Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood stands as one of New York City's most ambitious redevelopment projects, but it's also proving to be one of the most controversial. The transformation of this formerly industrial area has sparked debates about environmental cleanup, housing development, and community displacement that have persisted for decades.
The story begins with Buddy Scotto, a longtime community activist who spent 30 years advocating for beneficial changes in Gowanus. His efforts were documented in Allison Prete's 1999 film "Lavender Lake," named after the canal's nickname due to its oil-slicked surface. At that time, the low-lying industrial area was still a sparsely populated artist enclave, long before politician Brad Lander would emerge as the driving force behind its dramatic transformation.
Lander, who recently ran for mayor, began his career with the Fifth Avenue Committee and later became a city councilmember. He spearheaded the successful but controversial rezoning effort that is now rapidly reshaping the neighborhood. However, the pace of new housing construction is far outstripping the long-overdue environmental cleanup of the Gowanus Canal, which the Environmental Protection Agency designated as a superfund site in 2010, calling it one of the nation's most extensively contaminated water bodies.
The environmental challenges are staggering. Where Prete's documentary showed how one of America's most important 19th-century waterways became one of the most compromised water bodies of the 20th century, filmmakers Jamie Courville and Chris Reynolds take a different approach in their 2024 documentary "Gowanus Current." Their film uses a series of long takes over a decade to capture both the melancholy beauty of urban decay and the community activism fighting against it. As Reynolds explained at an April screening, they weren't trying to make an advocacy film but rather create "a portrait of advocacy and its limits."
For Lander, the rezoning represents his proudest achievement as a councilmember. At a campaign stop this spring, he declared that "more housing is going up right now in Gowanus than anywhere else in the city." The construction boom has indeed been remarkable, with building cores and skeletal structures rising like a concrete and steel superbloom. Current counts show 141 residential projects in development across the 82-acre rezoning area, which is expected to deliver over 9,000 housing units and accommodate 20,000 new residents by 2035.
This housing development gives Lander a unique talking point among mayoral candidates, as he can point to new residents already enjoying public esplanades while construction continues across the neighborhood. With Zohran Mamdani's nomination, Lander has positioned himself for a key role in the next administration, though whether this development model can be replicated elsewhere remains uncertain.
The rezoning process was years in the making. The carcinogenic canal has inspired visions of post-industrial renaissance since its decline in the 1960s, from Scotto's Venetian-inspired dreams to the current remediation efforts and infrastructure upgrades. Courville and Reynolds began filming in 2013, the same year the EPA's Record of Decision finally initiated the cleanup process. That year also saw Lander launch the "Bridging Gowanus" community planning initiative, which preceded an official Department of City Planning study in 2016 and culminated in the passage of the Gowanus Neighborhood Plan during the final months of the de Blasio administration.
The environmental cleanup has proven far more challenging than anticipated. The canal's fetid odor, partly caused by combined sewer overflow events during heavy rains, represents just one aspect of the contamination problem. Cleanup costs have ballooned to triple the EPA's original high estimate of $500 million, with nearly every step taking longer than expected. The two new combined sewer overflow storage tanks, originally scheduled for completion in 2022, have been pushed back to 2028 and 2029. The Department of Environmental Protection, which often works at odds with federal agencies despite supposedly coordinating with them, completed excavation of the larger site near the canal's northern end in March 2025.
Perversely, these delays in tank construction may require re-dredging sections of the canal due to continued contamination from sewer overflows, adding to both costs and timeline extensions.
Despite environmental concerns and the area's troubled history, several new residential buildings have recently opened. The first completed project was the FXCollaborative-designed towers at 420 Carroll Street, where move-ins began in February with studio apartments starting at $3,430 per month and three-bedroom units priced around $9,000. This building sits across the canal from the neighborhood's first new developments at 363 and 365 Bond Street, which welcomed residents in 2017, before the official rezoning.
Those Hill West-designed, Lightstone-developed rental towers stood 12 stories each and seemed dramatically out of scale when they opened. However, they've since been dwarfed by the 21- and 16-story towers of 420 Carroll and other rapidly rising neighbors. A few blocks up Bond Street, Society Brooklyn began welcoming residents in May, featuring waterfront Privately Owned Public Spaces designed by SCAPE that are now open to the public.
Developed by Property Markets Group and designed by SLCE Architects, Society Brooklyn features two glazed 21-story high-rises and joins several new buildings offering outdoor pools among their amenities. The marketing for these new developments either glosses over or romanticizes the canal's polluted history. For example, 499 President Street, another recent completion with a pool, markets itself as evidence of Gowanus transforming into a "mini-Copenhagen," citing Danish bricks while ignoring the more relevant parallel of Copenhagen's comprehensive "Sponge City" approach to stormwater management.
The development boom extends across both sides of the canal. Charney Companies and Tavros Capital have assembled a series of parcels on the east side, creating a portfolio called "Gowanus Wharf" that totals over 2,000 units across four buildings. All but one were designed by Fogarty Finger, with Union Channel completing first and Nevins Landing following. On the west side, Tankhouse's 450 Warren, the fourth project designed by SO-IL, is currently under construction. This building scales between the existing density of rowhouses and the taller complexes of Gowanus Houses, operated by the New York City Housing Authority.
A few blocks downstream, past 420 Carroll and Powerhouse Arts—Herzog & de Meuron and PBDW Architects' exceptional adaptive reuse of a former power station known as the Batcave—sits 175 Third Street. This property was recently acquired by the Charney/Tavros joint venture and features a newly updated design by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). The design is more restrained than BIG's previous proposal for the former seller RFR. This massive development will occupy a full block between the art hub and the Whole Foods that opened in 2013, which many viewed as an early indicator of neighborhood changes.
Both Nevins Landing and 175 Third Street feature esplanade frontage with landscape design by Field Operations. At one million square feet and approximately 1,000 units, 175 Third will be the area's largest single development, matched only by the long-planned Gowanus Green development. This project will create 950 units, all affordable, at the former Citizens Manufactured Gas Plant site on Smith Street.
Gowanus Green has been in development for nearly two decades, with new renderings of the Marvel Architects-designed buildings revealed last April. However, no start or completion dates have been announced. Neither the Department of Housing Preservation and Development nor the developers—Hudson Companies, Jonathan Rose, and Fifth Avenue Committee—responded to inquiries about the project's timeline.
The need for affordable housing is urgent. At a March meeting of the Gowanus Oversight Task Force, Christian Schilhab from Domain, the developer of 420 Carroll, reported receiving 94,000 housing lottery applications for just 90 affordable units, highlighting the enormous demand.
On a more positive note, the neighborhood plan includes $200 million for modernization and renovation of Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens, two New York City Housing Authority campuses serving approximately 3,700 residents. These much-needed improvements are beginning to show tangible benefits and are projected to complete within 3.5 years, potentially coinciding with the completion of the sewer overflow storage tanks.
Meanwhile, sidewalk sheds and construction fences continue appearing and disappearing as quickly as development progresses. Given this rapid pace of change, "Gowanus Current" has already become as much a time capsule as "Lavender Lake" was before it.
Reflecting on the transformation after the film screening, Reynolds observed that "although the rezoning was pitched as growing the neighborhood, what actually happened was that the old Gowanus was taken away and a new neighborhood was put into its place. One with the same name but nothing else in common. That's not a value judgment; that's just the reality of what this process was all about. That might be what's best for New York City; it might be what's best for Brooklyn. But really, there's nothing left from before."
Indeed, the newcomers moving into these new homes probably don't know or care that the Gowanus Creek, before it was turned into a canal, was the site of the Battle of Brooklyn, a crucial moment in the Revolutionary War. They likely don't know about the Gowanus Dredgers, who regularly conduct surveys of Atlantic ribbed mussels in the canal as part of ongoing environmental monitoring efforts. They may not even know who Brad Lander is—they're simply looking for a nice place to live in an increasingly expensive city.
The Gowanus transformation represents both the promise and the perils of urban redevelopment in contemporary New York. While it addresses the critical need for housing and removes environmental hazards, it also raises fundamental questions about community preservation, environmental justice, and whether rapid development can truly serve both new residents and longtime community members. As construction continues at breakneck speed, these questions become more pressing, making Gowanus a crucial test case for how New York City manages growth, environmental responsibility, and social equity in the 21st century.
