The Greenpoint Waterfront is Getting Another Skyscraper
The warehouse at 27 West Street, which will be bulldozed to make way for a high-rise (Screen shot via Google Maps)
Welp, yet another luxury high rise is in the works on the Greenpoint waterfront, speeding along North Brooklyn’s transformation from a place of peaceful river views into a claustrophobic cluster of glass and concrete. Locals are up in arms about the development plans, especially since the city hasn’t quite made good on promises to add more parks and gardens to the area after the controversial rezoning of the waterfront in 2005.
Developers at real estate company Halcyon Management plan to demolish a warehouse at 27 West St., between Cayler and Quay Streets, and replace it with a 19-story tower housing 234 apartments.The building’s height hasn’t yet been announced. Good news is that the plans include space reserved for low-income housing, per the city’s zoning rules.
Still, neighbors aren’t thrilled about Halcyon’s plans, or about the many other real estate developements planned for Greenpoint, such as the controversially tall buildings rising on Commercial Street. Parks activists in particular are fighting the city to balance out North Brooklyn real estate development with more green spaces, which the city promised a decade ago.
“If we don’t get some kind of sense of progress on this or sense of commitment from DeBlasio and city planning, we’re going to take action,” Katherine Thompson, co-chair of parks activist group Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, told the Brooklyn Paper. “We will stand in front of the bulldozers and do the traditional Jane Jacobs — linking arms, halting construction — until we get their attention.”
[via Curbed]
