Transportation is in the MTA’s name, but real estate is the latest move in the agency’s game.
The agency on Wednesday unveiled a proposal to redevelop its 40 Quay Street property in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with the Gotham Organization. The developer will be charged with turning the site currently housing the transit department’s wash facility into an 840,000-square-foot mixed-use property.
The development — dubbed Monitor Point — will feature 900 mixed-income apartments, including about 25 percent set aside for affordable housing. It will also include 100,000 square feet for retail and commercial space.
Monitor Point will include open space that can connect the public to waterfront, as well as to future Bushwick Inlet Park, according to the announcement. The site will also house The Greenpoint Monitor Museum, which commemorates the Civil War’s USS Monitor, in addition to the NYCT Emergency Response Unit, which would vacate 65 Commercial Street for the future Box Street Park.
Gotham is set to relocate the Mobile Wash Division to a new facility at 208 Varick Avenue in East Williamsburg. Once that property is built, the developer will be able to demolish the existing facility at 40 Quay Street.
A possible snag for the project lies in the MTA and Gotham’s plans to go through the ULURP rezoning process. According to a tentative timeline on the project’s website, developers will spend the next two years fostering community outreach and an environmental analysis before kicking off ULURP in 2024. If all goes to plan, the groundbreaking is anticipated to start by the end of 2024.
The bidding process for the property began in 2019. Since then, however, the project has faced resistance from local community leaders on redeveloping the property, AMNY reported. Assembly member Emily Gallagher and the area’s Community Board have previously asked city leaders to nix the development.
“We believe the deal is a betrayal of public trust and we call on the MTA withdraw from the conditional designation of Gotham for the redevelopment of 40 Quay in Greenpoint and to work with the Greenpoint-Williamsburg community,” Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park co-chairperson Katherine Conkling Thompson said, according to the report.
Earlier this year, the Gotham Organization secured $50.4 million in financing for a Lower East Side development project at 60 Norfolk Street. The building is expected to include 115 units of affordable housing for seniors.
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