This testimony was submitted to Brooklyn Community Board 6 last week regarding the Gowanus Rezoning Plan. CG CORD is firmly opposed to this plan for many reasons. See below. CG CORD
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Submitted by:
Rita Miller, CORD Co-Founder, Carroll Gardens Resident
June 3, 2021
We all frame and reference things in our personal lives as before, during or after important events.
Covid has made us collectively frame and reference the events in our lives. Before Covid, life was different for all of us.
We are now in the "during" phase of Covid . There's some light at the end of this tunnel but we are still in the tunnel.
That is why going through this rezoning process now seems surreal.
Before Covid, a community group I co- founded, CORD, questioned the wisdom of increasing our population by 20,000 with no details as to how we were to absorb this increase with the limited services and fragile infrastructure we have in place.
We asked CB6 publicly, at meeting and via a signed petition, for town hall style meetings so we could question our local, state and federal agencies about our concerns before the actual rezoning time clock began to tick.
Before Covid, our questions were apropos of a plan of this size and scope.
Before Covid, CB6 chose not to pursue our request.
During Covid, many of us are still grappling with grief, anxiety, lingering illness and great uncertainties. Everything around us feels like it is shifting beneath our feet.
And - We have no idea what the "After" will be like.
Yet somehow, during Covid, the rezoning clock has begun ticking and what we are seeing hasn’t changed one bit. It is exactly the same proposal as before.
Many different questions now come to mind...time limits allow me to mention only a few-
Many small businesses have been devastated. Will they return?
Many jobs, if you still have one, have become home based. This plus urban life phobia has more New Yorkers leaving the city every month. Will they return?
How many businesses with remote workers will still maintain all, some or none of their office space?
What will that former office space be transformed into? What would be its best next use in the "After"?
Given the exodus of so many, Will there still be a need for thousands of affordable housing units in the "After"?
Will there still be demand for any type of housing in the "after"?
Would we benefit more by expanding our ability to promote and encourage manufacturing in the area rather than increasing residential capacity in the "After"?
And the most obvious question: when so much is in flux, why is this rezoning being pursued at all?
Before Covid- our Mayor, both of our Councilmen, City Planning and I suspect the majority of both of our Community Board members and no doubt quite a few incentivized developers, had a dream of a rezoned Gowanus
During Covid, it seems more like garden variety denial - a refusal to see that our lives and this city have already changed and continue to do so as we speak.
So CB2 and CB6 members...I ask you to Choose not to pursue this rezoning now.
Like so many of our Before Covid plans and dreams that have been placed on hold in the "during"...
This plan must also be placed upon a shelf - to be taken down and closely looked at again when we are finally, in the "After".
Rita Miller
CG CORD Co-Founder
cgcord@gmail.com
