On September 27, 2012 the New York City Council Committee on Land Use met for nine and a half minutes and approved twelve land use items that together ended a 45-year standstill. Joel Rivera ran the meeting as acting chair, substituting for Leroy Comrie. The items were LU 0688 through 0699, all of them attached to the Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Area, six acres bounded by Essex, Delancey, Norfolk, Grand, Stanton and Broome on the Lower East Side. The site was demolished in 1967 and then sat empty for 45 years.
Margaret Chin had the floor for three and a half minutes. The site is in her district. She thanked the subcommittee for voting it forward, then walked through what changed in the application package before this committee saw it. Community Board 3 and the local leadership had worked with EDC and HPD for three years to revise the guidelines. The result on paper: 100 additional units of housing, half of them affordable, bringing the total to 500 permanently affordable units. The retail program added a diversity provision aimed at local small businesses.
The harder commitments came outside the unit count. Chin enumerated nine more: a community task force giving CB3, her D1 office and Rosie Mendez's D2 office continuing input into the RFP that will pick the developer; outreach to the thousands of families who were displaced from the site in 1967 so they can apply for the new housing; a guarantee for Essex Street Market vendors of comparable square footage, comparable rent and reasonable relocation costs; an RFP preference for proposals that pair with local social service organizations and local developers; an RFP preference for proposals that push the affordable income band toward lower tiers within the multi-tier structure; MWBE participation and local hiring through HireNYC; a 15,000 square foot reservation on Site 5 that the School Construction Authority will decide whether to build on; and a separate off-site affordable housing project on top of everything on the SPURA footprint itself.
The vote was unanimous. Rivera congratulated Chin, mispronouncing her name as "Chen" on the record. Jessica Lappin voted aye "with a hearty congratulations." Rosie Mendez asked permission to explain her vote and opened with "I'm not quite sure how I'm gonna vote on this" before finishing on "I proudly vote aye." Brad Lander observed that Margaret seems to have a very high proportion of the tough land use and development actions to navigate, then voted aye on all. Stephen Levin congratulated Chin and Mendez. Weprin, Halloran and Sanders all said aye. Rivera left the roll open for ten more minutes for anyone arriving late.
What happened next: the package goes to the full Council at 11932 on October 11, where the prediction is unanimous adoption. After that, the city issues the RFP, the developer team is selected in 2013 (L+M Development Partners, BFC Partners and Taconic Investment Partners), the project is rebranded Essex Crossing, and construction begins. The 45-year wait ends with one committee chair filling in for another.