Tipping Over Domino
Preservationists and community duke it out at Landmarks
The new designs by Rafael Viñoly Architects and Beyer Blinder Belle incorporate the traditional redbrick of the Domino refinery with more modern glass. All images courtesy Rafael Viñoly Architects
Find earlier coverage of the project, along with additional images, here.
Whether by coincidence or design, today’s Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing on a redesigned Domino Sugar refinery—part of a new 11-acre development in south Williamsburg—morphed into a rhetorical fight between preservationists and the developer, who enjoyed the support of the surrounding Latino community that lives near the old sugar refinery.
In the one corner, preservationists argued that many of the changes were too invasive, especially the five-story glass addition to the top of the refinery, while in the other corner, the developer insisted the necessary amount of affordable housing could not be achieved without the “cross-subsidization” provided by the 65 to 75 market-rate units planned for the addition. Of the projects planned 2,200 units, 30 percent—50 percent more than required by the city’s inclusionary housing program—have been pledged as affordable, with an emphasis on local lower-income families, such as those that spoke in favor of the project.
One commissioner, Roberta Brandeis-Gratz, was particularly bothered by what she saw as the divisiveness of the developer’s tactics. “I think it is unfortunate when these two admirable goals of our city have been pitted against one another,” she said. After the hearing, Michael Lappin, president of the project’s developer, CPC Resources, insisted that was never his intention. “One of the things we are not doing is pitting preservation against affordable housing,” he told AN. “In fact, it’s the opposite. We’re trying to marry three important goals: affordable housing, preservation, and open space, and you will find that all throughout the project.”
Still, the positions of each side were clear and unmistakable. Ishmael Diaz, a “father of three born and raised in the Southside,” the colloquial name for South Williamsburg, said that despite all his hard work, he and his neighbors were being driven from their homes. “The building’s not being knocked down,” he said of the refinery. “They’re just adding a little, adding a little beauty to make some more affordable housing for a few families.”
Father Jim O’Shea, founder of Churches United, a local organization that supported designation of the refinery last summer (“A Spoonful of Sugar,” AN 17_10.17.2007), echoed his previous comments that preservation is important, but not at the cost of additional affordable units. “When our children look up at the building and ask, ‘Why is there a five story addition up there?’” O’Shea said, “we can respond, ‘Because in our moment in history, we produced something that ensured the fund to create homes for 666 families.”
The preservationists who addressed the implicit charges by the project’s supporters—that they would sooner keep an old factory as it was than build new affordable housing—seemed to take considerable umbrage with their opponent’s characterization. “There are plenty of reused building that include affordable housing,” Lisa Kersavage, director of public advocacy at the Municipal Arts Society, said. “If the architects had worked for it, they certainly could have achieved both on this project, as well.”
Beyond the fight between preservation and housing, the preservationists took issue with many aspects of the design, including the size and placement of certain windows and the design of the storefront, as well as timing. “One would expect that a newly designatedlandmark would be maintained in a way that was as close to the original design intention as possible,” Cristabel Gough, secretary for Society for the Architecture of the City, told the commission. “Instead, we see the Domino Sugar Refinery used as a foundation for new construction, construction which relates to a new world of luxury built on and around it, causing the landmark to lose its prominence.”
Part of the problem, both for preservationists and commissioners, was that certain parts of the larger New Domino project remain to be determined as the developer negotiates the rezoning of the old sugar factory site from industrial to residential use. Commission chair Robert Tierney said as much, when he cautioned his colleagues from being too vocal in their criticism. “I think we need to give this more time,” he said, “but I am confident this body will find a way to make this compatible. It isn’t all riding on the top of the factory.”
MATT CHABAN