(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
With the City Council’s final vote on the Domino development set for Tuesday, we’ve managed to glean some more details about the deal struck yesterday between Two Trees and the council’s Land Use committee.
According to parties involved in the negotiations, the developer has agreed to apply for – and the city has agreed to grant – tax-exempt bonds for some of the affordable units. That guarantee of help from the city will insure that a vast majority of the units within the complex’s 537,000 square feet of affordable housing will be available to families earning 30 or 40 percent of the Area Median Income, said David Lombino, director of special projects at Two Trees. On average, the affordable housing units will be available to those making less than 70 percent of AMI, or about $60,000. About 50,000 square feet will be available to those making up to 125 percent of AMI.
Yesterday, a spokesperson for Stephen Levin said the City Council member had also helped negotiate a change in unit sizes, but Lombino denied that assertion, saying merely that Two Trees would work toward including more family-sized affordable units – a concern of the De Blasio administration.
With a groundbreaking not expected till December, the number and size of the affordable units isn’t yet set in stone.
Brian Paul, writer of The Domino Effect and one of the plan’s most vocal critics, had expressed concern about this. Last month he also complained that too many of the members of a committee overseeing park programming were to be appointed by Two Trees.
As part of the deal struck with the Land Use committee, there were technical changes to the committee that will give it more power to shape programming there, Lombino said.