Development

The Bronx is booming. Over the last decade, no borough added more new residents or posted faster wage growth.

The Department of City Planning's commitment to rezoning the city along more transit-oriented lines is a critical component of its sustainability agenda. Allowing more people to live and work next to transit means more people will ride transit and fewer will drive.

We reported yesterday that Department of City Planning Sustainability Director Howard Slatkin recently announced that his agency "believe[s] there are opportunities to lower parking requirements" in a ring of neighborhoods around the Manhattan core. This would be an important step forward in overhauling decades-old policies that lead to more traffic and less affordable housing. Importantly, Slatkin also revealed a major reason why the department sees mandatory parking minimums as so important -- it's all about the politics of development.

Housing is harder to build, more expensive, and often lower-quality as a result of the city's parking regulations, according to one New York City developer.

Since January, Upper Manhattan has been abuzz with news of a proposed development that could bring four new residential towers to Washington Heights. And according to developers Quadriad Realty Partners, there'll be ample parking to go along with them.

As the operator of the taxpayer-financed Yankee Stadium parking garages heads toward default, there's no longer any question that providing so much parking in such a transit-rich location was a mistake on the scale of Carl Pavano's contract. The decision to give up $2.5 million in city taxes and $5 million in state revenue has proven a poor investment indeed. The question, at this point, is what comes next.

Parking minimums continue to stymie the creation of affordable housing in New York City, according to an architect who frequently designs those projects. When a rezoning suddenly put parking minimums in effect for an affordable housing project in the Bronx, Richard Ferrara of DeLaCour & Ferrara Architects was forced to cut apartments out of the building.

You don't need Jimmy McMillan to tell you that housing in New York is expensive. But figuring out why the rent is so damn high, and what to do about it, is a knotty policy question.

This morning, the Bloomberg Administration announced the developer for the first phase of Hunter's Point South, a Long Island City project the city is billing as the largest middle-class housing project since Co-Op City and Starrett City went up in the 1970s. A team led by the Related Companies will be developing the first 900 units at what will eventually be a 5,000-unit complex along the East River.