BIGGEST ‘APPLE’ GROWERS
Nabes’ Council gains
New Yorkers residing in Downtown Brooklyn and the west side of Manhattan could gain clout when the 51 City Council districts are redrawn this year — thanks to huge population increases in their neighborhoods, new figures reveal.
The City Council is required to reapportion its districts every 10 years based on the changes in inhabitants, and the 15-member commission tasked with the endeavor could release its preliminary maps by Friday.
“The reality is the New York City from 12 years ago is totally different than the New York City of today,” said district commission chairman Dennis Walcott, a former city schools chancellor and deputy mayor who now heads the Queens Public Library.
The Big Apple saw its population overall grow by a significant 7.7%, or 630,000 residents for the census count from 2010 to 2020.
Districts are currently meant to average about 162,000 residents each. But to accommodate the population growth, the newly redrawn districts are supposed to each contain about 173,000 inhabitants, or within 5 percentage points of that number.
“It’s going to be challenging. We’re going to see real changes to the council districts citywide,” said Councilwoman Julie Menin, who represents Manhattan’s Upper East Side and headed the city’s census count under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Neighborhoods seeing some of the largest increases include Downtown
Brooklyn and along the borough’s waterfront, the site of new housing developments, according
to data crunched by the NYC Council Districting Commission.
In Councilman Lincoln Restler’s District 33 (Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Dumbo, Greenpoint, Vinegar Hill, Williamsburg), the population surged to 206,960 residents.
That means there would be an overflow of about 35,000 residents in the 33rd — or around 20% of the current population — who would have to be split into at least two council seats.
DUMBO jumbo
In the Downtown Brooklyn-Dumbo-Boerum Hill neighborhoods, the population surged by 67% and by 41% in Williamsburg, according to the Department of City Planning. So at least two council members would also have to be accountable to these neighborhoods thanks to the influx of newcomers.
The same holds true for the lower west side of Manhattan.
Chelsea-Hudson Yards and Hell’s Kitchen each gained more than 13,000 residents over the past decade, and Councilman Eric Botcher’s District 3 (Greenwich Village, Hudson Yards, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Times Square, Flatiron, Columbus Circle) now has 202,510 residents.
That’s an overflow of 29,870 residents from the average district population sought by the commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor and council.