Lot of homes: With One45 back on the table, Council should take the housing

One45 is dead, long live One45. The Harlem housing development on 145th St. that was killed by the inflexibility of local Councilwoman Kristin Richardson Jordan has been revived by developer Bruce Teitelbaum, who wants to move forward with the apartments and abandon the truck depot that had taken its place.

In this case, we don’t have to warn about the consequences of scuttling a reasonable plan in favor of an uncertain future because the future is quite certain, and it looks like noise, pollution, eyesore and certainly no housing. In fact, it’s just getting worse, as Teitelbaum has warned that truck operations at the lot are only going to ramp up.

Detractors can read this as a threat or a shove or whatever they want, but at the end of the day the lot is his to do with as he pleases as-of-right, and if he wants more trucks then there will be more trucks (provided he’s not blocked by the attorney general, but that’s unlikely to have any impact soon).

There’s little doubt that Teitelbaum has little affinity for Jordan, and vice versa, but governing means or should mean more than just dealing with people you like or getting absolutely everything you want. The developer has made the first move here in extending an olive branch to the councilmember in the form of a letter urging her to reach an agreement with him in order to “have a say” in whether the project comes to fruition.

Richardson should think about what she wants to show when facing voters in June: a pointless purity of intent paired with a smelly, dangerous lot with no housing, or compromise paired with 915 new units of housing, of which 174 will be set aside for those at the very low income band of 30% area median income? We guarantee that her constituents will take the housing, and if Richardson won’t step out of the way, then it must be Speaker Adrienne Adams that consigns the local member veto to the dumpster behind the lot.