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The Daily Dirt: “Protecting” New Yorkers from…clean energy?

Developer wins key ruling in battle to build solar farm

(Photo Illustration by Steven Dilakian for The Real Deal with Getty)
(Photo Illustration by Steven Dilakian for The Real Deal with Getty)

Outside of New York City, battles are being fought across the state over renewable energy projects — solar farms, battery storage facilities and wind farms. A bunch of towns have passed moratoriums while they “gather more information,” which usually means buying time to legislate a permanent ban.

Opposition to battery storage has been focused on the potential for fires, although design improvements have reduced the failure rate at large-scale facilities by 97 percent in five years. The Union for Concerned Scientists has a good piece on the safety issue here.

Wind farm opponents don’t like the way they look, but that sounds shallow so they also talk about birds flying into spinning blades — even though billions more birds are killed by cats and by flying into windows.

On the solar front, a project upstate exemplifies the issue. A New York court just delivered a key victory to Freepoint Solar, which is trying to build a 43-acre solar farm on land it bought in 2016 in Athens, a town in rural Greene County.

Reversing a lower court’s ruling, the Appellate Division panel found that the town of Athens was wrong to reject a variance application for the project, the Times Union reported. The land is zoned rural residential, and a local law restricts solar farms to commercial and industrial parcels.

The town’s basic argument was that the project was not a public necessity because the state had already achieved its 2025 goal for solar energy capacity. But that rationale ignored the state’s goals for 2030 and beyond, which are going to be quite difficult to reach — especially if towns keep banning solar arrays.

The comprehensive Times Union article by Olivia Holloway, a Cornell student, included one curious word: It said the town had sought to “protect” its residents from the solar farm. You might ask, Protect them from what? Man-eating solar panels? Zero-emission energy?

The project does require clearing 35 acres of trees, but even the town found that it would have no environmental impact, an attorney for Freepoint noted. The developer did alter the plan to mitigate its impacts, including to what locals called the viewshed. That’s a fancy word for their view.

What we’re thinking about: Housing development seems to still be regarded as a curse, not a blessing, on much of Long Island. “The developer has assured the community that housing will not be part of the proposal,” the Oyster Bay town supervisor told Newsday about plans to redevelop the moribund Sunrise Mall. Send your thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.

A thing we’ve learned: Tuesday’s Daily Dirt item about Shaya Prager’s flip of 311 East 51st Street noted that StreetEasy shows listings for units 1, 1A, 1L, and 1R, priced at an average of $14,100 a month. But an agent emailed that they are all for the same duplex. That would mean the building has seven units, not 10, with asking rents totaling $38,400, or $461,000 a year. 

Elsewhere…

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The outcome of Apex Development’s closely watched application to rezone 441 and 467 Prospect Avenue in Brooklyn for a 244-unit project will be decided by the Feb. 12 meetings of the City Council’s zoning and land use panels. The full chamber meets the next day.

“We think that with the input of many smart and passionate folks over the prior several months, we are close to arriving at a result that is not perfect, but very good for the community and the City of New York at large,” said Apex’s Andrew Esposito, who is partnering with site owner Arrow Linen.

The Council member who essentially determines the chamber’s decision, Shahana Hanif, told City & State, “I don’t want to give away what I’ve been negotiating, but there is going to be a project. There is going to be housing. And there’s going to be affordable housing. At this stage, I’m really trying to balance the concerns I’ve heard from my constituents — from the diversity of my constituents — regarding height, regarding affordability, regarding infrastructure upgrades, while also balancing the need for the urgency to build.”


Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat weighing a primary challenge of Gov. Kathy Hochul, has introduced a bill to cut off Section 8 funding to landlords who fail to install heat sensors in their buildings that receive the federal rent subsidy, the Bronx Times reported.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Torres and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduced such a bill in 2022, following a horrific Bronx fire that killed 17 people. The blaze was ignited by one of the many space heaters tenants were using to warm what some called their perpetually cold building at 333 181st Street. The 2022 bill passed the House but not the Senate.

A spokesperson for the owner of 333 181st Street said there was a heat sensor on the boiler and 14 more throughout the building, including on the third floor where the fire started. They showed that the average temperature in the building was 71.2 degrees on the day of the fire and 72.5 in the 72 hours before the fire. LIHC Investment Group, Belveron Partners and Camber Property Group acquired the building in a $170 million portfolio sale two years before the fire.

Closing time

Residential: The priciest residential sale Thursday was $22.5 million for a 4,869-square-foot, sponsor-sale condominium unit at 760 Madison Avenue in Lenox Hill. Douglas Elliman’s Madeline Hult Elghanayan and Sabrina Saltiel had the listing.

Commercial: The most expensive commercial closing of the day was $3.3 million for a 4,300-square-foot multifamily property at 123 Willoughby Avenue in Clinton Hill. Maria Ryan at Compass had the listing.

New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $26 million for a 6,500-square-foot condominium at 535 West End Avenue on the Upper West Side. Steven Cohen of Douglas Elliman has the listing.

— Matthew Elo

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