Buildings Popping Up like Mushrooms
I half wonder is this great boom is about to go bust, on my walk to the L train at Lorimer (on Keap Steet) I counted about three major sites where buildings have been torn down but nothing seems to be going back up:
City Sees Growth; Residents Call It Out of Control
"The city’s goals were ambitious. Greenpoint-Williamsburg was meant to be a model of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s vision for former industrial zones, an example of empathetic urban planning. In exchange for letting developers build residential towers on the waterfront, where factories had stood for decades, the city created a plan that it said would add residential growth and preserve the character of the neighborhood inland. At the same time, the plan was to provide thousands of apartments for low- and middle-income families, acres of green space, and protection for residents and businesses being displaced by the growth.
City officials say that their plan is right on schedule, especially by the waterfront, where construction has started on projects that will produce 460 below-market apartments, plus an initial few acres of parkland. But among many residents and community leaders, there is a nagging sense that the government has not moved fast enough to keep pace with developers.
In September, the city’s Department of Buildings received 337 complaints about construction in Greenpoint-Williamsburg, more than twice the filings from the community board of another fast-growing area nearby. In the heart of the rezoned area, near McCarren Park, luxury towers climb skyward, yet only nine new apartments of low- and middle-income housing are being built, far below the city’s original estimates."
