They curbed their enthusiasm.
Honchos from luxury housing builder Alloy Development have given up trying to close a block of Schermerhorn Street outside a planned high-rise in Boerum Hill after their scheme enraged residents and pols, according to a local leader.
“I heard that after whole big brouhaha, Alloy has backed away from it,” said Community Board 2 district manager Rob Perris.
Alloy in August applied to turn the block between Third and Flatbush avenues — part of the triangular nexus known as Temple Square, and right where the developer is looking to erect a new structure — into a pedestrian plaza, but withdrew its application in October, a Department of Transportation spokeswoman confirmed.
Company bigwigs and transportation officials claimed the closure would help make treacherous Flatbush Avenue safer by reducing traffic, but residents believed the change would just back-up drivers turning right onto the street, and the whole thing was really a way for Alloy to get a fancy front yard for its new high rise.
Locals were especially unimpressed with the way the developer went about trying to win their support. Company reps visited a Community Board 2 meeting on Sept. 14 where they tried to downplay the strip’s significance — “You don’t know it because nobody uses it,” one said before being informed that both assertions were incorrect.
Another rep opined that “Temple Square” is a misnomer because “there’s no temple nearby at all.” The plaza is directly across the road from the historic 100-year-old Baptist Temple, locals pointed out.
State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D–Boerum Hill) then took up the cause, unleashing a tirade against the transportation department at the community board’s October meeting where she accused the agency of putting a developer’s desires over the local community’s.
The pol said she was glad to see the plan get eighty-sixed, and hopes transportation honchos will consult residents first next time.
“No one knows the needs of a neighborhood better than its residents and we need to set a trend where communities are involved in the decisions that affect them,” she said.
Alloy — best known for building several multimillion-dollar condos in Dumbo — has bought up most of the properties on the triangular block bounded by Flatbush and Third avenues and Schermerhorn and State streets, where it is planning to erect something big, according to Perris and other local leaders who spoke with the company about its intentions in August.
City records show at least four of the lots there have changed hands this year, bought by various shell corporations.
The city is also trying to unload the Khalil Gibran International Academy high school building at Schermerhorn Street and Third Avenue to a developer, and Alloy is trying to get its hands on that site too, according to Perris.
Alloy refused to comment, as did the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, which was a co-sponsor on the pedestrian plaza application.
