A concrete plan to downzone Brighton Beach will be unveiled next month.
If that statement sounds familiar, it’s because it is.
For the second month in a row, officials from the Department of City Planning failed to attend a Community Board 13 meeting to unveil the long-awaited rezoning plan for Brighton Beach.
Now, CB 13 Chair Marion Cleaver says City Planning will present the plan at the community board’s general meeting later this month.
“City Planning was supposed to be here last month,” she said at the board’s meeting last week. “They swore on whatever City Planning swears on that they would be here this month.”
But in the days before the April meeting, City Planning mailed a letter to the board canceling its scheduled appearance.
“They swear they’re going to be here next month,” Cleaver explained.
Brighton Beach residents, who groaned when Cleaver announced City Planning’s absence, are tired of waiting for the downzoning plan.
“How come the downzoning is taking so long?” said Anna Daratany, a resident of Brighton 5th Street. “How long do we have to wait?”
While residents have demanded downzoning for the last several years, developers built multi-story condominiums next to modest bungalows.
“You should see those condos. They’re disgusting,” Daratany asserted.
The condos tower over “tiny little bungalows that are barely one-story high,” she added.
“Rockaway is getting downzoned,” said community activist Ida Sanoff. “Brighton Beach
