Sunday is clearly no day of rest for the Rev. Mark Lane, pastor of St.
Boniface Church on the corner of Duffield and Willoughby streets.
These days, caring for his flock includes being an advocate for them,
as Downtown Brooklyn stands on the brink of changes that will directly
affect his neighborhood, his church and the lives of his parishioners.
The church and rectory sit, literally, in the shadow of Brooklyn’s
massive downtown redevelopment plans. Those plans call for the construction
of 4.5 million square feet of office space, 1 million square feet of retail,
1,000 units of housing and 2,500 parking spaces.
In the parlor of St. Boniface’s rectory, Lane pulls open the shutter
to one of two, 8-foot-tall windows. A patch of sunlight falls on the inlaid
wood floor.
Right across Willoughby Street, where a bagel store and a check-cashing
business now stand, the city has passed zoning changes that will allow
the replacement of the existing storefronts with a 20-story office tower.
A couple of blocks down, at the corner of Willoughby Street and Flatbush
Avenue, plans call for a 40-story tower.
“All this beautiful sunlight will be gone,” Lane says with a
sigh. He fears the 150-year-old Roman Catholic parish will be dwarfed
in a dark canyon of office towers.
The redevelopment plan also calls for taking by eminent domain seven acres
of private property, including 130 residential units and 100 businesses.
Several of the homes and businesses belong to St. Boniface parishioners.
The law says that owners must receive fair-market value for their property,
but Lane worries about what will happen to those who rent.
Parishioner Zaida Robinson, for example, rents an apartment at 406 Albee
Square. Her mother lives nearby. Both their homes are slated for demolition.
In addition to caring for her mother, Robinson baby-sits her grandson.
Her daughter, a single mother without a car, lives within walking distance.
Michael Burke, director of the Downtown Brooklyn Council, which helped
devise the Downtown Plan, says programs are in place to help relocate
residents. He says the Downtown Plan includes new subsidized housing units,
and people displaced by development who qualify will be given top priority
by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
“The plan will only enhance the quality of life for everyone downtown,”
Burke says. “They have been taken into account.”
Lane wants guarantees, however, that all four generations of Robinson’s
family will be adequately re-housed.
“The city has to make sure developers have some responsibility,”
he says. “Not just promises, they have to be written down.”
Lane has attended community board meetings and, in March, he hosted developers
and city officials at his church, but he’s yet to receive any promises
in writing.
The pastor believes it is his duty to stand up to what he sees as a Goliath
consisting of big-time developers and city officials intent on turning
Downtown Brooklyn into Midtown Manhattan.
“When you’re that big it’s hard to see the little people
underneath,” he says. “That’s the job of the community
board and people like me.”
Community Board 2 failed to act on the Downtown Plan as it passed through
the city’s land use review process; the borough president and City
Council voted to pass the plan, which the mayor is expected to sign.
Lane says he is not against development, per se. He praised the massive
Metrotech complex right around the corner.
When he and his Order of Oratorian Fathers took over the church building
14 years ago, he said, it was dark and crumbling, and attendance at mass
was almost non-existent.
Lane says it was unsafe to walk the streets at night. He had to be hospitalized
after one mugging. Another priest was held up twice, once at gunpoint.
Since then, the church and the neighborhood have undergone major renovations.
Metrotech brings an estimated 25,000 workers downtown every day. The parish
estimates more than 100 people attend daily noon mass, and more than 800
people attend services on the weekend.
But Lane worries Downtown Brooklyn will become what he calls a “corporate
ghetto,” lacking the diversity he feels is the neighborhood’s
greatest asset.
“You don’t want soulless, heartless redevelopment,” Lane
says. He points to the ground-level shops of the Metrotech office complex,
which are closed on Sundays, when the plaza is mostly empty except for
security guards and the occasional dog walker.
Outside, he points to four row houses that sit between the church and
Metrotech. Community groups, worried about losing the character of the
neighborhood, demanded the old structures be preserved when Metrotech
was built in the mid-1980s.
The developer of that project, Bruce Ratner, saved them, but they now
sit empty and largely unused. Beth Davidson, a spokeswoman for Ratner’s
Forest City Ratner Companies, declined to comment on the row houses.
Inside his church, the pews are filling up and the sunlight is shining
through the stained-glass windows, bathing the congregation in a warm
glow. The choir, which Lane calls “the best in Brooklyn,” is
assembling in red robes by the front door.
Before Lane takes his place on the altar, he refers to a luminous window
depicting Jesus surrounded by children and asks, “Isn’t that
worth preserving?”
