City Delays Two Bridges Project Hearing After Community Outrage

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — The City Planning Commission pushed a Monday hearing on three controversial skyscrapers to October after elected officials and locals demanded the City Planning Commission give the local community board until September to study the development's impact on the Lower East Side.

"Our schedule in September has a number of large projects, and they’re likely to have their hearings that month. That means the City Planning Commission would not likely be able to hold a hearing on this item until Oct. 17 at the earliest. This aligns happily with requests from the community, the applicant and the Borough President," said Ryan Singer, Senior Director of Land Use Review and Commission Operations during a Monday hearing.

The city moved to launch the study period Monday, just as Community Board 3 was breaking for the summer. The timing would give the board just 17 days to review the more than 700-page document on how the Two Bridges mega-development will impact the area.

Typically, the community board's land use committee would have 60 days to review the project before the full board passes judgment, but because the board does not meet in August, a review and a vote would have been crammed into July. Now, the deadline for public comment will be on Oct. 17 and the city's hearing on the project's impact statement will happen on Oct. 29.

Current zoning laws allow the mega development to be built without going through the extensive Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). And livid organizers and elected officials, who have long fought the city to force the developers to go though ULURP, saw short notice release of the impact statement's release as a move that undermined locals.

"The whole point of zoning is to have ground rules we all agree on — these rules have been abused," said Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer at a Monday rally outside of 80 Rutgers Slip, where 19 low-income seniors would be temporarily displaced to make way for a tower on Cherry Street, before the city pushed back its hearing. "Now, when the community board doesn’t meet, when people go on vacation, just in time for summer, the Department of City Planning gives them the green light — it’s outrageous. It’s a 700 page document, who can do that during the summer?"

JDS Development Group plans to build a 77-story tower at 247 Cherry Street, while CIM Group and L+M Development Partners aims to build two towers on a shared base at 260 South Street. Starrett Development is also planning a 62-story residence at 250 Clinton Street — the developments would add 2,775 new housing units with 694 of those apartments designated as permanently affordable housing and 200 of those destined for low-income seniors, according to the Environmental Impact Study draft. Developers are asking the city for "minor modifications" to the Two Bridges Large-Scale Development Plan to build the towers.

The plan, for a single block of the project, represents more growth in a 36 month period than the entire neighborhood has seen in 30 years, according to Brewer, who was also joined Monday by Councilwoman Margret Chin and Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou. Roughly 11,000 square feet of retail space is featured in the plan along with a slew of community upgrades to local parkland and infrastructure — most notably $15 million worth of upgrades to nearby parks and a $40 million investment to the F train's East Broadway station, which includes constructing a new entrance on Madison Street and making the station ADA-accessible for the first time in its history.

The project represents a staggering amount of change coming to the traditionally low-rise, low-income immigrant community and residents were told there would be ample community engagement on the project, but instead, developer's transparency fizzled, said Susan Stetzer, the district manager of Manhattan Community Board 3.

"There were promises of robust community engagement, then the discussion stopped, the timeline seemed to be on hold and we lost all transparency," said Stetzer at Monday's rally, before the city pushed back its hearing. "Now a year later, we have three applications and the [Environmental Impact Statement] draft without warning, and with a timeline in August — when community boards don't meet. I don’t know why there has been such a drastic change, but this community deserves better."

Last October, Brewer and Chin submitted a zoning text amendment that, if approved by the Department of City Planning, would require developers to get a special permit to build in the area bordered by Market, South, Montgomery and Cherry streets and force the properties to go through ULURP, which requires a proposed zoning change go through several bodies including the local community board, city council and the mayor's office.

It's appalling to locals that developers are not automatically required to go through the process.

"There's nothing minor about what they are proposing for our community," said Lower East Side resident Elizabeth Ortiz, 41, who organizes with community group Good Old Lower East Side.

Once the city certifies the impact study, likely in October, the City Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the projects. Next, the agency will create a final environmental impact statement and vote on the project.

Developers pushed back on claims about their lack of transparency and, through their land use attorney, sent a Friday letter to the City Planning Commission requesting a delay in the public hearing to give locals more time to review the project.

“We have been strongly committed to dialogue with local stakeholders and outreach to local residents from the inception of the projects, now almost two years ago," the developer's behind the project said in a joint statement. "We will continue to honor that commitment during the Community Board phase of the process and appreciate the concern recently expressed by the Board that it require more time to review the applications. To make that possible, we have requested that City Planning push back its public hearing to a later date, allowing the Board more time to formulate its recommendations to City Planning."

Lead photo courtesy of Caroline Spivack/Patch/ Rending of the towers by SHoP Architects