"We're all over the place here - this meeting should be suspended. We should get our ducks in a row and come back here and do this properly. I mean it's like a circus - you're saying one thing, and then you're going back. You're kind of changing your answers."
Director Dan Garodnick informed Mayor Zohran Mamdani that he would be stepping down from the role "in the coming weeks," according to an email shared with staff earlier this morning, City Limits first reported. Under Gardonick, the agency passed the first major citywide rezoning since 1961-"City of Yes"-an effort to create more housing in every neighborhood amid a citywide housing shortage that has pushed rents higher.
The proposal includes developing over 200 all-affordable units at 22 Suffolk St., a publicly owned, 15,000-square-foot vacant lot located nearby. Looking ahead to the new administration, incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani has stated he will advance the affordable housing project at the garden site once he takes office. amNewYork contacted the developer Pennrose for the company's thoughts on the deal, but is awaiting a response.
City Limits rounds up the latest housing and land use-related events, public hearings and affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon. Welcome to City Limits' NYC Housing Calendar, a weekly feature where we round up the latest housing and land use-related events and hearings, as well as affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon. Know of an event we should include in next week's calendar? Email us.
A 545-foot-high mixed-use building is slated to rise at Domino Site B, sandwiched between 1 South First and the Domino Sugar Refinery on the Williamsburg waterfront. It will complete Two Trees' redevelopment of the 11-acre site, which was rezoned in 2014. The development, which does not yet have an address or a name like its neighbors at 325 Kent and 1 Domino Square, will include more than 1,200 units - 315 of which will be income restricted and rent stabilized and earmarked as affordable.
In yet another Northwest Austin zoning case, the Zoning and Platting Commission recommended rezoning for an empty piece of land owned by the recently shuttered Austin White Lime company during their August 19 meeting. The two tracts at 6101 and 6105 Melrose Trail, which represent a combined area of about 5 acres, are located in the Milwood neighborhood of Northwest Austin. They are currently zoned interim small lot residential. The company is seeking an upzoning to multifamily residence high-density zoning, or MF-5, which is the most intense of the conventional residential base districts.
SCSJ filed a brief Monday with the North Carolina Court of Appeals requesting their lawsuit against the rezoning be heard. The lawsuit, filed in early 2024, challenges Person County's redesignation of land zoned rural residential and conservation to industrial, including heavy industrial, for Enbridge - formerly Dominion Energy - to build and operate MEC, a liquified methane storage facility. The rezoning was passed by the Person County Board of Commissioners in December 2023 despite overwhelming community opposition.
