On February 17th, my group attended the Community Board 6 meeting of their committee for Economic/Waterfront/Community Development and Housing. The Community Board 6 represents Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, and Park Slope. Although Red Hook represents ten percent of the population of the community, it has twenty percent of representation in the board meeting. This meeting focused mainly on two different ways of using a lot of the empty or unused lots that are scattered throughout the community. There were two presentations within this meeting both done by two planning fellows: John Douglas and Josh Thompson.
John Douglas’s presentation focused mainly on how the community could expand its manufacturing industry. He began discussing the benefits of manufacturing: specifically how it holds ten percent of the employment in the area, how its wages are double than other industries such as retail and restaurants as well as a huge job source, and how it is a larger economic multiplier. Douglas suggested the use of a BID as a way to allow this manufacturing industry to flourish within the community. A BID is essentially a committee that is led by business owners and funded by businesses to help promote commercial and industrial districts. Douglas suggested using this bid to “advocate for policies, build stronger social cohesion between manufacturers, improve right of way, public spaces and infrastructure, buy bulk orders, institute energy efficiency projects on the neighborhood scale, and facilitate real estate needs of local businesses.” He then went into the logistics of creating a BID and the processes that the community must go through in order to establish a BID and stressed that this presentation was to see if there was any interest in creating a BID in the first place.
After the presentation was over, the committee members had a many questions concerning the BID and if it was a valid approach to developing the manufacturing industry within the community. Some questioned how would the BID deal with the conflicting interests of business owners and properties owners who might want rezoning. Or even the internal conflicts of non-manufacturing businesses that have different agendas. There was also a problem in the lack of a democratic system, since the more land you had, the more influence you had within the community and how it was run. These are all valid questions in the actual creation of a BID and if the conflict that would arise in the community would outweigh the actual benefits of the committee.
Josh Thompson then presented different opportunities to create additional housing. His presentation really opened my eyes to how under-utilized the area was. Even though there were already tons of areas zoned for residential construction, including 86 percent of lots, 77 percent of these lots were not being used to their maximum floor area ratio. Also, 60 percent of all residential lots have the potential for adding more units. This research is still in its baby steps, however. There are a lot of limitations to take into consideration like the presence of landmarks, community gardens and playgrounds and shifting through all the data to find the clusters with the highest potential for additional housing.
Ultimately, this community board meeting was very eye opening and shed light on the problems of the community as well as possible solutions.
