Packed Gowanus Planning Meeting Features 'Rocky' Interludes

BOERUM HILL, BROOKLYN — At the city's most recent community planning meeting on the future of Gowanus, held Thursday at the Wyckoff Gardens houses, city staffers emphasized their desire to work closely with locals to craft a neighborhood development plan, even as some residents expressed fears they would be excluded from the planning process.

The Gowanus Neighborhood Planning Study, also known by the acronym PLACES, is the city's attempt to build on the community planning efforts of Bridging Gowanus, another such engagement structure which ran from 2013 through 2015.

The city says the study's results will inform future Gowanus development policy, including what should be invested in, which community needs should be prioritized, and how, if at all, the area should be rezoned.

But despite those professed intentions, some of those at Thursday's meeting weren't convinced the city was interested in their input.

The evening's disconnect was most clearly shown when Charlene Nimmons, a community activist and former director of the Wyckoff Gardens Association, challenged Jonathan Keller, the Department of City Planning (DCP) staffer managing the PLACES project, about whether Wyckoff is included in the PLACES study area.

At a Community Board 6 presentation last week, Keller said Wyckoff is outside the PLACES area, considering that it's undergoing its own redevelopment process as part of NextGen NYCHA. (City maps visualizing the PLACES project mark Wyckoff and the Gowanus Houses in different colors from the area covered by PLACES.)

At that meeting, Keller also said that "whatever happens" with NextGen NYCHA "will be included with the [PLACES] analysis."

Nimmons, however, said Thursday that Keller's earlier comments revealed the city's intention to exclude NYCHA residents in Wyckoff from the planning conversation.

Keller denied that, chalking her impression up to a miscommunication, and repeating that the needs and perspectives of NYCHA residents would be part of the city's plans going forward.

But Nimmons didn't accept that explanation, accusing him of changing his answer under pressure.

"How do I trust that is going to be the case going forward?," she said of the city's claims that it wants to work with residents like her. "If I remain quiet, then what?"

On Friday, a DCP spokesman offered further clarity on the matter.

The PLACES study isn't exploring "land use actions" on NYCHA developments, the spokesman said, because of the NextGen review process already underway.

However, the planning department is coordinating with NYCHA to understand how NextGen will impact the Gowanus community, the spokesman said, emphasizing that Planning sees engaging housing development residents as an important part of its planning process.

The first PLACES meeting took place in October. PLACES has no set time frame, with Keller saying effectively on Thursday that the process will move as quickly as possible to be both thorough and incorporate community feedback.

Going forward, Keller said DCP will form working groups assigned to study key groups and topics, including public housing developments, arts and culture, resiliency and sustainability, and industrial and economic development.

DCP will also conduct targeted outreach to core constituencies, agency staffers said, and will continue holding public meetings.

(Regarding public housing, the Planning Department will reach out to NYCHA developments to determine what outreach process is best suited to residents' needs, the DCP spokesman told Patch.)

Joining a working group requires a time commitment — members, for example, must be able to make scheduled meetings — but DCP staffers encouraged anyone interested in joining to email them at gowanus@planning.nyc.gov. (You can also sign up for email updates from DCP to stay up-to-date on PLACES developments.)

Thursday's focus was the linked topics of resiliency and sustainability, which Keller summarized as the city's ability to meet future needs while reducing the city's impact on climate change and the environment.

Daniel Walsh, who leads NYC's Office of Environmental Remediation, explained how the city carefully searches for toxins to remove in contaminated areas, and then establishes a monitoring process so environmental progress doesn't backslide.

And Katherine Greig, the Deputy Director of the Mayor's Office of Recovery and Resiliency, spoke of New York's need to improve energy efficiency and prepare for the impacts of climate change, such as more violent storms, even as neighbors make plans and build relationships that will serve them during storm-related emergencies like Hurricane Sandy.

When a small child interrupted Greig's presentation by running to the front of the room, the staffer said she was glad he had.

"It is for that little boy who is the cutest thing ever for whom we have to focus," she said.

Even so, Nimmons wasn't the only meeting attendee who expressed concern with the city's planning approach.

A woman who described herself as a local renter and small business owner said that the perspectives of those like her needed to be considered, to which Winston Von Engel, who directs DCP's Brooklyn office, told her to "help us" incorporate her ideas into planning decisions.

An attendee suggested the city would use eminent domain to claim land it wants, to which Von Engel tried to reassure him by saying that, "Nothing has been decided about what is going to be done," on the topic of eminent domain or anything else.

A woman asked why residents should have faith that the city's development promises would be met, citing what she said were broken promises surrounding the development of the Barclays Center.

"This is a community planning process," Von Engel said in response. "The Atlantic Yards project was not a community planning project."

Councilman Stephen Levin, whose district includes Boerum Hill, agreed, saying that Barclays was "a developer-driven process," very different from what the city is doing in Gowanus.

Toward the end of the evening, Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, whose district includes Gowanus, Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill, reiterated that the PLACES study "is about coming up with our idea" about what we want the community's future to look like, "our" referring to a collective vision.

And "having these rocky conversations," she said, will help everyone get there.

[Editors note: this story has been updated with additional information for clarity.]

Pictured at top: Jonathan Keller, left, addresses attendees at Thursday's meeting. Photo by John V. Santore.