The Gowanus Shitshow

by George Fiala

A lot of people thought that Buddy, who was active in the community past age 90, might have lost his faculties since all he talked about was the bright future of Gowanus, as long as the right things were done. But as his friend, I got to ask him plenty of other things, for which he gave me very wise answers. As far as Gowanus being a community in the 1930's, he kind of had the same opinion I had fifty years later.

Now it's almost fifty years after that, and real estate developers, after having exhausted downtown Brooklyn for development profits, are beginning to feast on Gowanus.

Real estate developers think far in the future (which is why I'm scared to lose Red Hook to skyscrapers some day), and Gowanus has been in their sights for at least 25 years. They were ready to go in 2008, but the Superfund designation, which was fought mightily by the Bloomberg administration, delayed things.

Brad Lander, who was watching all of this while figuring out his political future from his perches at the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Institute, became the Gowanus City Councilman in 2008, and spent the next 12 years as Gowanus' representative in government.

In that job he had the most important role that anyway could have in the future of Gowanus. Zoned as an industrial area with small pockets of residential blocks, Gowanus was prevented from becoming a wealthy high-rise area, while the bordering communities of Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope were becoming more and more ritzy.

MARC JACKSON

Such a situation couldn't last, and while the Superfund set things back a bit, the real estaters never gave up, as they saw there time coming.

There had been failed attempts at rezoning Gowanus in the past, but by 2012 things were getting in place and wild real estate speculation began, as developers paid millions for complete blocks so they could pull the trigger on building huge skyscrapers as soon as a rezoning became law. Remember, rezoning mostly benefits landowners as land that is worth one price is magically worth ten times that as allowable building sizes increases maybe eight times. At the beginning of the rezoning discussions, they were going for 12 stories, by the end it became 30.

The one person in all of New York City that had just about the final say in how Gowanus would be rezoned, if even at all, is the local City Councilman. That's due to a tradition called "member deference." The complete Council votes on a rezone, but custom is to follow the will of the local councilman. Conservative and pro-development groups are trying to change this, but as of now it's still mostly followed.

Now, in the case of Gowanus it was Brad Lander with that power. What he said would go. And yet, in 2013 he, together with another former employer, Pratt Institute. created a community process they called Bridging Gowanus. I went to the first meeting at PS 32 where over and over he said that since a rezoning was inevitable, this was a way to see that the "community" got something."

It was only inevitable because he called all the shots.

The beneficiaries of the rezoning and of Bridging Gowanus were Brad Lander, who has gone on to become the city Comptroller, and hopefully for him a stepping stone to higher office, and the real estate community who are transforming the community as you can see for yourself as the skyline changes.

Long term residents will lose the charm that brought them to Gowanus in the first place, and many warn of the dangers of building in an environmentally compromised area, not to mention a flood-prone area with compromised sewers.

Money and power won and Gowanus is now a giant construction project.

The smell is back!

Last month brought lots of hot weather and some rainstorms, and all of a sudden the neighborhood blogs were full of complaints about thousands of tiny dead fish in the Canal along with a stench that was reminiscent of the old days.

At the Gowanus CAG meeting (the community group associated with the Superfund), it was stated that this was due to very low oxygen levels in the water. The one person at the EPA who really cared about all this, Christos Tsiamis, was recently suddenly retired, and his replacements had no solutions.

But Marlene Donnelly, a longtime activist and CAG member, told us with some credibility that concrete runoff from the construction by the Canal has compromised all the hard work Christos has done to bring us a clean canal, supportive of birds and fish. I'm sure worse is yet to come.