More Housing on the Gowanus?

4th Avenue and Smith Street, with their access to walkable commerce and public transportation, are excellent areas for dense development. Gowanus? Ehh. it's better than Gerritsen Beach, but not by much. So why is everyone looking to house more people there? From the Brooklyn Paper:

"“An environmentally restored Gowanus area could support an additional 1,500 to 2,000 housing units above those already planned,” the report states.

Those units, of course, are captive to the clean-up of the waterway, one of America’s most-polluted sites. Even under the best-case scenario, that process will take 10 years and cost $400 million.

Some development companies have said the lingering “Superfund Stigma” will make it impossible to ever build in the canal zone.

“There won’t be new housing until the cleanup is done [and] that is 20 years away,” said David Von Spreckelsen, a vice president for Toll Brothers, which opposed Superfund designation and withdrew its plan for a 447-unit luxury complex on the canal after the federal decision was announced in March."

You mean, except for the larger project that includes affordable housing, being done just a little ways down the canal from your proposed development, Von Spreckelsen. Was he in Goldmember?