The development pattern in neighborhoods where warehouses are the ghosts of industry past goes like this: manufacturing declines, old warehouses become new lofts, and everyone applauds the resurrection.
These transformations are now going on in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Long Island City. The Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn, home to a light industry corridor along the eponymous canal to New York Harbor and, more recently, down Fourth Avenue, is also joining the ranks of the recycled. The only glitch, however, is that industry there is not dead, say opponents of plans to rezone the neighborhood into residences for Park Slope or Carroll Gardens exiles.
Rezoning critics say light manufacturing in Gowanus is, in fact, poised to grow, especially as businesses in other neighborhoods find themselves hemmed in by new residences or are turned away by property owners not willing to give them long-term leases.
The Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation, a group funded in large part by the city to create jobs in the community, published a survey recently that said there are 550 businesses, most of them small manufacturing companies, in the Gowanus area, up from 300 since their first survey was published in 1997.
“We have found, by and large, that Gowanus is an active industrial area,” said Phaedra Thomas, the executive director of the group. “And so, while I understand and respect the push for residential conversion, it’s a very tricky question.”
Spurred by the housing boom, developers have snatched up property along the canal, which is already being used by recreational boaters on kayaks and canoes. Plans to develop the area into a residential haven, however, have proceeded haltingly.
In April, the city postponed plans to clean up the canal until 2009. The cleanup was seen as a fundamental prerequisite for luring residential development and its postponement has put on hold some of the largest and most controversial development plans.
One such plan comes from one of the city’s most prolific development firms, Leviev Boymelgreen, which is hoping to build Gowanus Village, a 350-unit complex built on three acres between Carroll and Third streets along the canal.
Details of the development remain under lock and key and a spokeswoman at the firm, Sara Mirski, did not answer a list of questions sent to her or respond to numerous requests for comment by The Real Deal.
Leviev Boymelgreen is one of four developers that has met with community board members and other neighborhood groups to discuss their plans to investigate the soil quality, a critical first step in understanding the cost of development. The other commercial interests include homebuilder Toll Brothers; Whole Foods, which has had to postpone plans to open in 2007; and Bay Side Fuel. Its owner, Vincent Allegretti, wants to convert one of his fuel depots along the canal into residential units.
Critics wonder why soil remediation is being sought before a zoning change for residential development has been granted by the city, but knowing the quality of your soil will determine what you do with it, the district manager for Brooklyn’s Community Board 6, Craig Hammerman, said.
Leviev Boymelgreen has applied for a permit that would compensate the company for their remediation under the state’s brownfield program to clean up contaminated industrial sites. The permit is under review, said Maureen Wren, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
The health of the soil will determine how much money developers will have to spend in order to make the land ready for residential units. And tax assistance from the state for remediation efforts will be critical in making development projects affordable.
Thomas worries that the cost of cleanup will make it easier for companies to claim a “financial hardship” having potentially spent millions of dollars to clean up the site in order to receive zoning variances.
“It’s not the right way to enter into a community, it’s just not right,” Thomas said.
The executive director of the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation, Thomas Chardavoyne, believes investigating the soil is necessary in order to create a comprehensive zoning plan for the community.
“We’re happy to support any investigation that will tell us more about the condition of the soils on the canal,” Chardavoyne said, adding that before any amount of cleanup begins a developer will first determine its cost.
“If he finds strontium 90, you can rest assured he’s not going to proceed,” Chardavoyne said facetiously. (Developers, of course, will not find strontium 90, a byproduct of the fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear reactors.)
The community board, meanwhile, is actively looking for funding so they can develop a zoning plan that would include a mix of residential and commercial development.
“The common notion out there is that there is room for everyone,” Hammerman said. “It’s just going to take some planning to decide how the Gowanus Canal should look.”
Owners of commercially zoned warehouses, Thomas says, are weary of giving businesses long-term leases for fear they may miss out on a residential housing boom if zoning laws change. The result, she says, is that business is being stymied.
A new zoning plan would take the neighborhood out of its limbo status, Hammerman said.
“We want to lay out ground rules,” he said, “so people know how to play the game.”