144 More Apts. Planned For Westville

446A Blake LLC image

Thomas Breen file photo

Attorney Jim Segaloff: Westville has potential to become "a significantly vital and vibrant community."

Another 144 new apartments are planned for Westville Village, according to a rezoning application recently submitted to the Board of Alders by the owners of an existing three-story office building on Blake Street.

That application is included as a communication on the agenda for Monday night’s full Board of Alders meeting. 

It now advances to the City Plan Commission and an aldermanic committee for review, before returning to the full local legislature for a potential final vote later this year.

The so-called petition to amend Planned Development District (PDD) #103 asks the alders to increase the total number of residential dwelling units allowed on the property from 293 to 437.

That’s because the owners of the existing three-story brick office building at 446A Blake St. would like to convert that structure and add two new residential buildings to the 1.89-acre site, to add a total of 144 new apartments on Blake Street between the West River and Stone Street. (The PDD already includes 293 market-rate apartments at the adjacent Wintergreen at Westville complex, which has the separate street address of 400 Blake St.)

According to the PDD-amendment application, the owners of 446A Blake St. — a holding company controlled by Tom Gelman and Yair Barda of Brooklyn, as well as by a California-based company called Moonars LLC — plan to set aside 7.5 percent of the proposed new 144 units at deed-restricted rents affordable to tenants earning 80 percent of the area median income (AMI) for 40 years.

The comprehensive plan identifies a number of planning themes including: (i) housing suitable for all ages; (ii) tax-generating development; (iii) job creation; (iv) sustainable transportation; and (v) high density to ensure neighborhood growth and stability,” local attorney James Segaloff wrote in the zoning application on behalf of the Blake Street landlord. 

The Westville area and particularly the Westville Village, has the potential to become a significantly vital and vibrant community. Residential units located essentially around the corner from the Village and in a location with available transportation, will enhance physical and social connectivity among neighbors and among the neighborhood.”

The rezoning application comes as that very stretch of Blake Street is undergoing some tectonic shifts in its neighborhood-specific real estate market.

An affiliate of Ocean Management is in the process of building 129 new market-rate apartments just a block away at the site of the former 500 Blake Street Cafe. And the adjacent 293-unit Wintergreen at Westville/Westville Village apartment was recently bought by a New Jersey-based investor duo for $50 million.

Click here to read the 446A Blake St. PDD modification application in full.

Would "Inclusionary" Law Apply?

The application also raises questions about if and how the city’s new inclusionary zoning” (IZ) law would require a deeper level of affordability in the set-aside apartments than the Blake Street developer is currently proposing.

That IZ law, which the alders passed on Jan. 18, requires new or significantly rehabbed buildings with 75 or more apartments citywide to set aside 5 percent of units at 50 percent AMI for 99 years. That’s a deeper level of affordability for a longer period of time (though among fewer set-aside apartments) than the developer’s proposal to set aside 7.5 percent of units at 80 percent AMI for 40 years. 

The city’s IZ law is scheduled to go into effect Feb. 18.

So, at a glace, this project would fall under IZ.

Or maybe not.

For one, that start date for the local IZ law may get pushed back several weeks — or even months — if the City Plan Commission, the Board of Alders and the city decide that the text of the law needs to be amended to make clear the city’s intent of enforcing rent caps through the legislation.

Secondly, even if the alders keep the Feb. 18 start date, this 446A Blake St. may be exempt from IZ’s rules by qualified as a prior submitted” development application. 

The IZ law as currently written and approved exempts from the affordability mandates developments that already exist or that have already been submitted to the city for some level of approval. 

The question the city and the alders will have to face on this, and other zoning-related development applications, is: Does a rezoning application submitted before Feb. 18 count as a development application, and therefore exempt the proposal from IZ? Or is it merely an application to enable a future development, and the specific building proposal would fall under IZ?

Without commenting on this or any other specific rezoning applications, city Assistant Corporation Counsel Mike Pinto said that PDD modifications are significantly different from a typical rezoning application — and therefore would likely qualify as an IZ-exempt application, if submitted before Feb. 18.

That’s because PDD modifications by their very nature go beyond simply requesting zoning changes. They also detail specific plans for a specific building or buildings on that specific site.

Generally speaking, a PDD application that spelled out a specific set of proposals and modifications that would go into that PDD would qualify as a development for grandfathering” — that is, for being exempt from the IZ law as currently written.

That’s not necessary true for more run-of-the-mill rezoning applications, which are not tied to specific building plans.

When you evaluate a general zone change, a general mapping question, it has to stand on its own, regardless of what the developer or owner might want to do subsequently,” Pinto said. When zone changes are discussed, there’s no reference to any development. It’s what you’re permitted to do with those rezoned parcels.”

While Pinto declined to comment on how this interpretation of the new law would affect any specific proposals, his reading would mean that the IZ law could apply to a Philadelphia-based developer’s plans to construct 136 apartments on Olive Street. That developer, PMC Property Group, has submitted a rezoning application for 78 Olive St.

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