INWOOD — A plan to tear down the Inwood Library and replace it with affordable housing and a new state-of-the-art library could also take over the parking lot that belongs to a public school next door, officials said.
Officials from the city's Housing Preservation and Development have been in talks with the city's Department of Education to expand the Inwood Library site at 4790 Broadway at Cumming to include I.S. 52's “underutilized” parking lot next door, they said at a workshop at the library on Wednesday night.
Officials said the expansion would allow them to increase the number of affordable units for the project, but added that the plan was “still fluid.”
"As far as this deal, all that I know is about this space, in addition to the parking lot next door that we’re negotiating with the DOE. It’s an underutilized parking lot. It would greatly expand the number of affordable units we put up on the site. It’s still fluid, what we’re potentially looking at," an HPD official who only gave her first name as Ann, said at the small-group workshop meeting Wednesday night.
A spokeswoman for the DOE confirmed their department is "having preliminary discussions about the use of a portion of the JHS 52 parking lot."
"Should plans move forward, we would work in close partnership with the school community to ensure instruction is not disrupted," the DOE spokeswoman added.
Juliet Pierre-Antoine, spokeswoman for HPD, said there is no final plan or building height for the project at this time.
“We truly are seeking input to issue a [request for proposals] to receive plans,” Pierre-Antoine said. “The workshops will be used to gather data on community wants, needs, and preferences. What they absolutely do not want to see and what they absolutely must have incorporated.”
Critics of the project — which was announced early this month as a partnership between the New York Public Library, Housing Preservation Development and the Robin Hood Foundation — say the city has not been transparent about who would own the land once the deal with an affordable housing developer goes through.
HPD officials say a decision on whether the city or the developer would own the deed to the land remains undetermined.
“If the ultimate outcome is that the public library stays in city ownership, which seems to be what people want, what is the concern about the land itself, if the asset — the public asset — stays public?” Beatriz De La Torre, Managing Director of Housing at Robin Hood Foundation, said at Wednesday's workshop.
De La Torre said the Robin Hood Foundation will not have control over the final developer selected for the project, adding that their only commitment to the project is contributing a $5 million donation from an anonymous New Yorker who “cares for Inwood” and would like to contribute to the community.
Inwood resident Kouross Esmaeli told De La Torre that she fears “once the control of the land leaves the public domain, it’s up for grabs. And we know the developers in the city really just play hot potato with ownership, so it’s really hard for us to trust, when it’s trying to privatize the land.”
The workshops are intended to gather input from the community to be included in a report that will be presented in March before Community Board 12. The report, city officials said, will then be modified to include more information from the community following the hearing, to create a request for proposal in search of an interested developer.
HPD has also put out a survey to the public asking for opinions of possible rezoning heights for the proposed new building — with a wide range of potential heights for the project, from 6 stories to 17 stories tall.
Some of those present at Wednesday night's workshop said they were concerned that the city didn't include smaller buildings in their illustration charts or list the correct income levels for the neighborhood during the workshop.
"People have concerns about height and affordability, and those concerns are very real,” said Hudson Heights resident and community board member, Liz Ritter.
"The more you make it clear from the outset, that you get people’s nervousness and people’s hesitation, and people’s — frankly appropriately placed mistrust — of AMI [area median income] calculations, the more you’re going to buy some real credibility that you get the problem and that you’re trying to resolve it in a way that works for this community," Ritter said to HPD staff members at the workshop.
HPD had several boards explaining how affordability is based on family size and income, and how that relates to residents of CB12.
"The boards at the Library Redevelopment Workshop included a cherry-picked list of tall buildings that gave the impression that 7- to 21-story buildings were common in Inwood, when in fact anything over 6 stories is exceptionally rare," said Inwood resident, David Thom.
Warren Stiles, of Inwood, said his concern about the city's planned changes in the community started with the city's Sherman Plaza project proposal last year.
The project, which would have rezoned the Sherman Plaza site at the 4650 Broadway as the first in the mayor's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing plan to allow developers to build higher in exchange for more affordable units, sparked widespread opposition before ultimately being rejected.
“If history is any guide, then private developers are going to own the land,” Stiles said. “The character of the neighborhood is what brought people up here, and it’s changing very rapidly. And I have concerns with not displacing the current residents. The gentrification going on is changing the overall temperament of the neighborhood.”
The remaining workshops for the project will take place in the Inwood Library, at 4790 Broadway, on Tuesday, Jan. 31 from 5 to 9 p.m. The survey will remain up, officials have said, and a kiosk will be added to the library site for further input from the community.
