The city—both the mayor’s office and the city council—said then that this 10 year, 175-block rezoning plan would revitalize a once great, industrial neighborhood, bringing new developments, affordable housing, and acres of new park land.

”In 10 years, I can’t imagine what Williamsburg-Greenpoint is going to look like,” Councilwoman Melinda Katz of Queens told reporters that April.

Now approaching the halfway mark however, the neighborhoods remain largely the same.

Only a handful of developments have risen above the East River, no significant new park has opened and community leaders and activists say they have brought only a small portion of what they were promised.

Compounded by the recession, community activists are still frustrated with the slow movement and said the city should do more. Only a handful of affordable housing units have been created or preserved and no single new park has been created, they said.

“If we evaluate the Mayor’s rezoning on its own terms, we have to conclude that many of the promised community benefits have yet to be fulfilled while his office seems intent on making exaggerated claims in this regard,” wrote Peter Gillespie, Executive Director of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG), in an e-mail.

“None of us thought it would take this long,” said Christine Holowacz, a community activist who sits on the Community Advisory Board, established to oversee community’s needs in the rezoning effort.

The rezoning was to not only bring the community more affordable housing and greenspace, but allow the city to turn some of the neighborhood’s old industrial neighborhoods into residential areas–including high rises on the waterfront.

The city laid out its intentions and promises to the community in a 12 page “Points of Agreement” document between the Mayor’s office and the City Council. It contains a laundry list of “to-do” action items for the city, both large and small.

Some of the smaller items, such as lighting the McCarren Park soccer fields and providing money for daycare services in Williamsburg have been completed.

But the document’s larger goals, which are often interlocked with each other, are in various states of development.

One goal was to move an existing sludge tank and MTA parking lot near the East River to another site to create new green space and affordable housing.

Today, both projects have slowed to a halt. A spokesman for Department of Environmental Protection, which owns the sludge tank, said last month the federal government’s plan to designate Newtown Creek has complicated the matter.

The DEP wants to move the sludge facility closer to the Newtown Creek Waster Water Treatment Plant, but doing so would require the creek to be dredged so new, bigger boats could get to the plant to take the sludge away.

Before the DEP will start dredging, however, they want assurances from the federal government that if Newtown Creek becomes a Superfund site, the city will be able to continue its work and not be held additionally liable for more clean-up costs.

The nearby MTA parking lot is in a similar position activists said—stuck between bureaucracies.

As part of the rezoning, the city was tasked with finding a new site for the site that holds buses and emergency response units. Four years later, the MTA has rejected several proposals.

That site would hold 200 affordable housing units, according to the points of agreement document, and sale of development rights—projected at $12 million—would pay for a tenant legal fund and an infrastructure fund.

“To tell you the truth, we just don’t get it,” said Peter Gillespie, Executive Director of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG). He is perplexed why the mayor is unable to move equipment off an MTA site to fulfill two promises.

The MTA site is just one of 17 sites listed as public and partner sites that the city projected would bring 1,345 units of affordable housing to Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

None of those sites has produced a single unit of affordable housing yet, said Gillespie.

Each of those sites on the have been stopped or delayed for different reasons, Gillespie said. He pointed out none of major sites, those that would produce over 200 units, are anywhere close to being started.

That list includes the sludge tank site, the MTA facility, and Greenpoint Hospital, which supposed to be developed into 265 units of affordable housing. So far, Gillespie said, no work has been done at all. He called it a problem of “political will,” because the city already owns the site.

The public sites represent just a fraction of the expected affordable housing units the city expected to be generated by the rezoning—totaling over 3,500.

To generate affordable housing, the city incorporated incentives into the plan for developers who included affordable housing units.

The rezoning laid out a series of inclusionary housing benefits—expanded tax breaks, increased density bonuses, and increased permitted heights—for the new developments that include affordable housing. The benefits differed slightly for developments on the waterfront versus those further inland.

To date, only 155 units of affordable housing have been completed, according to city documents, and another 845 are under construction.

Of those completed, only 113 units of affordable housing units in new developments are occupied, according to Filip Stabrowski, a tenant organizer at the North Brooklyn Development Corporation.

All 113 of those units are on the Williamsburg waterfront in a single development, The Edge, Stabrowski said.

Councilwoman Diana Reyna, who represents the upland areas of Williamsburg, said the affordable housing developed away from the East River mostly came from preservation of existing affordable housing.

“I am dissatisfied with the figures,” said Reyna, who supported the rezoning plan. “Families come into my office looking for help, but we can’t accommodate the amount of families… so it’s a failure.”

Reyna said the rezoning took the concerns of a community that was projected to exist more into consideration than the community that already exists. She said more should be done to protect people already living in affordable housing.

None of the units generated so far are in Greenpoint, community activists and city documents confirmed.

“This isn’t something that should be difficult,” Reyna said, “because every second we waste is a displaced family.”

Some critics of the rezoning effort have cited the inclusionary housing benefits as slowing down development, forcing builders to include less profitable, affordable housing.

Strabowski said this is not the case and that these benefits have not prevented or hampered development in the community.

“In fairness, tax breaks developers get [in return] are far greater than the cost of providing some affordable housing,” he said.

The slow down of waterfront development has also hurt the development of green space. The rezoning called for a continual waterfront esplanade along the East River from the Williamsburg Bridge to the mouth of Newtown Creek.

The rezoning tied waterfront development of the creation of a park that would span the East River from Williamsburg to Newtown Creek. Developers are to incorporate waterfront parkland into their projects, build it, and then transfer maintenance responsibility back to the city.

Gillespie at Neighbors Allied for Good Growth pointed out that this makes the development of waterfront parkland dependent on development and said it was a good idea. So far the plan he said was working.

But the waterfront esplanade is only one part of the 54 acres of promised parkland in the points of agreement. Gillespie pointed out that in the past five years, not one new significant park has opened.

The MTA site comes up again as it was also promised green space. In an e-mail, Gillespie and his organization slammed the city for its lack of progress at the site.

“From our perspective it’s hard to accept that Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t have the political clout or will to convince the MTA to move some transportation equipment to another location in order to fulfill an important open space requirement of the rezoning,” he wrote.

Tricia Zenobio, who has worked with the Community Advisory Board on behalf of the Mayor’s Office of Capital Development, tried to reassure residents that progress was being made when questioned at a recent public meeting about Newtown Creek.

“Give us some time, we’ll get there I promise,” said Zenobio to one frustrated questioner.

Zenobio denied requests for an interview.

Councilwoman Reyna said the city is on track because the rezoning effort is a ten-year plan, and they’re on target with their project numbers, so far.

“I’m not thinking about the next ten years. I’m thinking about the next family that walks through my door,” said Reyna.

“At this time we’re not supporting Superfund, but rather looking for a comprehensive approach from EPA or whomever else cleans the site,” said Johanna Greenbaum, Associate Counsel to the Deputy Mayor for Operations during the meeting.

Greenbaum and Anne Canty, a spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection, told reporters after the meeting however that the city had not yet taken a position to add the creek to the federal government’s list of most polluted sites.

The two joined several representatives from the city, elected officials, and about 70 attendees at the city’s first public meeting on the issue at a high school in Greenpoint last night.

“The way EPA handles this is going to make all the difference in the world,” said Dan Walsh, Director of the City’s Office of Environmental Remediation, during the meeting.

He said the city wants to work with the EPA to produce a collaboration that could become a national model for future Superfund clean-ups.

In September, the EPA officially proposed adding Newtown Creek to its National Priorities List, allowing the federal government to oversee the creek’s cleanup.

The EPA called the creek, which separates Brooklyn from Queens, “one of the most grossly-contaminated waterways in the country.” It is home to various pollutants as well as one of the largest known oil spills in the country.

City officials assured residents that it is not questioning whether or not the creek should be cleaned, but rather how best to accomplish that goal.

“I’m not sure Superfund is the way to go in my heart or hearts,” said Assemblyman Joseph Lentol (D-Greenpoint). “The jury is still out.”

The city is asking that the clean up focus not just on the creek, but on the land around the creek, Walsh said. Over 300,000 residents live within a one-mile radius of the creek, and over 1,000 businesses are located with a quarter mile.

City officials main concern is that projects already in the works will be slowed down or jeopardized by a Superfund designation.

The DEP said in November that it is requesting assurances that its work will not be affected by a Superfund designation from the EPA before it begins multi-million dollar work to remove a sludge tank facility on the banks of the creek to site closer to the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant.

In order to move the sludge tank closer to the plant, the city will have to dredge parts of the creek.

After the sludge tank is removed, the empty space will be used to expand green space and provide affordable housing. The plan was included in a massive rezoning of Greenpoint and Williamsburg in 2005, and originally scheduled to be completed by 2010.

The DEP said last night that Superfund designation of Newtown Creek could impact nearly $400 million of $500 million of its planned work in and around the creek.

As part of the collaborative effort, the city wants expedited responses in obtaining permits or approvals from the EPA and other agencies that will need EPA’s prior approval before granting their own greenlights, such as the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The city also wants ongoing community involvement and protections for local industry that will continue to operate around the creek and who may use the waterway for transportation.

The city’s views reflect what some community activists have been pushing for, specifically assurances that a Superfund designation will not disrupt the city’s ongoing programs.

The city said it has met several times with EPA officials and will formally submit these views as part of the public comment period. The city asked the EPA in October to extend the comment period.

Tricia Zenobio, a Program Manager in the City’s Office of Capital Project Development and who works with the community on the 2005 rezoning, urged attendees at the meeting to stress the need of collaboration in their own comments to the EPA.

Residents have until December 23 to make comment on the proposed designation.

City officials said there is no timeline for when the EPA will decide whether or not to add Newtown Creek to the Superfund program.

This public informational meeting will be the first held by the city, following two previous meetings held by the Newtown Creek Alliance and the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee with the Environmental Protection Agency last month.

The invitation to the event will feature a presentation and a question and answer period.

The full invitation:

The City of New York invites you to attend a public informational meeting on the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to add Newtown Creek to its National Priorities List (Superfund).

The public informational meeting will occur on Tuesday, December 8, at 6 p.m. at Automotive High School (50 Bedford Avenue) in Brooklyn.

The public informational meeting will include a presentation followed by a question and answer session.

Should you have any questions about the public informational meeting, please contact:

Phil Young
Office of the Mayor
212.788.9541

Attorneys for TransGas filed a motion for leave to appeal with the New York State Court of Appeals early last week, court documents show. The motion asks the court to hear an appeal of a September ruling by a Brooklyn court that blocked the proposed plant.

It’s the latest, and possibly last, movement in the fight over the massive power plant on Greenpoint’s shore that was first proposed in 2002.

In its motion to bring the case to the court, TransGas argues that the original decision by the state Board on Electric Generation, Siting and the Environment (or Siting Board) undermines the board’s authority.

In March, 2008 the Siting Board blocked TransGas, saying it lacked proper authority to grant necessary permits.

Plans for the plant called for the construction of a 6.4 mile pipeline under the streets of the city to transport water to the plant, as well as a steam pipe under the East River. The board said that TransGas must receive permits from the city to build the pipelines, court documents said.

TransGas disagreed, arguing the opposite, that the board did have the authority to do so and it would not seek out permission from the city, according to court documents.

In September, the Appellate Division, Second Department upheld the Siting Board’s decision.

Forcing a company to obtain permits from several different entities undermines the legislature’s intent of setting up a one-stop shop for major electricity generating projects’ approval, TransGas said in its motion to the Court of Appeals.

It said the lower court’s decision “improperly elevates” a municipality’s jurisdiction over the state’s.

That law, Article X, expired in 2003, but set up a “one-stop shop” for obtaining permits for proposed electrical generation facilities.

Attorneys for opponents, including Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Community Board One, and the Greenpoint Williamsburg Waterfront Task Force, filed a memorandum with the court in opposition.

They argue that since the law has expired and TransGas’s application is the last Article X proposal, the questions raised are neither “novel nor one of public importance.”

TransGas argues that the case is relevant because this standard could be applied to Article VII of public service law, which regulates the siting of major electrical and natural gas transmission lines.

“My prediction… is that the court won’t take it,” said Susan Kraham, a senior staff attorney with Columbia University’s Environmental Law Clinic, who has represented opponents of the plant.

Getting a case to the state’s highest court is difficult. Kraham said the court only takes about six percent of all cases that ask to be heard.

Kraham said that if the court does not hear this case, “then they’re at the end of the road.”

In an e-mail, John Dax, attorney for TransGas, acknowledged this.

“If the Court does not grant the motion,” he wrote, “TransGas’ Article X application would be over.”