The New York City Council approved two major real estate projects yesterday, one on the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the other in Flushing, Queens.

The council approved new zoning for the $1.5 billion redevelopment, shown at the right, of a shuttered Domino Sugar factory to create 2,200 housing units, 60,000 square feet of retail space and hundreds of feet of waterfront park space north of the Williamsburg Bridge along the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Michael Lappin, chief executive of the Community Preservation Corp., the parent company of the project's developer, hasn't yet secured financing for the project, which may prove difficult in the tough real-estate climate, but he has said he is in talks with several large institutional investors and plans to seek public subsidies to build the affordable units. Construction is slated to begin at the end of 2011.

The project at first generated controversy over the number of affordable units proposed and because local politicians said the original plan, which called for two 40-story towers, was too tall. To win council support, the developer reduced the towers' heights by six stories, added public waterfront park space, and increased the number of affordable units to 660 from 600.

"Williamsburg and Greenpoint are neighborhoods, and they were built up over generations," said Stephen Levin, a Brooklyn council member who originally criticized the project but supported it in Thursday's vote.

Rafael Vi¿oly is the architect for the Domino project.

CPC, a nonprofit, had to bid on the project, which is on city-owned land, through a for-profit subsidiary, because about 70% of the housing units in the project will be sold at market prices. CPC's parent company is a nonprofit overseen by many of the city's major financial institutions such as the Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase and it develops significant amounts of affordable and market-rate housing in New York and elsewhere.

A two-to-one majority of Community Board 1 members voted against the plan, on the grounds that it was too massive for the area, though Borough President Markowitz supported it, but the City Planning Commission approved it unanimously with only minor modifications, it said.

The proposal, which is called New Domino, calls for the preservation of the main refinery building and its 40-foot-high Domino Sugar sign and the construction of four towers between Kent Avenue and the river, between South Third and South Fourth Streets.

The city designated the main refinery building a landmark last year and its "preservation" is anticipated to cost more than $40 million as only its shell will be preserved with a new building construction inside it.

In Flushing, the council approved by a vote of 44 to 2 with five abstentions rezoning for Flushing Commons, an $850 million project that will create 600 residential units, 185,000 square feet of offices, 235,000 square feet of retail space, 1,600 underground parking spots and a 1.5-acre public green space.

In 2005, co-developers Rockefeller Group Development Corp. and TDC Development Corp. won the bid to build on the city-owned site, and have worked since on rezoning and a plan to compensate businesses that will be affected by construction.

The 5-acre site for the project is, according to an article by Fernanda Santos in today's edition of The New York Times, "surrounded primarily by small businesses owned by Koreans, who along with Chinese immigrants, rescued the neighborhood's commercial center after the city's financial crisis in the 1970s.