Mary Kay Harris, the city councilwoman from Ward 11, had been under immense pressure in recent weeks after she emerged as a possible swing vote and the person necessary to reach a supermajority of 10 council members to pass the override.

PROVIDENCE — After Thursday night’s City Council vote to override Mayor Jorge Elorza’s veto of a zoning change that allows a 46-story luxury apartment tower to be built downtown, Mary Kay Harris was able to relax a little.

“I’m finally breathing,” she said on Friday.

The city councilwoman from Ward 11 had been under immense pressure in recent weeks after she emerged as a possible swing vote and the person necessary to reach a supermajority of 10 council members to pass the override.

Harris initially opposed the change to the zoning ordinance, which exempts developers from a 100-foot height limit and allows them to build up to 600 feet on a parcel on former Route 195 land. The City Council passed the ordinance 9 to 5 with one abstention in November, and Elorza vetoed it a week later because developers wouldn’t guarantee the city final approval over the tower’s design.

With the spotlight on her in recent days, Harris said she used the debate over the Hope Point Tower to bring the issue nearest to her heart — that of access to affordable and low-income housing — to the forefront of the conversation.

“There’s an overarching problem that we need to deal with, and the city needs to take up this housing crisis,” she said. “Stop displacing people. Stop locking people up because they’re poor.

“Let my record in four years prove who I am for my community and what I can do,” she said.

After the council's vote to override, which passed 10 to 3 with one abstention and one member absent, Elorza released a strongly worded statement.

"As a city, we will not bend to the wishes of multi-millionaires who seek to change the rules for their own benefit, who seek to take advantage of every subsidy and benefit they can grab and yet who fail to consider the interests of the local community,” the statement says. “I am saddened that Councilwoman Harris flipped her vote to side with the developer. Every responsible expert has indicated that this project is not financially viable and will fail under its own weight. It's disappointing that our City Council ignored these warning signs and caved to continued political pressure, instead of siding with our residents."

Harris said she did not want to comment on the mayor’s statement.

“I will not go back and forth in public with my mayor because he’s a body that I respect,” she said. “I’m hoping to work with him as we go into the new year.”

Elorza was not available on Friday to discuss his remarks.

Ward 2 City Councilman Samuel Zurier said that, while he was opposed to granting the zoning change to the developers on the grounds that it would violate the city’s comprehensive zoning plan, he feels that the city should have at least gotten concessions out of the developers to contribute to affordable housing in some way.

“It was a big missed opportunity,” he said.

But Michael Sabitoni, business manager for Union Local 271, which represents the building trades, said the City Council did the right thing by overriding the mayor’s veto. The union has a letter of intent from the developers stating that union labor will be used for the project, he said.

“We’re ecstatic that we’re going to keep building Providence,” he said.

— mlist@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @madeleine_list