The Community Preservation Corporation has agreed to reduce the height of two of its 40-story towers to 34 stories at its proposed $1.2-billion redevelopment of the waterfront Domino Sugar facilities north of the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, according to an article today by Aaron Short of The Brooklyn Paper.

The article also said that the company has agreed to still provide 660 units of affordable housing, according to sourcesclose to the negotiations.

A last-minute plea from Mayor Bloomberg has apparently convinced City Council Steve Levin (D-Williamsburg) to drop his opposition to the project. Mr. Levin until recently had been insisting that the development cut its total number of residential units of 2,200 by 600, the article said.

The plan to transform the Domino sugar refinery complex into 2,200 units of housing and four acres of park space on an 11.2-acre stretch of industrial property has split Williamsburg since it was first proposed six years ago and introduced earlier this year, the article continued.

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.

The revised plan was unanimously approved today by the City Council's Committee on Land Use and the Committee on Zoning and Franchises, according to an article by Sam Levin at observer.com.

In the revised plan, the artile continued, "the developer will provide a shuttle bus to nearby subway lines; a Community Advisory Board will be implemented; and the Council agreed that any change to the space currently allotted for community facilities would be required to go through the city's lengthy Uniform Land Use Review Process."

Councilman Steve Levin told the Observer that "when you negotiate, nobody comes away with everything they want," adding that "we don't want to see a gold coast."

Mr. Levin still praised the final outcome.

The company acquired the site in 2004 for about $55 million and soon afterwards the city rezoned much of the waterfront in the area excluding the Domino site.

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.

Raphael Vinoly is the architect for the development.