Greenpoint Rezoning Industrial Reuse Meeting Report

The New York Times has a writeup about the rezoning meeting held last night about rezoning some parts of the neighborhood reusing industrial buildings. NAG board member Ward Dennis is quoted:

"Developers are demolishing perfectly good buildings such as the Old Dutch Mustard company in my neighborhood, a five-story loft building that was demolished, yes, to create a five-story loft building."

Other speakers included Mary Habstritt, an industrial historian and personal hero of mine, and Lisa Kersavage of the Municpal Art Society, who pointed out the dangerous false dichotomy that developers like to promote: that low-income housing and preservation can't coexist.

Kersavage and others also discussed the environmentally destructive impact of demolition, with one of the Navy Yard developers saying, "The most sustainable thing you can do is adaptively reuse a building, so we are doing that throughout the Navy Yard, 40-plus buildings we’re adaptively reusing before they’re so far gone you can’t make the numbers work."

Several commenters noted that, in addition to preservation of cultural history and other good reasons to manage development, turning industrial areas into housing is also bad for the local economy. One of them posted a link to something I keep meaning to post about—WNET's great series "Uncertain Industry: The Decline of Manufacturing in New York City." You can watch it online—it includes a profile of Greenpoint business Angel's Bakery, among others.

Photo of the Old Dutch Mustard Building (now gone) by masck, via a Creative Commons License.

ETA: Thanks to Ward for pointing out I confused two meetings in this post's original form! This is about the MAS panel on adaptive reuse. I'll post about the rezoning meetings in another entry. I've been sick.