Chair Louis questions on why R8 rezoning is necessary
Chair Louis asks why the R8 rezoning is necessary when large buildings could be built as-of-right. Washington explains as-of-right yields ~300 units vs. ~460 with rezoning, and the additional scale supports community facility space, amenities, and family-sized units. Walker-Stewart adds the scale enables 62% family units.
The community board mentioned that large apartment buildings could be built on these lots without any rezoning.
Can you explain why a rezoning is necessary and why the R8 zoning district was selected?
Sure.
Ashley, do you want?
I can start.
Ashley will pick up on it.
I mean, so as of right, you could probably build about 300 units.
on the site.
And our project contemplates about 460, you know, close to that.
And so there are a couple of reasons.
One, there's a need for affordable housing in the city.
And so being able to do that is important.
Plus, it allows us to, you know, increase the scale that allows for the incorporation of the community facility space, you know, beautification of the area around it.
You know, one of the things that's important with the rezoning and as we went through environmental review, there is a community garden across the street from the Sojourner Truth site, which was of interest to the community board, you know.
With hopefully the approval of the city council, we'll be paying for a redesign to address any concerns about shadows that the community garden has.
And we've already been in touch with Green Thumb and to talk with them about the process.
And so a lot of it is understanding the needs that the city has, building to a scale that can support things like
the amenity spaces we want to provide for residents, such as concierge, making sure that families can receive packages that don't grow legs and walk away, which unfortunately happens sometimes in buildings.
And so being able to provide a suite of amenities, you really just need more income to make it work.
And so it's what really finances and functions for our properties.
Okay.
And Kelly mentioned this earlier, but I just want to emphasize.
The scale of the building allows us to create the 62% family size units.
If we were to reduce the scale of the building, we wouldn't be able to support that.
And we recognize that it's an important part of that.
It's an important.
Request from the community that we create more family size units and we had conversations with the borough president that this is a priority for her so we're we're excited we're able to do that because of because of the scale of the project right