Development Deals Hit New York Council Roadblock

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Hey there, let’s get into today’s news at the intersection of policy and real estate:

The Monitor Point apartment complex is at a political stalemate.
Is a Hudson River Park air rights deal in jeopardy?
A charter revision commission redux.

In this edition we mention: City Council member Lincoln Restler, Gotham President of Development Bryan Kelly, Council member Gale Brewer, Hudson River Park Trust President and CEO Noreen Doyle, New York State Association for Affordable Housing president and CEO Carlina Rivera, Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development executive director Barika Williams and others.

We Heard

Development deadlock: City Council member Lincoln Restler sparred with the Gotham Organization and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Wednesday during a tense committee meeting on the Monitor Point project, rejecting the proposed 1,150-unit development on the Greenpoint waterfront without more income-restricted housing and a city commitment to completing Bushwick Inlet Park. With just weeks to go before the Council must take action on the proposal, Monitor Point appears to be at a political stalemate, and an increasingly likely candidate to test the city’s new housing appeals board. The unfolding political battle has become the latest proxy for the city’s YIMBY-versus-NIMBY showdown, pitting pro-development housing advocates against neighborhood groups who’ve raised concerns about the project’s affordability and scale. Ninety speakers packed the committee room to testify, a mix of those for and against the project, with housing advocates and labor unions rallying outside the building to chants of “What’s the point? Monitor Point!” As proposed, Gotham would build three residential towers on land leased from the Greenpoint Monitor Museum and the MTA. Forty percent of the 1,150 apartments — or 460 units — would be permanently income-restricted for households earning 60 percent of area median income. The remaining 690 units would rent at market rates, with studios starting around $4,000 and three-bedrooms topping out near $9,500, according to Gotham president of development Bryan Kelly. Restler said he remains “uncomfortable and opposed” to the project, arguing that the state-owned MTA parcel should deliver deeper affordability. “I don’t think this makes sense, and we’re going to have to see significant improvement for my position to change,” he said. The Mamdani administration, meanwhile, has framed Monitor Point as “an opportunity to deliver new affordable housing, additional public amenities and critical infrastructure,” mayoral spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach said. He added that the city is working with Restler to advance the project. Gotham has pointed to its spending on roughly $130 million in development rights, replacement MTA facilities and infrastructure needed to make the project viable and argues that adding more income-restricted units is unworkable on its end. “With the support of the city, if we can move the needle, we’ll move the needle,” said Kelly. “But to be clear, developers are executing upon a business plan. We also have constraints.”
Air rights battle: An air rights transfer of 148,000 square feet from the Hudson River Park Trust would clear the way for The Chapman Group and Friedland Properties to build a pair of beefed-up towers on Manhattan’s West Side known as Dewey Clinton Park North, with 1,064 apartments — 273 of them permanently income-restricted. But the proposal is running into familiar friction over affordability levels and scale. The taller of the two buildings at 629 West 54th Street would rise to 44 stories with 617 units and 113,000 square feet of commercial space for a car dealership. The other tower sited for 801 11th Avenue would stand at 38 stories with 477 units and 85,000 square feet of commercial space, also earmarked for a car dealership. The project hasn’t faced the kind of drawn-out battle seen at Monitor Point, but it has exposed a split in local support. Manhattan Community Board 4 ultimately voted against the plan even after its land use committee backed the project. On the other side of the process, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal and the City Planning Commission approved the rezoning and air rights transfer. The proposal is now before the City Council, where local Council member Gale Brewer is signaling continued scrutiny. “I will say that this is unusual,” Brewer said at a Wednesday committee hearing on the air rights transfer. The Hudson Park River Trust has only ever sold its air rights to developers three times — for the St. John’s Terminal Project and in separate deals for mixed-use towers by Douglaston Development and Lalezarian Properties. In this case, the $29.7 million sale of air rights would help fund the rehabilitation of Pier 76, a five-and-a-half-acre pier supported by roughly 6,500 deteriorating wooden piles, according to Noreen Doyle, president and CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust. The Trust plans to finalize the transaction once the project clears city approvals. Brewer called the park funding component a clear benefit, but said concerns persist over what developers plan to do with the added floor area. “We are concerned about how it goes higher, we are concerned about the number of affordable units — we want more,” she said.
COGE, not DOGE: Mamdani on Wednesday moved to dissolve a charter revision commission appointed at the end of former Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure, and on Thursday replace it with the Commission on Government Efficiency, or COGE — a name that echoes the federal Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk early on in President Donald Trump’s second term. That’s where the similarities end, insists Mamdani, who said COGE is intended to improve city services, not cull them. “Any tool at our disposal that we could use to build more housing, that we could use to be more efficient in our operations, those are the tools that we want to unlock,” Mamdani told reporters, pointing to the administration’s SPEED reforms to accelerate affordable housing across the city as an area to build on. The commission’s 16-member roster includes a pair of familiar names in New York’s affordable housing and planning circles: former Manhattan City Council member Carlina Rivera, now president and CEO of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, and Barika Williams, executive director of the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development. The commission will hold its first public meeting on June 4, followed by its first public hearing on June 9. Another nine hearing dates are expected in the coming weeks.

Have a tip or feedback? Reach me at caroline.spivack@therealdeal.com.

The Catch-Up

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s pied-à-terre tax is barreling toward reality, but with co-ops stuck in valuation limbo, the luxury market is bracing for an enforcement headache that could leave boards and shareholders holding the bag, reports The Real Deal’s Sheridan Wall.

The Mamdani administration is rolling out a tenant-first crackdown that aims to squeeze “bad landlords” with lawsuits, violations and ownership takeovers — a playbook that has the real estate industry bracing for a war on rent-stabilized owners, reports TRD’s Lilah Burke.

Just before midnight Wednesday, the New York state budget passed both houses of the legislature. Now, all that remains is the governor’s signature on the remaining bills, reports NY1.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling curbing the reach of federal environmental reviews is giving cities and developers fresh hope that long-stalled housing and infrastructure projects could move faster through approval pipelines, Bloomberg reports.

Call it the “med-à-terre”: wealthy retirees who’ve left New York are now snapping up crash pads near Manhattan hospitals to access top medical care, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Mamdani is seriously considering endorsing Darializa Avila Chevalier over Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the tightening Upper Manhattan House race, The New York Times reports.

The Kicker

“Our goal is to build a tremendous machine of housing growth across the city,” said Patrick Love, deputy commissioner for the Office of Development at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.