A developer’s proposal to build a 56-story luxury tower on public land in Greenpoint next to the East River has enraged a community overwhelmed by luxury high-rises and still waiting for a waterfront park promised to it 20 years ago. This controversy will be an early test of how Mayor Mamdani balances his commitment to parks and open space against for-profit developer efforts to exploit the city’s housing crisis to circumvent zoning rules and renege on community commitments.
The flashpoint for the luxury-tower proposal is land owned by the MTA that borders a waterfront stretch across from Midtown Manhattan. In 2005 the city promised to turn that stretch into a glorious Bushwick Inlet Park when it rezoned Greenpoint and Williamsburg to allow high-rises at the river’s edge. Unsurprisingly, the towers appeared quickly. But two decades later much of the designated park area remains fenced off and highly contaminated from heavy industry that occupied the waterfront for over a century.
To protect the park, the 2005 rezoning limited buildings on the MTA land to 14 stories, designated as parkland an adjoining waterfront lot, and required a 40-foot public esplanade along the river. The Gotham Organization now seeks to blow up these commitments through a sweeping rezoning that would remove the park designation, narrow the public walkway, and permit 56-story and 41-story luxury towers flush against the park on the MTA land, which the agency tentatively has agreed to lease.
The Gotham towers would stand next to Bushwick Inlet, a rare natural embayment and ecological treasure finally scheduled to open this spring. Our group, Save the Inlet, was formed to protect the inlet from this mega-project and grows out the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, which has spent the last 20 years fighting to get the city to live up to its promises in the 2005 rezoning.
Already outraged by the decades-long wait for the park, the local community is up in arms over the prospect of 100 stories of concrete and glass looming over Bushwick Inlet. Nearly 5,000 local residents have signed a petition opposing the project, and hundreds turned out for recent Community Board meetings that marked the start of the review process of Gotham’s rezoning application. Local Councilmember Lincoln Restler spoke forcefully against the proposal, noting that public land should only be used for public good and that any project had to come with firm commitments to complete Bushwick Inlet Park.
But Gotham is pushing ahead, relying largely on claims its towers will include affordable housing. It recently emerged, however, that nearly half of that housing would be relegated to a separate building farthest from the waterfront — a classic “poor door” — and some rents would be pegged to household incomes of $162,000 for families of four. This is the “affordable” bait Gotham is dangling to develop waterside luxury towers where monthly rents could reach $20,000.
No one can accuse Greenpointers of being NIMBYs. Greenpoint and Williamsburg welcomed nearly 30,000 new housing units between 2010 and 2024, more than any other district in the city. Meanwhile, Greenpoint has one of the city’s lowest ratios of open space, and the proposed project would make it even worse with nearly 3,000 additional residents.
With a new mayor committed to truly affordable housing and more open space, now is the time to stop private developers seeking to use public land to build luxury housing while devastating nearby parks. Rather than tearing up the 2005 rezoning agreement with the Greenpoint-Williamsburg community, New York City should turn its attention to completing Bushwick Inlet Park, which can be a spectacular public space for the entire city.
Thompson leads Save the Inlet, and Dunn is a member of the group.
