Gowanus Rezoning Will Push Longstanding Arts Out, Local Fears

GOWANUS, BROOKLYN — Proponents of the city's plan to rezone Gowanus have often touted its ability to bring more art and cultural uses to the area as one of its selling points to creating a thriving, mixed-use neighborhood. But, at least for one long-standing member of the arts community, that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Martin Bisi, a record producer who has run his studio on 3rd Street for just about 40 years, fears that the rezoning's promise to bring as many as 20,000 new people to Gowanus could push his business out of the neighborhood, and maybe even New York City altogether.

Bisi said he not only worries the rezoning's goal of drastically increasing Gowanus' housing supply clashes with protecting the arts, but said that even if it does, the character of that culture could change forever. Long-standing artists like himself who were able to find large industrial spaces for relatively cheap could be forced out for a newer — and namely, wealthier— crop, he said.

"It seems on paper to be artist-friendly, but the question is — is it really artist friendly?" Bisi said. "What I'm afraid of is being dispensed with to make room for subdividing and packing artists into these co-working spaces. In my world, in terms of what I do, I don't fit that model."

His approximate 2,500-square-foot studio has been necessary for the kind of work he's done recording with 50 to 100 artists each year, including the likes of Whitney Houston and Brian Eno, Bisi said.

It's pre-gentrified price in the early 1980s also meant that it was accessible for more urban, up-and-coming creative projects like his time working on the early days of hip-hop, he added.

Gentrification in the 1990s and early 2000s already started to shift that, though, bringing in more prestigiously educated, wealthier artists into smaller spaces, he said.

But, Bisi fears, the rezoning development boom could "bulldoze it through" to a point of no return.

"(It will become) a picture of the arts that is not the New York that I knew," Bisi said. "I think we’re losing something when New York is not the place you can go to with a Greyhound bus ticket and a song."

The Gowanus Rezoning Plan, developed by the Department of City Planning over the last decade, aims to bring more affordable housing, climate-change protections and varied development to the waterfront neighborhood, city officials have said.

But Bisi hasn't been its only critic. Since its unveiling, local groups have contended it does not bring enough affordable housing or that the plan for 22 or 30 story buildings on some blocks will change the neighborhood for the worse.

Bisi said these residential developments are part of what worry him.

City officials have said they hope to maintain the "Gowanus mix" by using incentives for residential developers to include arts or manufacturing uses in their buildings. Or, the department has said, with restrictions such as certain clusters of arts and cultural use areas that are prohibited to new residential development.

"Planning is more than zoning – it includes investments to support Gowanus as a thriving, inclusive, sustainable community," planning spokesman Joe Marvilli said.

But Bisi contends that these tools don't actually provide a guarantee that the arts will be protected given that they create trade-offs with developers. He also argues that bringing in more development at all could overrun Gowanus' industrial past.

"The power we're up against is residential," he said.

Bisi said that while the natural gentrification that has happened without rezoning in Gowanus has not been all positive, he would rather the city not get involved and let the neighborhood change organically.

City planning officials have warned against this approach, contending that doing nothing would mean Gowanus is developed piece-meal and without a comprehensive plan to coordinate what direction that takes. They also argue that not going through with a rezoning will leave parts of the neighborhood underutilized, maintain the lack of necessary housing and drive up costs in nearby neighborhoods.

The worry among locals, though, Bisi said, is that the rezoning could have unforeseen consequences that could create rapid shifts in the neighborhood.

"There’s something to be said for slow — there’s this fear because of massive change that could happen within a year," he said. "My slight sliver of hope right now is that we might be topping off in the market. If rezoning happens people might bulldoze all the way through."