CB1 Says Slow Down on Plans for Giant Residential Tower at 100 Gold Street

Rendering of the three-tower apartment complex at 100 Gold Street, center, as envisioned for the city by FXCollaborative. The 870-feet-high 8 Spruce Street is at right. 

Not so fast.

That’s Community Board 1’s message to city officials who are looking to build a towering, 2,000-unit apartment complex at 100 Gold Street, next to Southbridge Towers.

As part of Mayor Eric Adams’s initiative [1] to create 100,000 apartments in Manhattan over the next 10 years, a nine-story, block-long building that now houses city agencies would be demolished and replaced by what, according to a rendering, is a three-building apartment complex that rises as high as roughly 90 stories. Few details about the “mixed-income homes,” as Adams called them, are known, such as how many apartments would be deemed “affordable” and what community amenities would come with such a huge project.

But officials from the city Economic Development Corp., the lead agency on the project, last month released a planning timeline for the development that CB1 is calling “rushed.” That schedule calls for the city to issue a request for proposals (RFP) to developers this month, a target that leaves too little time for the community to have a say in the RFP through a promised needs survey and public meetings, CB1 said in a resolution passed late last month.

The project would be located on a full block along Frankfort and Gold streets, opposite the Brooklyn Bridge, and rise high above the 27-story Southbridge Towers complex, which borders the site on two sides.

EDC officials appeared before CB1’s Executive Committee last month in the first public meeting about the project. Issuing the RFP in February, CB1 chair Tammy Meltzer told them, “definitely makes us know that you’re not actually interested in what the public thinks. Because once the RFP is out—and we have had this experience with [other city agencies], that’s the contract. Your framework’s done.” (In earlier discussion, city officials promised that the RFP would be issued at the end of the first quarter of 2025, CB1 said.)

Mikelle Adgate, an EDC vice president in charge of government relations, agreed to another public meeting on the project before the RFP is issued, as well as a meeting with concerned Southbridge Towers residents. A survey would also be issued, but she declined to commit to a delay in the proposal request. That, she said, “is obviously something that EDC cannot decide just on its own because we’re working with [the Department of Housing Preservation and Development], the mayor's office and others.”

With the Democratic primary looming in June, some on the committee suggested that the city’s “rush” to sell the land is tied to the mayor’s run for re-election. “We don't make votes based on any one political party. That’s against the rules of the community board,” Meltzer said. “But we do need more time. It is not unreasonable to say six months from where we are today.”

Proceeds from the sale of the city-owned lot at 100 Gold Street, a building the city says needs $200 million in repairs, would be used to purchase space for the displaced city agencies as well as a senior center in the building. What’s left over, officials said, would go towards affordable housing and “community needs.” It’s a plan that Melzer criticized as “giving us crumbs for affordable housing.” (The EDC said 25% would be the minimum number of affordable units in the building.) 

Paul Goldstein, a board member and for many years the board’s district manager, recalled trade-offs for schools and other neighborhood amenities in deals made with developers of unpopular projects. He cautioned against viewing the project as largely an opportunity for affordable housing. With many needs on Lower Manhattan’s east side, he said, “we should not look at this simply as maximizing the number of affordable units, which is important, but not the only issue. We should have a larger discussion about what the community givebacks should be.”

“That’s why we had hoped that the survey [of community needs] would be done before the RFP was fully formed,” Meltzer said. 

Many Southbridge Towers residents fear the impact of the construction, and the building itself, once it goes up. 

“What’s going to happen with the dust and with the noise if this in fact takes place?” said Southbridge Tower resident John Ost, pointing out that construction that is already going on nearby. “I think some serious environmental considerations have to take place.”

The loss of light, said Southbridge resident Coco Dorneanu, would be “absolutely devastating for this community.”

“I’m happy for development,” she said. “But we need light.”

Adgate of the EDC emphasized that an environmental study would be part of a lengthy city-mandated land use review, with public hearings. “So there’s a lot of time for us to be working together,” she said,  “and I would really want to get us off on the right foot.”