Williamsburg Residents Protest NYCHA Plan To Develop Parking Lot

EAST WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — Plans to put a 15-story apartment building in a public housing development’s parking lot spurred outrage from residents who said the block is already jam-packed with people and low on parking.

Residents from Cooper Park Houses gathered Tuesday night to tell New York City Housing Authority officials what they thought about plans to lease a thin stretch of land between Debevoise and Morgan avenues to a private developer.

“Corruption,” shouted East Williamsburg resident David Dobosz, 78. “Corruption to the core.”

“We’ll actually be Peeping Toms if a building is placed there,” added Cooper Park Houses resident Karen Leader, 62. “The space is not big enough, it’s just not feasible.”

NYCHA officials argue that leasing the parking lot to developers would bring an influx of badly needed cash to Cooper Park Houses, which will need an estimated $60 million in repairs over the next five years that NYCHA doesn’t have.

“We’re in a financial bind,” NYCHA representative D'Andra Van Heusen said during her presentation, noting that a 30 percent cut in federal funding has created a $17 billion repair deficit. “We have to think differently.”

Van Heusen promised the angry residents that half of all proceeds from the 99-year lease would go toward fixing Cooper Park Houses’ heating, plumbing and brickwork, but refused to disclose how much money NYCHA would ask for the land.

NYCHA community outreach organizer Leroy Williams also stressed that Cooper Parks’ 1,569 residents would be allowed to contribute a list of demands that would be gathered during six upcoming community meetings and presented to developers before the bidding process began.

But when residents asked if they had the power to veto the project — which they said would cast a shadow over nearby housing and cut into the already low number of neighborhood parking spaces — NYCHA’s acting Vice President of Real Estate Deborah Goddard said no.

“We plan on building,” she said.

Cooper Park Houses is one of four public housing developments named in the NextGeneration Neighborhoods Plan, which allows NYCHA to lease its unused land to private developers to build affordable and market-rate housing.

Fifty percent of the proposed 250 units would be available only to households earning 60 percent below the area median income, or about $46,000 for a family of two, Goddard said. The public housing agency plans to pick a developer in the fall of 2018 and begin construction in fall of 2020.

Jimmy Perry, a father who has lived on Maspeth Street for 12 years, worried what the new building will mean for his children. Local schools are overcrowded, speeding trucks and too many cars make for “dangerous” traffic, and the only real access his kids have to outdoor space is a backyard that will soon stand in the shadow of a new high rise, Perry said.

“They keep pushing people into this area,” said Perry. “I’m afraid we’re gonna lose our light.”

Photos by Kathleen Culliton