, HPD, the MTA, the Governor’s office, and the many community partners.”
Monitor Point, which will see three high-rise residential towers constructed on the last undeveloped Greenpoint waterfront property, has divided the community since its public review process began in January. Several labor unions and nonprofits have supported it unconditionally, while Restler has maintained since the beginning that the project — set to be built on MTA-owned public land — must primarily serve the public good if it is to earn his support. The developers had initially proposed that just 25% of the devel- opment’s 1,150 apartments be affordable, before upping that percentage to 40 earlier this year.
Still, Restler and a large group of Greenpointers had protested under the slogan “public land for public good,” insisting that developers — the Gotham Organization and the MTA — must commit to making the majority of housing units affordable and fully funding the half-built Bushwick Inlet Park, which sits next door. Activists with a group called Save the Inlet had also raised resiliency concerns, citing elevated flood risks along the Greenpoint waterfront and rising sea levels that they say should put a development of this size out of the question.
But after extended negotiations, Restler said, the development team agreed to adjust the plan according to Restler and the City Council’s re- quirements.
”This was a challenging negotiation that took many, many, many hours,” Restler told the Brooklyn Star, “and I held firm on what I be- lieved was necessary for this to be a good deal for our community.”
Restler’s reversal came as a shock to Save the Inlet activists. On May 27th, Restler questioned Gotham, the MTA, and the Monitor Point development team before the City Council’s Land Use and Zoning Subcommittee, in a fierce cross- examination that saw the council- member call the project a “bad deal” for his community.
Greenpointer Katherine Thompson, who’s one of Save the Inlet’s founders, described the news of the project’s impending approval as a “gut punch.”
“Although the whole time people were saying ‘this is going to happen,’ if you’re an activist and you believe something, you don’t want to believe that you’re gonna lose,” Thompson said. “So it was tough to hear that.”
She raised concerns about financing, worrying that without a comprehensive plan to fund the additional affordable housing, there’s nothing to ensure that the developer will actually build it.
“I always want to support afford- able housing,” Thompson said. “But right now, we oppose this project, not because we’re opposing afford- able housing, but because of where it is. It’s just in the wrong place.”
The full Council will likely vote to approve the project at the Stated meeting scheduled for July 16.
