Air rights purchase could bring park to Greenpoint

The city’s Economic Development Corporation is making a new attempt to develop a Greenpoint park by issuing a request for proposals from developers interested in buying air rights for part of the waterfront plot, DNAinfo reported. This development comes seven years after the EDC promised to deliver more than 30 acres of park land to the Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods; but money is tight and the city admitted that it didn’t have a concrete plan for a full park between the two neighborhoods.

“We don’t have a bottomless pit of money,” Joshua Laird, a Parks Department official, told DNAinfo.

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The Greenpoint plot is located at 65 Commercial Street, a lot where the MTA still keeps trams, near Newtown Creek. Selling the air rights would allow a developer nearby to erect higher and denser buildings; that would leave the site at 65 Commercial Street in city hands, and enable the creation of a park there. Revenues from an air rights purchase would also be used to relocate the trams.

Proposals are due Aug. 30. [DNAinfo] — Zachary Kussin