Development

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.

There's a lot not to like about parking in New York City. It deadens urban space. It drives up the cost of housing and doing business. And it's a powerful generator of traffic and congestion.

Here comes Wal-Mart.

Council Member Gale Brewer has struck a deal on the Riverside Center mega-development, sending the 2,500-apartment project through two City Council committees and on a track to final approval. The deal increases the number of parking spaces allowed at Riverside Center to 1,500, far more than the community board or even the City Planning Commission had approved.

Even by its own math, the City Planning Commission seems to have approved 430 parking spots too many at Riverside Center, the new development slated to straddle 60th Street on the far West Side.

Now that the City Planning Commission has called for 1,260 parking spaces at the Riverside Center development -- instead of the 1,800 requested by the developer -- the project moves on to the City Council for the final step of the city's land use process. Traditionally, the local Council member representing the district is given a lot of deference by her peers, so we checked in with West Side representative Gale Brewer to see whether she'd be pushing for a further reduction in the number of spaces.

We got our hands on a copy of the City Planning Commission's report on the Riverside Center mega-development [PDF], and as we reported last week, the commission is allowing Extell Development to construct 1,260 parking spaces under two Upper West Side blocks. It's possible that the number of parking spaces could drop lower when the public review reaches the City Council, where local representative Gale Brewer has said she favors 1,100 parking spaces.

Last month, builders broke ground on Fort Greene's Navy Green project, which, when completed, will add 458 homes between the Navy Yard and the BQE. A full three-quarters of the project will be affordable to families earning between 30 and 130 percent of the area median income, and 97 of those residences will be supportive housing, offering social services in addition to shelter.

The City Planning Commission is likely to approve a 1,260-space garage for the Riverside Center mega-development at its meeting this Wednesday, according to multiple sources. That's space for hundreds more cars -- causing more congestion and more pollution -- than requested by the Upper West Side's representatives. It's yet another case where the commission and planning chair Amanda Burden have disregarded the sustainability goals of PlaNYC when shaping parking policy.