Gotham Organization’s embattled rezoning plan for its massive Monitor Point development in Greenpoint eked out approval at a City Council land use vote Thursday, after negotiating to bump up the share of affordable housing to nearly half of the proposed units.
“We just moments ago were able to reach a final agreement on this project,” Restler said before the City Council voted to approve the Monitor Point project. “It’s come an extraordinarily long way, and I am pleased today to express my support for the amended proposal for a majority affordable housing development known as Monitor Point at 40 Quay Street in Greenpoint.”
Gotham’s newly pitched plan bumps the affordable housing component of the project up to 50 percent of the units from a recent 40 percent figure.
“For years, everybody involved in this project told me that it wasn’t possible to make this a 50 percent affordable housing project, and we just kept at it,” Restler told The Real Deal. “We looked at every possible angle at how we could add affordable housing. Gotham, the Mamdani administration and the MTA all stepped up with creative solutions.”
Those solutions included adding more units specifically for seniors and supportive housing, converting commercial space and taking air rights from across the street to expand an affordable building, according to Restler.
“It was not one single intervention or tool that got us there,” he said. “On public land we have a much higher standard for what we should expect in terms of affordable housing for our community, and we accomplished that here.” Restler added that this was the “hardest negotiation” of his entire Council career.
The updated plan allows Brooklyn Council member Lincoln Restler to claim a win on Monitor Point, which he threatened to hold hostage mid-ULURP process unless Gotham fully funded the nearby site slated for Bushwick Inlet Park and reached 50 percent affordability, or 662 of the units slated for development.
Notwithstanding the project’s planned green space, public shoreline access, climate infrastructure, museum and $300,000 Bushwick Inlet Park annual investment, Monitor Point became a lightning rod for NIMBY activism in the area, with advocates crowding a February community meeting where Restler voiced his staunch opposition to rezoning the MTA property.
The Council member ultimately came around to a yes vote on the project. If Restler had kept the project from passing the land use vote, it could have led to the first test of a recently formed affordable housing appeals board consisting of Council Speaker Julie Menin, Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The mayor, who offered President Donald Trump a sympathetic ear to talk ULURP reform during their November meeting at the White House, won’t likely stand in the way of building affordable housing or long-promised parkland on the MTA-owned site. His administration’s housing plan aims to speed up affordable housing construction across the five boroughs and eliminate bottlenecks at every stage of the development pipeline, and he appeared in an Instagram post with Lincoln Restler touring the Bushwick Inlet Park site.
“I really want to thank the Mamdani administration, I think this is probably their first big hairy ULURP of their first six months,” Restler said before the Council vote.
“We look forward to the full City Council vote and continuing to work with the community as Monitor Point moves closer to reality on a true public-private partnership,” a Gotham spokesperson said in a statement.
Spokespeople for the Mamdani administration and HPD didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.