Councilman Brad Lander Answers Liena's Culver El Questions

Two broader points before I get to your specific questions:

1. It is important for people to understand that there are two overlapping but distinct sets of actions proposed here:

(a) The Southern Brooklyn Community Organization is proposing to build 68 units of affordable housing on the 30', City-owned strip of land where the Culver El used to be, from 12th Avenue to 14th Avenue. This requires the disposition of City-owned land to SBCO, rezoning from manufacturing (M) to mixed-used (M1-2/R6A) to allow residential development, as well as a variance and some other technical actions.

(b) A broader rezoning, from manufacturing to various mixed-use and residential districts, in a roughly 8 block area bounded generally by 36th Street on the north, 12th Avenue on the west, Old New Utrecht & 14th Ave on the east, and 39th Street on the south (more information is available on the City Planning website at http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/culver/index.shtml. This rezoning would not only facilitate the SBCO affordable housing project, but additional residential conversions/development in the area.

In considering impacts, it is important to consider both actions. While the SBCO proposal has gotten the most attention, it is essential to consider the broader impact (more on this below).

2. The process here has been neither unusual, nor rushed (if anything, it has taken much longer than usual). With City-owned property where the City does not have its own big plans, it is quite typical for a not-for-profit, affordable housing organization to approach the City and ask for the opportunity to develop the site (we did this many times while I was at the Fifth Avenue Committee). In this case, SBCO approached the City long ago, and was in negotiation for some years. In April, 2005, Mayor Bloomberg publicly announced his intention to transfer the Culver El strip to SBCo for affordable housing (http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/html/2005a/pr138-05.html).

Since then, the project has been discussed on numerous occasion at CB12 and other public meetings, as SBCO, and the City's housing & planning departments worked on the project. City Planning decided that it should be part of a broader rezoning, and this has taken a very long time (much longer that SBCO was hoping).

The project is now going through the normal ULURP (uniform land-use review procedure), a 7 - 9 month process which involves 4 public hearings, as well as advisory votes/recommendations by the Community Board, Borough President, and City Planning Commission, before it is ultimately voted on by the City Council (likely sometime in October or November). I definitely encourage interested residents to attend the Borough President's public hearing tomorrow night, Thursday, July 8th at 5:30 pm at Boro Hall, as you have been letting people know on the website. We will also let you & your readers know about the City Planning Commission and City Council hearings.

Is the Culver El project intended solely for the Orthodox Jewish community?

A. No, the project is being developed under the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development's New Foundations Program (http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/developers/new-foundations.shtml), and will be open for all to apply, with a lottery to select applicants. As with all HPD programs, federal & local fair housing rules apply, and HPD supervises an open lottery. As with most HPD projects, 50% of the units will be reserved for residents of the local community board (in this case, CB12).

Q. What kind of outreach has been done to inform other communities, including the many local Bangladeshis, Mexicans, and Russians, of the proposed project, and the way they can apply? How many families in the neighborhood, assuming it is by lottery, qualify for such housing? Based on what is going on with the Broadway Triangle, such numbers, or estimates, seem to be obtainable.

There will be a very public and extensive outreach and marketing effort to let people in the community know about the project, monitored by HPD (and posted on their website, along with other available homeownership lotteries, at http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/buyers/lotteries.shtml#lists) and subject to fair housing rules. My office will help get the word out & make sure information is available in relevant languages.

…Right now, it is very early in the process,… [project probably won’t be built before 2011-12] Because people have to qualify based on income, and 50% of the units are reserved for community residents, it doesn't make sense to start marketing and outreach until much closer to the time when the units would be available.

SBCO is also voluntarily working to achieve deeper income targets than would otherwise be required by the New Foundations program. Under that program normally, the units would be made available to families in affordability tiers from 80% of AMI and 130% of AMI (approximately $50,000 - $100,000/year for a family of 4). SBCO has agreed to narrow the range from 80% AMI to 110% AMI (approximately $50,000 to 90,000/year), and is hoping to obtain additional housing subsidies, which would allow them to offer the vast majority of the units at the lower end of this range (and even lower, if they can). This is, of course, higher than many low-income families can afford -- but as homeownership projects go, and especially for large families, it is significantly more affordable than what is available in our community.

Q. Apartment sizes at Culver El?

A: Yes, the plan is for 65 4-bedrooms, and 3 5-bedrooms. The project is indeed designed to serve larger families, who have very limited housing options in Brooklyn. As you know, there are many large families in our area, in the Orthodox Jewish, Bangladeshi, Mexican, and other communities.

Q. Are there conditions attached to resale, or can the families just live there forever and sell to whomever, given they are condos?

A. The normal New Foundations program has resale restrictions, in which buyers who move out earlier than 15 years have to repay to the City the subsidy that allowed their home to be affordably developed (http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/developers/new-foundations.shtml).

However, I have been urging SBCO to instead use a different approach, which would allow for the units to be resold as affordable homeownership opportunities for many years to come -- with the family who purchased it initially to have some opportunity to get some of the benefits of homeownership and value appreciation, but still re-selling it to another family who needs affordable housing in the future. We will be negotiating with them about this in the coming months.

Q. Can we have a statement on the lack of proposed green space and the impact on public services - adding 68 units, given the large family size required to qualify, which would add I'm guessing about 500 kids? Assuming they will be using public school, which one is the project zoned for? Or is the assumption that they will not be using public school?

A. You are correct that this area – northern Borough Park / southwest Kensington – currently lacks sufficient active open space, and that the public elementary schools here are at capacity.

The Department of City Planning examined these and other issues as part of their consideration of the broader rezoning. In order to do this, they look at all of the sites in the rezoning area, and put together what they call the “Reasonable Worst-Case Development Scenario” (RWCDS) – what sites they think are reasonably likely to be developed, if the zoning is changed as proposed, over the next 10 years.

Projected development sites: Of the 52 sites in the district, they project that 13 are reasonably likely to be developed (what they call “projected” sites) – including the SBCO project – for a projected RWCDS of approximately 180 units (68 affordable, i.e. the SBCO project), as well as commercial and community facility space.
Potential development sites: City Planning believes that the other 39 sites will not be developed in the next 10 years. 

It is worth noting (and important in my thinking, see below) that the largest single site in the rezoning area, the Bergament department store site, is in this category. While they do not project that it will be development in the next 10 years, the rezoning as currently proposed would allow that site to be converted (with no additional public review) into a 7-story building with 121 residential parking units (i.e. nearly twice the SBCO project), 152 parking spaces, and ground floor retail – with no required affordable units, open space, community facility, or any other public benefit. To me, this is a very large problem, and one I plan to address as the rezoning moves forward.
Having done the RWCDS analysis, City Planning looked at both schools & open space. Here, in brief, is what they found:

Public schools: The public elementary schools in the area (PS 230, PS 130, PS 131, and PS 169) are at capacity. There are currently 3,829 students enrolled in 3,810 seats; while there are districts in Queens that are far more crowded, this is a problem. What’s worse: by 2020 (10 years from now, the year that City Planning looks out to), enrollment is project to increase to 5,174 – so if we don’t build additional school seats, the neighborhood elementary schools will be far over-capacity – by about 1,500 seats.

So, we definitely need to build additional schools seats in the area in the years to come. But this is not really as a result of the SBCO project, or the Culver El rezoning. City Planning projects that under the RWCDS, using their normal formula calculations, the rezoning will only result in an additional 74 elementary school students annually by 2020. This number is probably a bit small, given that the SBCO units will generally have more than the usual number of kids – but remember that only elementary schools (Pre-K through 5th grade) are zoned by neighborhood, so its only about 1/3rd of kids under 18 in this age range. But even if the number were doubled, it would only be about 10% of the projected student growth in the area.

There will indeed be many more public school students in this area – not because of this rezoning, but because families with kids are moving to the neighborhood and growing. So, we will definitely need to work together in the years to come to identify and build additional neighborhood public schools. The strip of land that SBCO is getting is far too narrow to build any school space on. And since there is no other suitable publicly-owned land in the area, new school(s) will need to be on privately-owned property acquired by the NYC School Construction Authority (a standard practices for them). The small bit of good news is that District 15 is in the current 5-year capital plan for two additional K-8 schools.

Open space: The area is indeed starved for active open-space. However, as with public schools, the situation is not substantially changed by the Culver El rezoning. It will add approximately 180 families, but this adds only very modestly to the 60,000 that already live in the ½ mile study area.

I suppose that the strip of land along 37th Street, where SBCO is building, might have been considered for open space, instead of affordable housing. However, it is very narrow, and not too suitable for active public open space (I can’t think of any active open space that is just 30 feet wide). And the need for affordable housing in our community is significant, so I believe that the City did the right thing in accepting SBCO’s proposal.

To address the open space need in the community, both as part of & beyond the Culver El rezoning, here are a few of my thoughts:

Dome Playground: As part of the recently-adopted City budget, I was able to allocate $650,000 (plus another $300,000 that the Borough President allocated at my request) to begin the renovation of Dome Playground, the nearest City park, which will hopefully allow for planning and investments to improve the space and make it work as well as possible for its diverse neighbors.
Bergament site: As noted above, I am very concerned about the inclusion of the Bergament site for an as-of-right conversion to residential development, 7-stories tall, with no public benefits. I will be seeking to have this site removed from the rezoning. This would be an appropriate site to consider for future development, but only if it provides public benefits – such as open space, school space, and/or affordable housing.
Interim use of stalled development sites: In the nearer term, we are working on the possibility of converting stalled development sites into community use, on at least an interim bases. I hope to have more to say about this in the near future.
OK, that’s a lot more information that you bargained for (and I didn't even get into my concerns about eliminating manufacturing businesses/jobs, which I'll address a bit in my testimony tomorrow)! I guess the land-use/community planning wonk side of me has been waiting for an opportunity to come out for a while. Still, I hope this is helpful.

brad.lander@council.nyc.gov