Village Demands Bigger Building For Long Awaited City Housing Site

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY — The first phase of developing a long-awaited city-owned vacant lot at 388 Hudson St., and so far, members on Community Board 2 were not impressed with the preliminary concepts.

As housing officials presented some rough ideas of possible configurations, board members felt that the city was missing a major opportunity to go big with affordable housing desperately needed in the neighborhood.

During the bruising fight over the SoHo rezoning plan, and the battle over the Elizabeth Street Community Garden, residents and experts alike frequent cited 388 Hudson St. as an "ideal" site that could handle scores more housing than what would be gained by developing the community garden.

The process to start fielding proposals for 388 Hudson St., a former parking lot purchased in 2002 by the Department of Environmental Protection to facilitate the Water Tunnel #3 project, took its first steps last week, initially to much excitement.

"This is the most viable site we have in our entire district," said Susan Wittenberg. "We're so excited about getting as much affordable housing out as possible."

In the presentation from the department of Housing, Preservation and Development last week, officials presented some rough zoning models for what the site could look like, since the site will have to be rezoned in order to build residential housing on the lot.

Half of the lot abutting West Houston Street will forever remain as open space to preserve DEP access to the water tunnel, HPD officials said.

The zoning options presented for the 13,622 square foot lot ranged from a 14-story building with 106 units to a 23-story building with 181 units — all required to be affordable housing.

In each zoning model presented, board members were dismayed that it seemed like the city from the start was underutilizing a suddenly split lot, and leaving out unrealized space.

The preliminary plans show that on the new southern lot line, where traditionally windows would not be allowed, there is a significant setback past the first story of the building.

Many wondered that, since HPD said the split adjacent southern lot would never be developed, why the city wasn't planning on getting an easement to build right up to the edge of the lot and maximize the full potential for desperately needed affordable housing?

"We understand that this would be treated as a lot line window," said board member Carter Booth, "but we've been told over and over this site can never be developed."

Anita Brandt also said the city should do more in its RFP to "maximize units."

"It's kind of disappointing that we can't get more," she said.

More surprising to hear at the presentation was that the city had seemingly already decided to split the lot and that the DEP half of the lot would remain as open space, said several members.

In the past, Booth said, there had ideas to cantilever a building over the DEP site.

When the topic of the split lots was raised during the HPD presentation, Wittenberg said, "they were just dismissive of it, they were just like 'well, this is how it is.'"

"We are not coming in at the beginning of a discussion," said Wittenberg, "there have been many that we haven't been a part of and I feel concerned about that."

"I think it's a big handicap to not have 25,000 square feet to work with," said committee co-chair Eugene Yoo.

One member, David Gruber, said he opted out of the conversation entirely, because the experience of working with "envisioning" projects related to NYU, Elizabeth Street Garden, Hudson Square and others left him distrustful of the process.

"This project is being formulated and being pushed by politicians above our pay grade," he said. "It doesn't matter what we envision or what we want, it's not going to be heard and they're going to do what they want."

Booth agreed that while the Community Board lacks any actual authority, "one of the strengths that we have is embarrassment."

"It is embarrassing if the city moves through and doesn't utilize this plan the best way, it is embarrassing if they split the lot, it's embarrassing if they hold back some FAR," Booth said.