River Ring project begins City Planning review, gets conditional support of Borough President
Two Trees’ ambitious River Ring proposal for the Williamsburg waterfront cleared important hurdles Wednesday, as city planners began deliberations on the project and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams expressed his office’s conditional support for its approval.
In a 26-page recommendation to the City Planning Commission released on Wednesday, the BP’s Office wrote that Adams supported the project due to its commitment to building permanently affordable residential space and its “innovative coastal flooding measures” as part of the proposal’s designs for resiliency and sustainability around the space.
The recommendations follow last week’s public hearing held by the BP’s Office and come on the heels of Community Board 1’s vote in support of the project last month. At the BP’s hearing, Bonnie Campbell of Two Trees Management expressed a commitment to be responsive and inclusive of the community board’s recommendations, with the sole exception of reducing the project’s size by a third. To do so, she said, would limit their ability to follow through with their other commitments and make the project economically unfeasible.