The neighborhood New York forgot. (Hudson Square Connection)

Trinity Church has controlled vast swaths of Lower Manhattan real estate for more than three centuries, since the Queen of England deeded 215-acres to the church in 1705. Much of that property has been given away or sold off, but the church still controls one pocket of land at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, known affectionately these days thanks to developers and brokers, as Hudson Square.

Over the years, the neighborhood has been remade repeatedly, from farmland to factories to the heart of the city’s printing district. More recently, it has become a hub of media and tech firms—Saatchi and Saatchi, New York magazine, MTV, the New York Genome Center—but the church wants to take things a step further and create a 24/7 live-work neighborhood, like neighboring Soho and Tribeca.

For the past five years, Trinity has been working on a rezoning of 50 acres spread over some 20 off-the-grid blocks—the area often feels remote cut off from the rest of the city as it is by the Holland Tunnel. On Monday, it officially begins the public review process, as the City Planning Commission is expected to certify Trinity's in-hourse rezoning proposal.

The area is generally bounded by Sixth Avenue on the East, the Hudson River on the West, Houston Street to the north and Canal Street to the south. The rezoning will be slightly smaller than that, but at twice the size of the Hudson Yards development 40 blocks north, and three times as big as Columbia’s new Manhattanville campus further north from there, it is by far the largest private rezoning the Department of City Planning has ever underwritten.

It is also one of the most complex, with contextual zoning elements meant to preserve the neighborhood character; open space provisions meant to foster more plazas and parks in an area that has almost none; plus schools, affordable housing, even plans for dealing with night clubs, of which there are already a few in the area. The idea is to create opportunities for housing without stymieing the businesses that have already taken root.

A spokesman for Trinity declined to discuss the project until it is officially certified.

Some locals have already complained that height limits for new buildings are already too high while developers outside of Trinity express concerns about their ability to build. The area is home to celebrities, among them James Gandolfini, Jennifer Garner and Lou Reed, as well as ignominy in the form of a coming garbage truck garage all those stars hate. Meanwhile, one of the primest development sites, Duarte Square along Canal Street and Sixth Avenue, has already made headlines.

It is the empty lot, once a temporary art park, that was taken over by Occupy Wall Street following their eviction from Zucotti Park. Initially, Trinity was happy to have the guests until they showed hostility toward their hosts, at which point the NYPD forced them out, and the park has remained locked up ever since.

Hopefully the rezoning will prove to be less contentious.

Correction:A previous version of this post misstated the year the Queen deeded the land to the church. It was 1705, not 1773. The Observer regrets the error.

Pedestrians? My word!

The knives are already drawn for a proposal that might not even happen, a proposed closure of Vanderbilt Avenue to cars. The mayor supports it anyway, and when the City Planning Commission unveils the outlines for its Midtown East rezoning tonight, New Yorkers may have a better idea of what is in store. Or not. Time and again, it has been stated that this maybe-plan is far from certain.

So now is the time to attack it.

The Post has with relish, as should be expected, and so has The Times in its way, tapping its target demographic, the Yale Club, which faces onto Vanderbilt Avenue.

“This is like limo city!” exclaimed Bruce Williams, who works on the avenue, as he watched a fleet of black and navy Lincoln Town Cars idle outside the Yale Club, awaiting passengers who were finishing lunches. A valet could be seen steering a Mercedes S.U.V. toward the building’s Vanderbilt entrance.

A woman standing next to him, who would not give her full name, completed the thought. “This is the Yale Club,” she said. “It’s famous for being on Vanderbilt Avenue.” If cars could no longer drop off or pick up members, she said, “That would kill them.”

[...]

As for the Yale Club, a spokeswoman said a meeting was being arranged to discuss the proposal.

The club’s members “haven’t really had much time to think about it,” the spokeswoman, Jennifer Warpool, said. “Obviously there are a lot of logistics.”

But at a press conference yesterday, the mayor seemed to suggest, according to Capital New York, that without embracing the plaza, the city was threatening the economy.

He also said the proposed Vanderbilt Avenue plaza's proximity to a major transit hub made perfect sense, arguing that "people come out of that and they want to be able to find stores and not get hit by a car and be able to go and disperse."

"The number of people who have jobs in this city, because of Janette's department, is more than you can possibly imagine," he continued. "That is why ... we've replaced over 200 percent of the private sector jobs lost during the downturn, when the United States has only replaced 40 percent. Why? Because we've been growing tourism, one of our industries, and tourism is exactly what these pedestrian streets are all about."

Making the case that these plazas are not for New Yorkers, though, may not be the strongest play. Already they've taken over the sidewalks.

The old—and in the way—plan. (CPC Resources)

Exactly two years ago tomorrow, the City Council approved a sweeping $1.4 billion redevelopment plan for the Domino Sugar refinery on the Williamsburg waterfront. One of the biggest concerns at the time (of which there were many) was that the grand promise made by developer CPC Resources to make 30 percent of the project's 2,200 units would never be realized.

Nowhere in the zoning resolution was this mandated, even though it was the marquee feature of the 11-acre development, along with promises of waterfront access, top-notch open space and a school. The developer could build no affordable housing, though this would mean a smaller project, or use the city's inclusionary housing program to gain a bonus for bigger buildings in exchange for a promise to make 20 percent of any units affordable. Anything beyond that was a promise, one even CPC Resources did not have to keep. The firm had signed a memorandum of understanding saying it would follow through on this promise, but in no why was it legally binding.

That is why when it was announced last week that Jed Walentas and his Two Trees development company is in contract the Domino site for about $180 million (three-times what CPC had paid for it in 2004, but also less an arduous and contentious public approval process), there were widespread concerns that Mr. Walentas would not live up to the promises of his predecessors. In a recent interview, the developer admitted as much.

"Basically, that analysis is correct," Mr. Walentas told The Observer.

"That MOU was not signed by us and the zoning is what it is," he continued. "But at the same time, I'm not tone deaf. I know there is a lot of interest in affordable housing in the community. If we can reach a broad level of support for more, and it is buildable, that is something we would consider."

Mr. Walentas stressed that he still had no idea what his firm planned to do with the expansive site, which stretches for six blocks on the north side of the Williamsburg Bridge and is best known for its iconic Domino sign and smokestack-topped refinery building, both of which were landmarked in 2007. Mr. Walentas admitted it would be difficult to tamper too much with those two pieces, but the rest of the site remains up for discussion.

Yes, he is willing to take the whole damn thing back through the ULURP process, one of the reasons it is arguably much more valuable than it once was. When the rest of Williamsburg was first rezoned those eight years ago, turning it from a wasteland of warehouses into a wasteland of condos, Domino was to remain as the one major bastion to the area's historic industrial character, a bit of grit and blue collar jobs still on the waterfront. The other small holdout was an area on the northern side of the neighborhood, bordering Greenpoint, where it just so happens Mr. Walentas has just opened one of the city's finest hotels. So the city's dreams did not exactly play out.

Mr. Walentas is willing to keep at it, even if one North Brooklyn development watcher called it "crazy to go back to ULURP." Mr. Walentas sees things differently, and to his credit our source also noted that "if anyone can do it, he can." Mr. Walentas said Two Trees would undertake a study of the entire site into the fall to determine the best course of action.

"To be honest, people probably won't believe this, but we really haven't even begun to develop what we think is the best plan for the site," Mr. Walentas said. "We did our underwriting on the plan that is in place, but we're going to take 4, 6, 8 months to study this and come up with the best course of action. If we come up with something better and build a consensus around it, that's what we'll build. If we conclude the plan that's in place now is optimal, we'll build that plan."

He added that "you don't need the ULURP to make an economic go of this," so if his team were to go that route, it would be a sign of a superior plan.

Having a zoning in place does make negotiations easier, though. "We can try and rezone this, and if it doesn't work, we'll just go back to what we've got," Mr. Walentas said. "It's not like we've got the choice between something or nothing. We've got the choice between what has been proposed and what we might want to do."

He stressed that whatever happens, there will be an intensive community outreach. "We do not even know what they are looking for at this point," Mr. Walentas said. He also pointed out that the project had struggled in part because of the incredibly demanding parameters of the previous plan, which is why Two Trees will be exploring all possible options.

"Regardless of what the deal was with the previous people, it's been several years and nothing's gotten built," Mr. Walentas said. "One of the biggest challenges is to make something happen. I do think affordable housing will be at the top of the list, but there's a wide array of social benefits this project can offer, from schools to open space to community space."

As far as an architect goes, Mr. Walentas said he has not even begun to think about that part of the project and is instead focused on completing the planning. He said he was open to working with multiple designers on the site but also acknowledged that he had met with the project's original designer, Rafael Viñoly.

While the process is daunting, and any reduction in affordability, allowable as it is, will likely ignited a local firestorm, some local machers are looking forward to improving the project and, more importantly, finally having something built.

"The Domino rezoning was never a particularly good deal for the community, even with the promised affordable housing," Ward Dennis, co-chair of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth said in an email. It was substantially larger than prior waterfront zonings, and didn't address key infrastructure issues—transit, transportation and particularly open space."

Perhaps negotiations with Mr. Walentas might help address some of these issues, while others have existed all along, Mr. Dennis concluded. "It's encouraging that this developer is seriously looking at building some of that affordable housing," he said, "but it has been clear all along that nothing was guaranteed, and that anything over 20% (the inclusionary zoning baseline) would be tenuous at best."