Quinn's Brooklyn
The green outline shows Speaker Christine Quinn's proposed 421-a exclusion zone in northern Brooklyn--the area within which developers would need to include on-site affordable housing in order to qualify for tax breaks.
Currently, the exclusion zone covers only well-established neighborhoods (West Village, the Upper East and West Sides), where an automatic 421-a tax abatement for new multifamily housing (which is what the rest of the city currently enjoys) would seem too much of a giveaway. Adding in Billyburg makes sense (as well as Park Slope-Fort Greene-Downtown Brooklyn, of which you can see a greenish corner at the bottom).
But that two-block strip along Broadway, which goes through the southern part of Bushwick all the way to Eastern Parkway? Has that become a condo corrider? Or is anti-developer sentiment so strong in those parts that City Council members Diana Reyna and Eric Martin Dilan wanted a little piece of that green to cut into their districts?
- Matthew Schuerman
Let's just call that Vito's Way. You see, things are being done Vito's way because he holds all the cards in the 421-a debate. Anything the council does must be replicated or narrowed by Albany in order to be put in force come J. 1 2008. And Vito has already been put in charge of the Committee that will take up the issue sometime next year, probably next November. And indeed if Vito had his way, he wouldn't allow a single new market rate unit to be built in all of his district. Why? Because, through marketing, those market rates are pulling people from Manhattan and interior Brooklyn, not from Bushwick and East NY. The last thing he needs is yuppies invading his turf and upsetting his electoral balance. He plans on being around a lot longer than that. So the answer to the question is that it has nothing to do with the mentioned council members, and everything to do with VL.
By correlation, Prospect Heights / Clinton Hill, which is included in the new proposed exclusionary zone, can be thought of as "Tish Town," though her motivation is less apparent as she seems to be quite popular with newer residents of the 'hood.
It follows the "L" subway line - which makes sense.