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August 5, 2010
Is The Domino Sugar Factory M.O.U. Sweet With No Substance?
MultiFamily Investor
The Domino Sugar Factory site is the second biggest multifamily development project in Brooklyn behind Atlantic Yards.
In 2004, the Refinery LLC purchased the 11.2 acre Domino Sugar Factory complex on the waterfront of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at 314 Kent Avenue, for just over $55 million.
...The Domino Sugar Factory and Atlantic Yards thus share two qualities: magnitude and location.
They also share a third point:
For years, a development team proposing to build a $1.5 billion luxury apartment complex on the former Domino Sugar factory site in Williamsburg has vowed that 30 percent – or 660 – of the project’s 2,200 apartments would be affordable units.
The 30-percent affordable-housing promise, however, has been memorialized in a “Memorandum of Understanding” that both the city and the development team of CPC Resources and Isaac Katan recently signed off on. However, as even the document notes, this M.O.U. is a non-binding agreement.
City officials have not articulated why they have failed to implement language guaranteeing 30-percent affordability.
There is no guarantee the property will now be sold to another developer, who could then ignore the M.O.U.
Followers of the Atlantic Yards saga and this blog must have a sense of deja vu: Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project is one such example. Its M.O.U. has come under fire for not legally holding developer Bruce Ratner fiscally responsible if the project doesn’t get delivered as planned.
Posted by eric at August 5, 2010 10:10 AM