Critics blast Greenpoint pier, condo plan

A pair of condominium towers planned along the Greenpoint waterfront is drawing fire from critics after the developer inked a deal with the city to build a pier at the end of Java Street in exchange for another 40,000 square feet of residential building rights.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the city recently approved the $60,000 sale of a strip of underwater land for the pier to Stiles Properties, but local leaders are charging that the deal was done behind closed doors and will allow for out-of-scale development.

Stiles is planning two of the tallest condo towers on the Brooklyn waterfront — one of which would be upwards of 40 stories — for an adjacent former industrial site between Java and India streets that it purchased in 2009. Plans for the next-door pier came afterward, when the city issued a request for proposals for the site and Stiles was the only developer to apply.

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“Essentially you have a developer getting 40,000 of additional space for building a pier that nobody asked for,” said local City Council member Stephen Levin, who wants the city to review the pier deal before it closes. “It serves a dubious public purpose.”

Meanwhile, Stiles said it applied to build both the Java StreetPier And Another Pier On India Street at the same time, and with the India Street deal already approved, the pier at Java Street is actually only giving the developer another 4,000 square feet of building rights. [WSJ]