Adams Pledges Support for Gowanus Redevelopment, Boosting Delayed Project

A long-delayed development project that would transform the banks of Brooklyn’s notoriously filthy Gowanus Canal into the home of thousands of new apartments and scores of shops appears poised to move forward under a new mayor — as long as nearby public housing developments also receive hundreds of millions of dollars for repairs.

At a news conference on Friday, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and heavy favorite to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio, conditionally gave the project his blessing. Mr. de Blasio has championed the project as an important step in helping to solve the city’s housing crisis.

All told, the redevelopment would add 8,000 units of housing and shops, and remediate blighted areas. But critics of the plan, including a vocal neighborhood coalition, have raised environmental and economic concerns, and said it would push out poorer residents from an already relentlessly gentrifying pocket of Brooklyn.

Mr. Adams’s show of support for the project added a sense of promise to an initiative to revamp the area that has stuttered for years. It has been stalled by concerns ranging from the industrial area’s toxicity — in 2010 the canal was designated a Superfund site, and some areas are polluted with coal tar — to an emboldened push by progressive activists against the impact a flood of new, expensive apartments could have on the area’s racial diversity.

By tying the Gowanus plan to support for New York City Housing Authority repairs in the area, Mr. Adams appeared to be acknowledging those complaints while seeking to preserve what was among Mr. de Blasio’s most ambitious development goals.

“NYCHA needs to be part of the prosperity of the city and borough,” Mr. Adams said at a news conference outside the Gowanus Houses on Friday. “So as we look to re-envision the future of public housing, residents cannot be left behind.”

Mr. Adams said he would support the rezoning that is required to go forward with redevelopment if the city can fund $274 million to repair Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens, another public housing development nearby.

Brad Lander, a Democratic city councilman who represents parts of Brooklyn and has long championed the development, said on Friday that Mr. Adams’s announced support of the project — including the public housing funds — was a significant boost for its future and for the neighborhood. Mr. Lander won the Democratic nomination to be the city’s next comptroller in the June primary.

“We both support the concept of rezoning whiter, wealthier neighborhoods with a significant commitment to making sure that housing is genuinely affordable, and real opportunities are created for Black and brown and working class families,” Mr. Lander said of Mr. Adams.

A review of the plan commissioned by the City Council and the Fifth Avenue Committee, a local housing nonprofit, found that the initiative could redistribute the racial balance of the Gowanus neighborhood — currently one of the city’s whitest — to one more in line demographically with the rest of the city.

Mr. Adams and Mr. Lander are both heavy favorites to win their respective elections in November, but their appearance together on Friday bridged an ideological gulf in the city’s Democratic Party. Mr. Lander, in his primary, ran significantly to the left of Mr. Adams, and was endorsed by progressive figures including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has criticized Mr. Adams.

The rezoning, which would span 82 blocks of the Gowanus neighborhood, a hodgepodge of vacant lots, artists’ studios and eclectic businesses, will include new parks and a waterfront esplanade; of the new housing units, about 3,000 of them will be classified as affordable housing.

It is part of the de Blasio administration’s ambitious affordable housing plan to create or preserve an estimated 300,000 affordable housing units by the year 2026. The Gowanus development, the city says, could end up bringing about 20,000 residents to the neighborhood.

But the proposed project has recently been hamstrung by some progressives, who are skeptical about initiatives that would significantly boost private interests: Sandwiched between the wealthy enclaves of Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, the area could be a cash cow for developers. They have been emboldened by the dissolution of other major development initiatives, like the commercial and office space expansion proposed for Industry City and Amazon’s failed headquarters in Long Island City.

That resistance culminated in a lawsuit filed by opponents of the plan, including the resident group Voice of Gowanus, which argued that the virtual public hearings on the proposal necessitated by the pandemic were inaccessible. But a judge allowed the process to move forward, and in April, the public Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, resumed. The City Planning Commission will vote on it in September. It is likely to come before the City Council for a vote in October.

Jack Riccobono, a filmmaker and member of Voice of Gowanus, said that Mr. Adams’s endorsement did not change his group’s position. Remediation on the Superfund site just began last year, and the neighborhood group believes a more thorough environmental impact study of the plans is required, Mr. Riccobono said.

“This rezoning is premature,” said Mr. Riccobono, 39. “The city has created a faulty and incomplete and legally insufficient environmental review.”

But tethering the rezoning to funding for public housing, which a Brooklyn community board voted to do in June and which Mr. Adams pledged to do on Friday, could win over some residents. Of the $274 million being sought for repairs, $132 million are considered urgent, according to NYCHA.

Linda Jewel, a retired city employee who has lived in Gowanus Houses since 1959, said the capital repairs to her home were imperative. Gas outages are frequent, according to tenants, and the water sometimes shuts off for hours.

“The elevators are a nightmare,” said Ms. Jewel, who uses a walker to get around. “They break down all the time.”

Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting.