From left: Michael Lappin, CPC Resources Senior Vice President Susan Pollock and the Domino sign

The developers of the Domino Sugar Refinery site on the Williamsburg waterfront responded to one of the project’s main criticisms — that its 660 affordable apartments would become market-rate after 15 years — by saying today that housing would permanently stay affordable. Susan Pollock, senior vice president of project developer CPC Resources, said the about-face came after realizing the rezoning for Williamsburg and Greenpoint passed in 2005 required waterfront developers to include permanent, not temporary, affordable housing in their projects in order to receive a density bonus. Although the five-block Domino site, once the world’s largest sugar refinery, was not included in that rezoning, Pollock said they promised to follow those rules for the project’s 660 affordable apartments, out of 2,200 condos and rental units spread throughout six buildings that would be constructed over a 10-year period. [more]

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]