The City Council has gone sweet on a controversial plan to build a luxury apartment complex on the former Domino Sugar factory site on the Williamsburg waterfront after its developer agreed to an 11th-hour deal to slice six stories off the two tallest towers.
Before two Council committees unanimously voted today in favor of the $1.5 billion Brooklyn project, the development team of Community Preservation Corporation and Isaac Kataan agreed to reduce the size of both buildings to 34 stories while still delivering on a promised 660 affordable housing units. The full Council is expected to ratify the plan in the coming weeks.
The agreement was reached after Mayor Bloomberg convinced Councilman Steve Levin, who represents the neighborhood and has been a project opponent, to back the plan with the modifications. The council usually backs the wishes of the local council member on land-use issues, and sources said Levin behind the scenes had been pushing to cut 600 units from the 2,200-apartment project.
Phil DePaolo, a North Brooklyn activist, said the project is still too big for Williamsburg’s transit and schools system to handle and will dramatically drain existing city services like police, fire and sanitation.
“It’s a shell game because we are still getting 2,200 new households” as the developer originally proposed, DePaolo said.
“The New Domino” project was already supported by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and the city Planning Commission but was snubbed earlier this year by local Community Board 1.
Besides Levin, Levin’s political mentor, Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez, also previously opposed it before the compromise.
The mixed-use Domino project also includes four acres of public recreation space, 274,000 square feet of retail space, and an esplanade overlooking Manhattan. It needs city approval for a zoning change to allow for residential use because the 11.2-acre footprint was not part of the 2005 neighborhood rezoning.
The project, the second-biggest in Brooklyn behind Atlantic Yards, came under fire last year over the possibility that the illuminated “Domino Sugar” sign would be lost. But the developer opted to keep it following massive opposition from residents.
The New Domino is expected to be built over ten years, beginning next year.