Inwood Rezoning Foes Implore Council To Vote Down Plan

INWOOD, NY — Advocacy groups and politicians opposed to the city's controversial plan to rezone a large potion of Inwood for greater density and development in the neighborhood stood on the City Hall steps Tuesday afternoon with one demand of the City Council — vote no.

Demonstrators held sings Tuesday that read "don't zone us out," "vote no to segregated neighborhoods" and "northern Manhattan is not for sale" as speakers panned the city Economic Development Corporation's plan as a trojan horse for displacement and gentrification.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat said the city's rezoning plan does not protect the large number of Inwood residents currently living in rent-stabilized housing, especially those on preferential rents, from displacement and rent increases should their buildings be upzoned for greater density.

Instead of rewarding Inwood residents who made the neighborhood their home when the area was plagued by violence and drugs, the plan will incentivize market-rate development that's too expensive for the neighborhood, Espaillat said.

"If this plan goes through as proposed it will inject fuel in the hyper gentrification movement in northern Manhattan and we will all be out," Espaillat said Tuesday. "No one will survive this."

Espaillat said he will only support a plan that guarantees the creation of 5,000 apartments affordable for current neighborhood residents, 1,000 homes for senior citizens and one that supports local labor unions. He also called for the removal of a part of the city's rezoning plan called the "Commercial U," which would allow developers to build 11- and 14-story buildings along parts of Dyckman Street, Broadway and West 207th Street.

Advocates for Inwood's schools, parks, small businesses and affordable housing all criticized the city's plan during Tuesday's rally.

Johanna Garcia, the president for the Community Edcuation Council for New York's 6th School district, said that a plan that adding thousands of market-rate housing in a district where 80 percent of students qualify for free lunch can't "be something for our community." Garcia also criticized the plan for not calling for new schools in the district despite upzoning for greater residential density.

Advocates for housing also claimed the city's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program — the policy being touted by the city as adding affordable housing through the rezoning — is a "failed policy."

"It's the same failed policy of giving away buildable space and height to developers for inadequate amounts of affordable housing for our community that's still unaffordable to the most vulnerable families who need it most" Ava Farkas, the executive director for the Met Council on Housing, said Tuesday.

Rezoning opponents also claimed that the city's plan will result in a large number of residential development in Inwood's flood plains, will overburden existing infrastructure and will force out small businesses currently located in "soft sites" for development.

Nearly all the speakers during Tuesday's rally pleaded with local City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez to vote no on the plan. After the rally, advocates streamed into City Hall for the City Council's subcommittee on zoning and franchises' public hearing for the rezoning. Most of the rezoning opponents were affiliated with a coalition of neighborhood groups called Uptown United, which is pushing for an alternative rezoning plan "about us, with us, for us" that calls for any housing built on upzoned land to be 100 percent affordable at neighborhood-appropriate levels.

Rodriguez, who released a "vision" for the rezoning Monday, did not take a firm stance in support or opposition of the rezoning plan during the subcommittee hearing. The city councilman said that a neighborhood rezoning could be an opportunity to make up inadequate investment in northern Manhattan by prior administrations and to address challenges currently facing the neighborhood.

He did concede during opening statements of the hearing that the city's plan would need to be changed to address community concerns.

"There are certainly changes that will need to be made to this rezoning proposal to respond directly to community feedback," Rodriguez said. "Today we are here to listen to your concerns and your voices on the proposed rezoning plan, particularly in the preservation and construction of affordable housing which we agree have to be more clearly defined and articulated by the [de Blasio] administration."

The rezoning plan proposed by the city Economic Development Corporation has seen mixed results through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. Community Board 12 passed a resolution agreeing with some aspects of the plan, but advocating for sweeping changes, Borough President Gale Brewer opposed the plan and offered a set of conditions for her approval and the City Planning Commission approved the plan as proposed.

The City Council has the final say on whether to approve or reject the plan and has the power to make modifications to the plan. The council may take action similar to when it approved a plan to rezone East Harlem by modifying a city-proposed plan to align more closely with community recommendations.

Read more about the city's plan here.

Photo by Brendan Krisel/Patch