Progressives Killed Amazon’s Deal in New York. Is Industry City Next?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/nyregion/industry-city-zoning-amazon-nyc.html

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A plan to bring tens of thousands of jobs to an overlooked corner of the city just outside Manhattan has become another battleground for New York City leaders. Progressives are attacking mainstream Democrats about their competing visions for the city. A powerful business is on the defensive.

Last year, it was an Amazon campus in Queens. Now it is Industry City, a 19th-century warehouse complex in Brooklyn that has been reborn as a 21st-century hub for small businesses, artists and visitors.

Developers want to further transform the waterfront industrial area, and are pursuing a zoning change in the working class neighborhood of Sunset Park that would allow Industry City to expand into a shopping and office behemoth. But a number of local political leaders, including Carlos Menchaca, the city councilman who represents the neighborhood, strongly oppose the proposal.

In normal times, Mr. Menchaca’s opposition would be enough to kill the plan; tradition holds that City Council members can essentially veto any rezoning in their districts.

These are not normal times. Mr. Menchaca’s colleagues say that the prospect of adding 20,000 jobs during an economic crisis is too important, and they might attempt to go around him.

The collapse of the Amazon deal is still fresh on some lawmakers’ minds, and there are still hurt feelings on both sides. Ritchie Torres, a Democratic councilman from the Bronx who won a competitive congressional primary race this summer, said the city should not make the same mistake again.

“Amazon 2.0 in a time of Depression-level unemployment strikes me as deeply irresponsible,” Mr. Torres said in an interview.

The showdown over Industry City is a fight over the future of development in New York City — an especially urgent debate given the job losses of the pandemic.

The rezoning proposal has also exposed complex tensions among Democrats over gentrification, the power of the real estate industry and who will lead the city as it recovers from its worst crisis in half a century.

Mr. Menchaca, who is part of the Council’s progressive caucus, called Industry City a “luxury mall” that could worsen gentrification in Sunset Park, where half of residents are Hispanic and Asian, and about one in five lives in poverty.

“We’re not anti-development at all — we’re anti-gentrification,” he said. “We have so many ideas for developing the waterfront in a vein of equity and economic justice.”

The developers of Industry City, using the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a template, want to expand their “innovation hub for creative companies,” and add more space for retail and parking. They say the rezoning could create 20,000 jobs and $100 million a year in tax revenue. (Amazon promised 25,000 jobs and $27 billion in tax revenue over two decades.)

Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose second and last term ends in 2021, has not taken a position on the rezoning proposal.

“Obviously, it would bring a lot of jobs and that’s something we would appreciate in this city, but again, that’s really between the private developer and the Council to work that through,” he said last week on NY1.

Corey Johnson, the Democratic City Council speaker who is running for mayor, has also not said whether he supports the rezoning. Another Democratic mayoral candidate, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, had expressed concerns about the project. Now he wants the full City Council to decide its fate.

“The Industry City proposal could create the kind of jobs and economic boost that New York City needs right now — and so it at least deserves an up-or-down vote in the City Council,” Mr. Adams said in a statement.

Over the last year, Democratic factions have fought over a long list of issues, including a proposal to institute a tax on millionaires, plans for a train to La Guardia Airport, and the extent of police reforms.

A rezoning of the Inwood neighborhood in northern Manhattan was highly contentious and raised similar concerns over pushing out longtime residents. Other city leaders want to build a huge development over the Sunnyside rail yard in Queens.

The conflict over Industry City could figure prominently in the Democratic mayoral primary next year, and has even raised questions about the unspoken tradition of allowing a council member to torpedo proposals in their district. Last week, Mr. de Blasio said the tradition, known in the Council as “member deference,” was “not a hard and fast rule.”

“I do think we have to think about some of the overwhelming dynamics we’re dealing with right now,” the mayor told reporters. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and we’ve got to get people back to work.”

Indeed, despite Mr. Menchaca’s opposition, the developer has not withdrawn its rezoning application, and it is expected to be voted on next month by the city’s planning commission. If it passes, it would then advance to the Council.

Industry City is a century-old industrial complex on the waterfront covering more than five million square feet. It was built by the industrial tycoon Irving T. Bush in the 1890s and formerly known as Bush Terminal.

In 2013, Jamestown, the developer that owns Chelsea Market, and its partners bought a nearly 50 percent stake in the 16-building complex. Jamestown renovated the buildings, which were engulfed by more than 20 million gallons of water during Hurricane Sandy.

The complex grew to include more than 500 businesses, including a food hall, a film-production company and a training center for the Brooklyn Nets basketball team. Under the rezoning, the developers could expand the complex and add more buildings. They agreed not to build hotels as originally planned.

In a letter to the City Council, Andrew Kimball, chief executive of Industry City, said there were currently 8,000 jobs at the complex. The rezoning would allow for 15,000 total jobs at the site, he said, and another 8,000 in the neighboring community.

Elizabeth Yeampierre, the leader of Uprose, an environmental justice group, said residents of Sunset Park, where many small businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic and might not reopen, were worried that they would not be hired for the new jobs. She questioned the wisdom of building in a storm surge zone, and said the developers had made promises about community engagement, including proposing a public high school, without listening to feedback from residents.

“None of their recommendations came from the community, and they are inconsistent with our community needs,” she said.

In one demonstration of the community’s preference, a recent Democratic primary for State Assembly was won by Marcela Mitaynes, a candidate who ran against the rezoning plan and was endorsed by United States Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The tension over the rezoning proposal has led to unusually prickly exchanges on the City Council, a body that is often collegial. Mr. Torres and Donovan Richards, a councilman who won the Democratic primary for Queens borough president, wrote in an opinion piece supporting the rezoning that Mr. Menchaca should not act as a “feudal lord” overseeing a “personal fiefdom.”

Mr. Menchaca, who questioned whether the developer’s job claims were inflated, said it was unfair for council members from other boroughs to tell his community what was best for them.

“It’s beyond disrespectful; it’s anti-democratic,” he said.

Mr. Richards, who is part of the progressive caucus but supported the Amazon deal, responded to criticism that he was meddling. “Yes,” he wrote on Twitter, “I’m weighing in on a project the way Brooklyn members did on a project that cost Queens 25,000 jobs.”

Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change, a progressive organizing group, fired back that Mr. Richards was “unapologetically in the pocket of developers.”

Despite the economic repercussions of the pandemic, the developers are still committed to the rezoning. Mr. Kimball spearheaded the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s transformation from an abandoned industrial wasteland to a creative hub with tech start-ups.

“Just like I did at the Navy Yard, we’re taking a decrepit site and bringing it back to life,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Kimball said he had been down a “very windy road” with Mr. Menchaca in negotiating the rezoning and hoped to win him over. But he did not seem too disheartened by his opposition.

“We are very encouraged by the growing support,” he said, “and very encouraged to move forward.”