Posted Oct 3, 2025, 7:47 PM
|
 |
New Yorker for life
|
|
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 56,612
|
|
https://www.brownstoner.com/development/395-flatbush-avenue-extension-rezoning-cb2-vote/
Community Board Backs 72-Story Fort Greene Tower, With Conditions
Concerns about the tower, slated to be the second tallest in Brooklyn, include affordability and impact on Fort Greene Park.
by Anna Bradley-Smith
10/02/2025
Quote:
A new tower planned for Fort Greene, set to become the second tallest in Brooklyn if built as proposed, has received conditional approval from Community Board 2.
At its September full board meeting, the board voted 26 in favor, five against, and two abstaining to support the development at 395 Flatbush Avenue Extension. The site, currently occupied by a seven-story black glass office building housing Verizon, is owned by the city.
The project, led by developers Rabina and Park Tower Group, would bring about 1,260 mixed-income apartments, with 25 percent set aside as permanently affordable as part of the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program required with rezonings.
Board members added a list of 10 conditions to their approval of the project, citing concerns about affordability and unit sizes, and the impact on Fort Greene Park and on the surrounding community.
|
Quote:
At the meeting, CB2 Land Use Committee chair Daughtry Carstarphen said the development team had said it would use MIH option one, meaning there would be 325 apartments targeted at households earning an average of 60 percent of area median income. She said of those, the developers have committed to 130 very low-income apartments.
Carstarphen said the board had communicated concerns with the developer about the sizes of the units, the affordability, and infrastructure issues, and the conditions of approval were designed to address those. While the conditions are not binding, they often inform Community Benefits Agreements that City Council reps forge with developers through rezoning processes.
“One is that continued conversations need to happen via a community advisory group, which needs to be formed and include both NYCHA residents and what was called legacy residents, or folks who’ve been in the neighborhood for a long time,” she told the board members. The developers have said they would fund outreach to NYCHA residents around using Housing Connect, she said.
She said the development team also needs to increase the number of permanently affordable two- and three-bedroom units, even if the result is fewer units overall, and deepen the affordability to provide units at 30 and 40 percent of AMI.
|
Quote:
Still, some board members felt the proposal fell short. Maisha Morales said the board should be asking the city to contribute funding (currently the project is using no city funding) to get more affordable units, given the project is being built on city-owned land.
“I’m very shocked with this board right now,” she said. “This is city land. This is our taxpayer land. This is an opportunity.”
Morales said the board had typically always asked for a greater count of affordable units when it came to rezonings, and she said given this was city-owned land where the developer was already having to build 25 percent affordable housing without any city subsidy, “This is an opportunity to get that increase, this is where we have power we usually don’t on private land.”
|
Quote:
Another sticking point was the building’s potential impact on Fort Greene Park. One member worried about new shadows falling across one of the neighborhood’s most heavily used green spaces.
The draft environmental impact statement prepared for the rezoning found no significant adverse impacts across four seasonal test days. Shadows would range from 36 minutes during the winter solstice to an hour and 44 minutes during the spring and fall equinoxes, according to the document.
A member of the Land Use Committee said the level of the shadows were not worth reducing the building’s height by several floors, “and our focus instead was financial commitment to the conservancy [Fort Greene Conservancy] for maintenance for all the new users.” The developers are in talks with the conservancy about providing funding, Carstarphen said.
|
__________________
NEW YORK is Back!
“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
|
Prev
Linear Mode
