Community board committee rejects Domino Sugar project

The Community Preservation Corporation’s $1.2 billion redevelopment proposal for the Domino Sugar factory in Williamsburg was shot down last night in a 5-3 vote by Community Board 1’s Land Use Committee. The vote isn’t final — the full community board will hear the proposal March 9, after which Borough President Marty Markowitz, the City Planning Commission and the City Council will all have a say — but it is the first public rejection of the project, which entered an eight-month public review process in early January. The plans call for a 2,200-unit waterfront apartment complex, which would require the Kent Avenue site, just north of the Williamsburg Bridge, to be rezoned from manufacturing to residential. The developers have promised to create an open, public space on the waterfront and to designate 30 percent, or 660, of its units for below market-rate housing, far more than what is required by current zoning. Last night’s panel objected that the developer’s affordable housing commitment, as it currently stands, is only 15 years long and that the building plans were too dense. [Brooklyn Paper]