It came down to a held-open roll call. The Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises, chaired by Council Member Farrell Lewis, started with five members in the affirmative on three rezonings, then kept the vote open as more colleagues arrived. The final count: eight yes, zero no, zero abstentions. All three items were approved as described and referred to the full Land Use Committee.
The two with real housing on the line were both reshaped before the vote. At 9201 Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge, an applicant wants to build roughly 97 apartments, about 24 of them permanently affordable, by switching a C8-2 commercial strip to a C4-4D district that carries an R8A residential equivalent and mapping a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing area. The subcommittee recommended one change: strip out MIH Option 2, which staff said would make sure the affordable units stay actually affordable. Council Member Santos Sosos backed the project as modified.
At 46 Nelson Street in Red Hook, the ask is bigger, roughly 108 apartments on a former manufacturing block. The rezoning turns an M1-1 lot into a mixed-use district that pairs an M1-2A manufacturing zone with R7A and R6A residential, plus an MIH area. Here the panel went further on affordability, recommending the removal of MIH Option 2 and the addition of Option 3, framed as making the units genuinely affordable to Red Hook residents. Council Member Avila supports it as modified.
The lightest item was the smallest. Saint Francis Prep in Fresh Meadows, Queens, asked to legalize an illuminated sign at the school's entrance by mapping a C2-4 commercial overlay onto land at 6100 Francis Lewis Boulevard that is currently zoned only for residential and community-facility use. No opposition surfaced, and Council Member Lee, whose district it sits in, supports it. With the subcommittee's sign-off, all three proposals now move to full Land Use, where the affordability modifications on the Bay Ridge and Red Hook projects will be the numbers to watch.