The city has given an 18-story apartment building on stately Washington Avenue a tentative green light, despite activists’ calls for the city to swing a wrecking ball through the proposal.
The apartment building, which would be bounded by Myrtle Avenue and Hall Street, is “totally out of scale with the brownstone community,” said Councilwoman Letitia James (D–Fort Greene), who added she wants to delay the project until a proposed downzoning of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill is approved. The rezoning is still percolating through the public-review process, and will need at least seven months before it could go into effect.
It’s doubtful that James will be able to hold off the development for that long, especially since the city’s Buildings Department has already given the developer a “conditional” approval to the plan.
There are some “outstanding objections that are minor and can be addressed easily by submitting revised plans reflecting the required changes,” said Buildings Department spokeswoman Kate Lindquist. These “minor” revisions include a scale-down of the building’s size to conform with current zoning laws, and alterations to make the building more handicapped accessible.
The neighborhood’s opposition to the development isn’t just rooted in the building’s size, which contrasts markedly with its two- to four-story neighbors.
“This will creates a wall separating the Wallabout community from the rest of Clinton Hill,” said Sharon Barnes, head of the Society for Clinton Hill.
Other residents feel the developer blindsided them.
“Initially, it was supposed to be [a much shorter] building,” said Peter Cheng, a Clinton Hill resident and the manager of Kum Kau, the Myrtle Avenue Chinese restaurant that abuts the building site. “They kind of changed the plans without telling anybody. They were, for lack of a better word, sneaky about it.”
According to James, the site has had two developers. The first planned to build a six-story building, but then “flipped” the property to the new developer, who apparently added another 12 stories.
The developer did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but James insisted she would keep on fighting.
“We are organizing an action plan to force or convince the developer that a smaller building would be more in character with the surrounding community and would still net him a profit,” she said.
