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Is The Domino Sugar Factory M.O.U. Sweet With No Substance?

The Domino Sugar Factory site is the second biggest multifamily development project in Brooklyn behind Atlantic Yards.

In 2004, the Refinery LLC purchased the 11.2 acre Domino Sugar Factory complex on the waterfront of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at 314 Kent Avenue, for just over $55 million.

The American Sugar Refining Company, who had owned the site since 2001, cited falling demand for cane sugar as the motivation for selling the factory. In the post-Civil War era when New York City dominated sugar production worldwide, the Domino plant employed 4,500 workers, processed 3 million pounds of sugar daily, and was the largest refinery in the world.

The Domino Sugar Factory and Atlantic Yards thus share two qualities: magnitude and location.

They also share a third point:

For years, a development team proposing to build a $1.5 billion luxury apartment complex on the former Domino Sugar factory site in Williamsburg has vowed that 30 percent – or 660 – of the project’s 2,200 apartments would be affordable units.

The 30-percent affordable-housing promise, however, has been memorialized in a “Memorandum of Understanding” that both the city and the development team of CPC Resources and Isaac Katan recently signed off on. However, as even the document notes, this M.O.U. is a non-binding agreement.

City officials have not articulated why they have failed to implement language guaranteeing 30-percent affordability.

There is no guarantee the property will now be sold to another developer, who could then ignore the M.O.U.

Followers of the Atlantic Yards saga and this blog must have a sense of deja vu: Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project is one such example. Its M.O.U. has come under fire for not legally holding developer Bruce Ratner fiscally responsible if the project doesn’t get delivered as planned.

Atlantic Yards project is supposed to provide 2,250 units of affordable public housing, a slam-dunk for meeting the requirements of “public use.” Under that particular non-binding M.O.U., Forest City Ratner is under no obligation to build the proposed number of units. There is no guarantee that the project will include any affordable housing.

The project came under fire last year over the possibility that the illuminated “Domino Sugar” sign would be lost. But the developer opted to keep it following massive opposition from residents.

The New Domino is expected to be built over ten years, beginning next year.

If all goes well, the New Domino will be completed in 2020 — 63 years before construction is slated to end on the 2nd Avenue subway line.

Get your T-shirt now.

Hat Tip: NY Post

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