Pols sue in towers project

The city’s moving too quickly to approve a massive Lower East Side housing project, a group of elected officials complain.

The City Council and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer on Friday sued the city, saying the law requires them to have a say in plans to build three massive residential towers in the Two Bridges neighborhood — arguing the de Blasio administration has “usurped” their oversight authority.

The three towers would bring 3,000 units of housing — 700 of them affordable — to the Lower East Side waterfront.

But critics — including Brewer, Council Speaker Corey Johnson and local Councilwoman Margaret Chin — have knocked the towers as out of scale with the Two Bridges area, which they argue will be burdened by the new development.

They’ve also ripped City Planning and the Planning Commission for not subjecting the project to a full review — including public City Council hearings and ultimately a vote over which Chin would have the final say — through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

But the Planning Commission approved the project this week without requiring a review. It said the proposed development constitutes only a “minor modification” to the area’s large scale redevelopment plan.

“As the City Council is deprived of its right to take up the application for a vote, its role in this entire process has been usurped,” the lawsuit says.

“Further, as the Borough President is deprived of her right to review the applications . . . her role has been usurped as well,” the suit reads. “The City Planning Respondents’ therefore have no justification for their actions, and have improperly exceeded their authority under the City Charter by intruding on the domain of the Council and the Borough President.”

City planners argue that a full review of the project is not required by law — a position backed by the city Law Department.