Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's New York City Council vote for the subcommittee on zoning and franchises.

At this time, please silence all electronic devices.

Just a reminder, no one may approach a day as at any time.

Thank you.

Chair, we are ready to begin.

Good afternoon and welcome to a meeting of the subcommittee on zoning and franchises.

I am Councilmember Farrellis, Chair of the Subcommittee.

This afternoon, I am joined by Councilmembers Farias, Schulman, Salam Felder, Encanacion, Thomas Henry Carr, and Jay Sanchez.

Stand at ease.

Today we are scheduled to vote on three proposals.

We will vote on LU 72 through 77 regarding the DeWitt Clinton Park North proposal, which actually consists of two separate development sites.

These sites are located on the west side of Manhattan in the northern part of House Kitchen and are in Councilmember Brewer's District.

The first site is located at 801 11th Avenue along 11.

Sorry.

And there the applicant is seeking to develop a mixed use residential building that will have approximately 477 apartments, of which approximately 125 will be permanently affordable.

The second site is located at 629 West 54th Street along 12th Avenue.

And the applicant is seeking to develop another mixed-use residential building that will approximately that will have approximately 617 apartments, of which approximately 162 will be permanently affordable.

The proposed developments would seek a transfer of floor area from the commercial park piers in Hudson River Park in exchange for approximately 29729.7 million payment to Hudson River Park Trust that would support improvements in capital maintenance in the park.

The 11th Avenue site is requesting a zoning map amendment to change the existing manufacturing M2-3 zoning district to a commercial C4-district, which has a residential equivalent of a R10 district.

The 12th Avenue site is also requesting a zoning map amendment to change the existing manufacturing M2-4 zoning district to a commercial C4-7 district.

Second, a zoning text amendment would map a mandatory inclusionary housing area on both sites, as well as an update the special Hudson River Park District rules to reflect the new granting and receiving sites for a floor area transfer from Hudson River Park and clarify the affordable automated related use provisions for C4-7 districts as well as applicable bulk rules and the applicability of the special Clinton District regulations.

The third action, again, applicable applicable to both sites is a special permit to allow the transfer of a development right from Hudson River Park to the development sites and to provide bulk waivers to facilitate the proposed design of the mixed use buildings.

We are recommending the following modifications.

The removal of the street wall location waiver granted by CPC for the 11th Avenue site, which will provide a more consistent streetscape along 11th Avenue.

For the 12th Avenue site, the modification is to reduce the building height from the CPC approved 550 feet to a maximum of 520 feet, consistent with the intent of having the height of buildings decreased from 11th and 12th Avenue in order to create less of a barrier along the waterfront.

Councilmember Brewer supports these applications as modified.

I now recognize Councilmember Brewer for a statement.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, these two buildings, as you suggested, are being considered together in the area of 54th Street and 11th Avenue.

They are separately owned.

Most of most of the discussions were with Mr.

Friedland and not the Chapman organization when we spoke to them.

And they are getting what we call FAR, which is basically height, from Hudson River Park Trust.

It's a good project where Hudson River Park Trust, which you know, every time you look at a peer that needs assistance like Pier 76, it's millions and millions of dollars.

So the least that these buildings will pay Hudson River Park Trust is 29 million dollars, which is around 200 a square foot.

We also think that maybe they should pay more, but that's what it is at the moment, and they'll have to work it out.

There have been many, many meetings between community board four and the developers, and I participated in them, both in person at the community board, and then Zoom discussions with these parties as well as the council land use staff.

And I certainly want to thank Paul Devlin and Joe Restittier from Board 4, as well as the council land use staff here.

CB4, which is a bill of a very sophisticated board, will all due respect to all other 58 community boards.

Nobody else has the expertise like Board 4.

The people on it have been doing this for a long time, particularly Joe Vesticia.

They support housing at this site.

But just so you know, at the full board meeting that I was at, they issued a negative declaration, unless certain milestones were met, as opposed to a yes but, which is what they would have liked to, because the owners were so reluctant to make any concessions for the community.

The height community wanted the max height to come down, but the most that we could get was a reduced 30 feet from 550 to 520.

They wanted to bring it down even more because they understand these buildings are facing the river.

You want to have as much light and air on the river as possible for the fish and other uh aspects of marine life, but we were not able to get it down even further.

Another issue.

DeWick Clinton Park is right across the street.

This is not the Hudson River Park, Hudson River Park is on the river.

The Hudson River, the Witt Clinton Park is a city park.

It's right across the street from these buildings.

I know it well.

It includes ball fields, leisure areas, playgrounds, and more.

Despite the request for more, six plus six.

Then, of course, there's the issue of affordability.

By law, as you heard from the chair, uh 25 to 35, 25 percent to 30 percent, depending on option one or option two, are mandated to be affordable and to be low income.

That's based on law and based on the state.

Community board four has always advocated this unlike other boards, what I call workforce housing, which is basically higher income teachers, firefighters, police, etc.

And we wanted to add another five percent, so it would be 30 percent total.

We can't we started to compromise at 2.5%, meaning 165% AMI workforce housing, make it additional to the what was their MIH mandated.