[NYguy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/nyregion/monitor-point-ship-real-estate.html

A Little Museum and a 56-Story Tower
The U.S.S. Monitor took part in an important Civil War battle. Near where it was built, a battle over a development project is heating up.


By James Barron
April 27, 2026

For 30 years, longer than they have been married, George Weinmann and Janice Lauletta-Weinmann have been enthusiastic backers of a Brooklyn nonprofit. Its mission is to commemorate the U.S.S. Monitor, famous for fighting a Confederate ship known as the Merrimack to a draw in the Civil War.

“We say that’s a victory,” George Weinmann said.

The nonprofit, the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, has never had a building to call its own. But it has one valuable asset: a vacant lot steps from where the Monitor was built.

The Weinmanns have tied that acre of land to a proposed apartment complex that would include a 56-story building. That would be far taller than allowed under the current zoning, thanks to development rights that the museum group is set to transfer. The building and two others would mostly occupy the lot next to the museum’s land, currently the site of a Metropolitan Transportation Authority garage.

Together, the three buildings would have almost 1,150 apartments, 40 percent of which would be affordable. The developers also promise a home for the museum.

But first the project, known as Monitor Point, must be approved by the city.

Last month it won an approval recommendation from Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, though he called for changes that would make at least 100 more units affordable, bringing the percentage of affordable apartments in Monitor Point to just under half. His decision came a month after the local community board voted 24 to 9 in favor of the project.

The City Planning Commission, which held a public hearing on Monitor Point last month, will weigh in next. If it approves the plan, Monitor Point will go to the City Council for another hearing and a vote.

On Saturday, opponents of Monitor Point gathered for a rally at the site. The group that organized the event, Save the Inlet, has collected 5,400 signatures on a petition that calls Monitor Point a “betrayal” of a 2005 rezoning that “promised this land would serve as a buffer and transition zone — not high-rise towers.”

The petition also says that Monitor Point would threaten “a rare ecological treasure,” the adjacent Bushwick Inlet, just as a long-planned city park there is being completed. The developers say that Monitor Point would provide the “missing tooth of connectivity” for a waterfront path from Greenpoint to Williamsburg. Monitor Point would also pay the city $300,000 a year for maintenance of the park.