Sunset Park Pols Call On De Blasio For Industry City Rezone Help

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — Local officials have officially called on Mayor Bill de Blasio and his administration to join the conversation about Industry City's controversial plan to rezone the Sunset Park waterfront.

Council Member Carlos Menchaca and Community Board 7 Chair Cesar Zuniga sent a letter to the mayor this week asking that his top officials meet with the board before its Dec. 18 vote deadline runs out on the proposal, which the private developers officially submitted late last month despite pleas for them to hold off.

The meetings are part of Menchaca's plan to get the city to commit to helping Sunset Park with things like a new school, job tracking and tenant protections before the private complex is allowed to rezone its 35-acre property.

He has said that, along with other conditions he asked of Industry City, this will make sure the expansion of the private complex helps, rather than harms, the largely working class, immigrant neighborhood.

"Your administration has rightly paired recent major rezonings with direct public contributions to local housing, workforce, education, and resilience needs," the officials wrote in their letter. "An unprecedented upzoning on the Sunset Park waterfront similarly requires the City’s partnership to address critical neighborhood challenges that are directly connected to the proposed changes of Industry City."

The letter's four specific requests include expanding two protections for renters in Sunset Park, which Menchaca has said will help with displacement of residents critics say the rezoning could exacerbate.

It also asks the city to commit to building a technical high school in Industry City and create a "job count" to track the rezoning's impact on jobs in the neighborhood. Industry City has said that the rezoning could help bring 15,000 new jobs to Sunset Park.

The local officials also told the mayor they want to discuss other problems facing the neighborhood, like environmental threats, housing insecurity, underemployment and deterioration of the Industrial Business Zone.

The letter, sent on Nov. 4, came the same day Community Board 7 received the more than 3,000-page application they will need to go through before casting a vote on the proposal Dec. 18.

That deadline began when Industry City submitted the application — which proposes more than 1 million square feet of new development for the 16-building complex — on Oct. 25 even though Menchaca had asked that they wait to do so until a legally-binding agreement was reached with community members.

It was the second time Menchaca had asked the private developers to hold off on the proposal, which many residents say will exacerbate gentrification already rampant in Sunset Park.

The developers have said they will comply with Menchaca's requests, like not including two high-rise hotels or limiting the 900,000 square feet of new retail in the proposal.

They contend that an agreement on those changes can be worked out as the proposal makes its way through the seven-month review process, which moves the application through local officials and eventually to City Council.

But community board members said this week that meeting even their own deadline in that process will be a stretch.

"3,000 pages — that’s like reading a novel a night," Land Use Chair John Fontillas said at a "public speak-out" held Wednesday. "We need your comments, we need your review, we can’t do [3,000] pages all by ourselves."

Residents who came to the speak-out Wednesday were split between those urging officials to reject the proposal outright and those advocating for the community to work towards the agreement with Industry City.

A coalition has already started working on the agreement, which Menchaca has said will create accountability that Industry City will make the changes it says it will.

Both Menchaca and coalition members who spoke Wednesday said reaching this agreement is non-negotiable for Industry City to get their support.

"If we cannot create a Community Benefits Agreement, or if Industry City does not agree to our proposal, the coalition would walk away from this project and not support a zoning change," one coalition member said.