Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
54
The Process Behind the Plan
The DCP completed the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) in September 2007,
stating that the immediate displacement of 71 small businesses and their 975 employees
resulting from the rezoning would not constitute a significant adverse economic impact (DCP
2007c). Likewise, the indirect displacement of 500 residents in 190 units and the threat of
demolition of some of the street’s century-old buildings were not regarded as worth of
particular consideration (Ibid.). The DCP certified its proposal as complete on October 1,
2007, thereby starting the seven-month Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP)
mandated by the City Charter. On December 5, 2007, Community Boards 9 and 11 (East and
West Harlem) voted for conditional approval of the rezoning (that is, they approved the plan,
provided certain modifications were made), while CB 10 (Central Harlem) issued a
conditional disapproval, objecting to the projected indirect displacement of low-income
residents from the rezoned area and expressing concern about the impacts of a forecasted
overproduction of market-rate housing units (80 per cent market-rate against 20 per cent
reserved as ‘affordable’ to low- and middle-income households) in a predominantly very low-
income area. All three Community Boards agreed that the plan did not guarantee a sufficient
amount of housing affordable to local residents, nor any provision to protect existing tenants
from eviction. They also favoured the establishment of provisions aimed at retaining existing
small businesses in the area.
But the role of Community Boards in New York City is merely advisory, and the City
Planning Commission (CPC) approved the plan on March 10, 2008, giving the City Council
50 days to approve or reject the Commission’s decision. On January 30, 2008, the
Commission held a public hearing at the City College of New York at West 135th Street, in
which residents, business owners and local community organizers attended to testify their
overwhelming opposition to the rezoning (Morais 2008).
Before final approval was due on April 30, 2008, Councilwoman Inez Dickens, who
represents the portion of 125
th
Street where the largest up-zoning was proposed, was holding
the balance of power. Dickens is strongly tied to the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce
and to its development arm, the Greater Harlem Housing Development Corporation, and is
also active in the Harlem real estate business with her own firm (Buettner 2010). Dickens had
promised that she would not approve the plan until she could extract some benefits for the
local community. After negotiations with the board of the DCP, she came to an undisclosed
agreement, and a modified version of the plan was presented to City Council for approval.
The modified plan granted inclusionary zoning bonuses to encourage developers to set aside
46 percent of the newly produced housing units as ‘affordable’. Broadly defined, inclusionary
zoning is the provision of incentives to private developers in exchange for the commitment to
include the construction of a percentage of affordable units as part of their development. New
York has a voluntary program, which subsidizes development in the form of density bonuses
or financial grants like the New York State’s 421 — a tax abatement program. Before 2005,
the density bonus was provided only in the highest-density residential areas of the City. The
city expanded the program in 2005 for areas being rezoned to medium- and high-density
residential uses and included the tool in the rezoning plan for Greenpoint-Williamsburg.
