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Mayor Unhappy That Uptown's 'Loudest Voices' Scuttled Sherman Plaza Plan

By  Carolina Pichardo and Jeff Mays | August 19, 2016 11:30am | Updated on August 22, 2016 8:54am

 Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday morning that he was
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday morning that he was "disappointed" with the final vote on Sherman Plaza.
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DNAinfo/Rosa Goldensohn

INWOOD — The mayor's unhappy that Uptown's "loudest voices" convinced the City Council to unanimously shoot down the Sherman Plaza project.

"This is a very local situation but I have to say I'm disappointed," Mayor Bill de Blasio said on his weekly #AskTheMayor segment on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show Thursday.

"I have great respect for Councilman [Ydanis] Rodriguez, we work very closely together, but here's the bottom line — now this community has lost a chance to have a building that would have been 50 percent of affordable housing which is an extraordinary win for the community.

"Of course people are fearful of displacement, it's very natural. But I don't think they were well informed by some of the loudest voices in the community. I think people were led down the wrong path because, actually, what could happen now is the worst of all worlds — just plain luxury housing, no affordable."

The Sherman Plaza project at 4650 Broadway, which was the first individual project proposed under the mayor’s controversial Mandatory Inclusionary Housing rezoning plan, was rejected by the council's rezoning subcommittee and its land use committee on Tuesday.

If approved, the rezoning would have given developers Washington Square Partners and Acadia the right to build up to 17 stories tall — higher than existing zoning restrictions — in exchange for 70 affordable housing units. Although Paul Travis, managing partner at Washington Square Partners, said they were willing to work with HPD and bring the total number of affordable apartments to 175 — out of the total 335 units — closer to what Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez was pushing to attain.

The additional apartments, however, wouldn't have been guaranteed to be permanently affordable, as would the 70 MIH units, according to Rodriguez's office.

The plan sparked concern from locals who felt that the precedent set by the rezoning wasn’t worth the number of affordable units it would make possible.

Residents organized several petitions and rallies, including one that led to a Twitter war between City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez and the development's opponents.

Rodriguez, who represents the area and had been in negotiations with the developers on the project, held a press conference the day before the council's vote to announce that the project wasn’t in the community’s best interest and that he couldn’t support it.

"At the end of the day, I did my job as a representative and listened to my constituents. This was not the right project at the right time and the agreement we sought to put in place could not be guaranteed to the extent necessary to move forward. I remain a strong supporter of the Mayor and Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, but my constituents interests come first," Rodriguez said in a statement.

"The Sherman Plaza proposal came right in the middle of a community-oriented discussion about a full neighborhood plan for Inwood. Conversations about affordable housing construction uptown should continue to have the community's voice involved, rather than through spot rezonings with minimal community input. This discussion will continue as we work to preserve our vital affordable housing stock as well as the human character of our beautiful uptown neighborhoods."

De Blasio said City Hall is "going to go back and see if we can fix it," but cautioned that he didn't interpret the City Council vote as a threat to future MIH-related projects.

"I don’t think it's a larger referendum on our affordable housing plan, I think it was just a mistake locally and a lost opportunity locally," said de Blasio, despite a war of words between him and City Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer, who represents Sunnyside, Queens, where another MIH development is coming up for a vote.

After de Blasio said he planned to have a "polite but firm" conversation with Van Bramer about his opposition to the Queens project, the councilman told told the Wall Street Journal, "I don't work for the mayor, and I do not appreciate the tone that I will be spoken to in a firm manner."

As for the state of his housing plan, which has been shadowed with the Sherman Plaza vote, de Blasio said on the radio that “overall the support has been outstanding.”

“Obviously we passed the most progressive affordable housing program in the entire country with mandatory inclusionary housing, literally requiring developers to build affordable housing in a way that they've never been required to do before,” he said.

And he had a warning for anyone who believes that they can prevent gentrification and displacement by opposing rezoning.

"The notion that there's not going to be a changing economy and there's not going to be gentrification, its just not real," he said on the show.

"I've tried to be blunt with my fellow New Yorkers, development is happening, gentrification is happening in a number of neighborhoods. I have my qualms about it too. But it's happening for much bigger economic and social reasons.

"Our job as government is to intervene to the maximum extent possible in a free market system and insure that the people's interests are protected.

"You can't make development go away because a lot of people would like it to. It's not going to go away."