The Ocean Avenue NewsIn the western part of Brooklyn lies one of the more diverse neighborhoods in the borough, Sunset Park, which hosted a festival.
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In a surprising twist, developer Continuum Company is throwing in the towel on its controversial rezoning application for the Spice Factory site in Crown Heights. The move comes just after City Planning Commission approved a tweaked version of the proposal Monday afternoon, designed to protect the nearby Brooklyn Botanic Garden from shadows that would damage its plants — a plan that appeared to have the full support of the developer.
The site will now likely be developed as market-rate condos under the existing zoning, according to a rep for developer Continuum Company.
To save the Botanic Garden and the nearby Jackie Robinson Playground while also allowing housing development, the City Planning Commission modified the developer’s application for a 14-story building at 962-972 Franklin Ave. from a proposed 145 feet and 475 units to 115 feet and 355 units. After nine of 12 commissioners approved the updated rezoning proposal in a vote Monday, Continuum Company said through its lawyer David Rosenberg that it intends to withdraw the application after years of trying to get a rezoning through.
Development of the Spice Factory, originally Consumers Park Brewing Company, has long been mired in controversy, with some locals hoping the historic brewery buildings could be preserved and intense opposition to any build that could threaten the Botanic Garden.
“A well-meaning project that cannot be financed will not be built,” Rosenberg told Brownstoner in an emailed statement. He said the changes would “significantly impact our ability to deliver on the promises we’ve made to the community – including the creation of much-needed affordable housing units and hundreds of good-paying union jobs. Today’s vote makes that financially unworkable.”
Continuum’s May 2024 rezoning application was to convert the property from an R6A zoning district to R8A and C2-4, allowing for a 14-story, 475-unit development rather than the seven-story development that would be allowed as of right.
Ahead of a recent public hearing on the proposal, the developer pitched a height limitation plane that would step the building down towards the rear of the lot, creating a slope that would limit shadows on the garden. Nonetheless, the structure would have reduced sunlight to some plants at Brooklyn Botanic Garden by one hour and 29 minutes a day in peak sunshine months, something BBG staff said would be “devastating” at the hearing.
DCP said it analyzed the height plane approach after the hearing, and on Monday presented its updated proposal to commissioners to change the zoning to R7D, which would allow for a 115-foot-tall 10- or 11-story building and would require a 15-degree slope on the western side of the building. The complex, DCP staff member Josh Vogel said, would have 355 units, of which 89 would be income restricted under the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program, required of any housing that takes advantage of a rezoning.
Vogel also pointed out in the presentation that if City of Yes zoning changes go through, the developer could increase the size of the building to up to 130 feet (including a bulkhead) and 230 units if they chose to use the proposed Universal Affordability Preference. The latter allows for 20 percent taller buildings if that 20 percent is affordable to families earning an average of 60 percent of Area Median Income.
With DCP’s proposed changes, the garden would lose around one hour and nine minutes of sunshine, an average of 30 minutes less than the original plan. Jackie Robinson Playground would also lose less light, Vogel told the commissioners.
“The main thing to highlight here is just that where the longest shadows do still exist, it’s on resources like the outdoor hardy plant nursery yard and the New York native collection propagation tunnel where, unlike the conservatories that are in glass pavilions, they have a little more flexibility to combine with partial mitigations, which wasn’t possible under the previous alternative,” Vogel said.
The proposal also required Continuum to enter a restrictive declaration to fund shadow mitigation efforts at BBG and invest in Jackie Robinson Playground, which the developer had entered into Monday, Vogel said. The apparent agreement makes the withdrawal of the proposal even more surprising.
CPC Director Dan Garodnick said at the meeting that the proposal had been one of the most debated in years, and for good reason. “It calls out the need to balance an opportunity for new housing in the midst of a generational housing shortage and the protection of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, one of the jewels of the borough,” he said at the meeting.
He said with the modifications proposed, “we can guarantee that the garden will thrive far into the future, while also creating the housing this community needs,” and added in an emailed statement following the vote “I thank our partners across the city, DCP staff, the Botanic Garden, and the applicant team for their collaboration and commitment to achieving our shared goals.”
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden also sent out an emailed statement following the vote saying it was “pleased the proposed development has been modified to better suit the needs of Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the community, particularly around Jackie Robinson playground, and we thank Mayor Adams, the leadership and staff of the Department of City Planning, and the Planning Commissioners for listening to the people of Brooklyn in looking for solutions to mitigate harm to the Garden.”
It did add that additional changes were needed to protect the garden, “specifically a decrease from 15-degrees to 10-degrees slope, to prevent serious shadow impacts to BBG’s most vulnerable collections.”
At the meeting, the commissioners, including the three who voted against the proposal, praised DCP, BBG, and the developers for working together to find a solution. Commissioners Leah Goodridge, Juan Camilo Osorio, and Raj Rampershad said they opposed the proposal due to the precedent the rezoning set on the city’s sunlight-sensitive resources, and what they said was a lack of affordability of the income-capped units.
“We all know that there’s a housing crunch, but we also see from a policy standpoint that it is forcing people to make this sort of decision that green spaces are not important,” Goodridge said. “We see that happening throughout the city, and I think that this is why this particular proposal really had a lot of people coming to testify, because that’s happening across the city.”
All the talk of finding a workable compromise between the parties during the vote also made Continuum’s about-face surprising. But Rosenberg said in an email to Brownstoner that BBG had refused to work with the developer during the process and said BBG’s request to reduce the slope size resulted in a proposal with 56 fewer apartments and something that “is not buildable.”
He said that without the rezoning the site would likely be developed as market rate condos rather than using the City of Yes Universal Affordability Preference, if it is passed by the city. (City Planning votes on it Wednesday.) Next door at 960 Franklin Ave., also on the former Spice Factory site, developer Yitzchok Schwartz is planning an as-of-right seven-story 300-unit condo development.
Yesterday’s approval of the rezoning follows CPC’s 2021 denial of a highly contentious rezoning application for the Spice Factory site. It proposed two 39-story buildings with 1,578 units, which would have increased shadows on BBG by two to four hours. City Planning, City Council, and the mayor rejected it.
Despite CPC’s approval of this current proposal, it’s unlikely it will make it to the City Council given Continuum’s intent to withdraw it. So far, no new-building applications have been filed for the property.
Continuum said in its original rezoning application that if the rezoning is denied it would build a seven-story, 168-unit condo building that will be totally market rate. R6A zoning rules, which the site is currently governed by, allow for a 75-foot-tall development with an additional 55-foot-tall bulkhead.
This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site Brownstoner.
What if your life came crashing down in the middle of the hottest day of the year? In ‘Notice to Quit,’ that’s exactly where the story evolves for its lead, Andy (played by Michael Zegen), who begins the film caught in the middle of his own eviction crisis when his semi-estranged daughter (Kasey Bella Suarez) comes to shadow him for the day.
Set over the course of 24 hours, the story follows Andy’s personal and professional life falling apart, but also, how he repairs it to possibly create something even better. And there are a few hilarious moments in between. To chat more about the experience and what audiences can expect from writer-director Simon Hacker’s new feature, Zegen sat down to dive deeper into ‘Notice to Quit.’
To be honest, I didn’t know what I expected. It was not easy, I’ll tell you that just based on the plot itself. It takes place on the hottest day of the year, and it’s this father-and-daughter relationship, so it’s mostly us.
You’re dealing with weather, and it rained a bunch, so we had to figure out how to get around that. We’re dealing with a child who has her hours, who has to have breaks and has to have tutoring at some point. Then we were battling the sun because like I said, it takes place on the hottest day of the year, so it must be really bright and sunny. And no matter how early we started, it always felt like the sun was on its way down.
Another thing was we shot on 35 mm, it would have been a lot easier if we shot on digital, but I think it was well worth it because it looks gorgeous. It really felt like we went through a war here and we’re on the other end of it, and I can’t believe it’s coming out in theaters.
Yes, and that’s not even counting Roosevelt Island, where we shot at this abandoned hospital. But yeah, we shot all over. And that was another tricky bit is that one day we’d be shooting in the Bronx and the next day we’d be shooting in Bed-Stuy or Brooklyn, and I’d be taking subways at six in the morning. We didn’t have a lot of money for transportation, so I was self-reporting to set, and that was fine by me actually. It gave me time to just reflect and go over my lines on the subway.
Yes, it was a huge challenge because it all had to line up correctly with the camera, which was on a tricycle sort of thing. I took a few takes, it was like five or six before we got the shot. And by that point, my legs were not well. I was feeling it, I really was.
I think when you first see him, he is a scumbag. I did try to lean into that a little bit, but you always have to show some sort of humanity, some sort of heart, because he is the focus of the movie and you want the audience to like him eventually. You want to see him evolve and you want to see him change. Luckily, it was all in the script, it wasn’t so much me. Simon [Hacker] is a really good writer, and it was all kind of there.
I get to work with Robert Klein, which was incredible. I’ve always been such a fan of his, and we were very lucky to have him and he couldn’t have been more professional if he tried. And working with Kasey Bella Suarez, who played Anna, my daughter. I mean, she was like 10 or 11 when we started doing it, and she was so wonderful and just so normal.
She doesn’t have stage parents or anything like that, and she’s not jaded by the business yet. But I loved working with her, we had a good rapport, I think it’s believable that we’re father and daughter. I wanted to be an actor since I was a little kid, and just thinking back to where I was at her age, I couldn’t do that. She’s just so talented that she’s going to be huge.
I want ’em to have a good time, and there are some underlying themes to this. There’s the father-daughter relationship, there’s resilience. He’s a hustler, and he doesn’t stop hustling and I definitely recognize that in myself, I’ve been a hustler for a long time. But at the end of the day, I just want people to come see this movie and laugh and have a great time.
‘Notice to Quit‘ releases in theaters Sept. 27.
New asphalt made with 50% recycled material will reduce fossil fuel use, save money and cut down on amount of old roadway pavement.
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The New York City Planning Commission voted Wednesday to approve Mayor Eric Adams’ “City of Yes” zoning overhaul aimed at boosting housing supply across the Big Apple — but the controversial plan must still pass the City Council, where it likely will face strong political opposition.
The scheme, known as the “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,” would rewrite zoning rules that have restricted where and how much housing developers can build in many corners of the city since the early 1960s. It aims to make it easier to construct “a little more housing in every neighborhood” as the city contends with an ever-worsening shortage of available and affordable homes.
The 13-member panel passed the plan — as expected — by a 10 to 3 vote, with the dissenting members giving lengthy explanations for their “no” votes.
Before casting his vote, Dan Garodnick, who chairs the commission and heads the Department of City Planning, said the plan would be a solution for the city’s acute housing crisis. He argued that it is designed to maintain the character of various neighborhoods around the city, despite concerns that it would do the opposite.
“We don’t have to live this way. We have the power to update our outdated rules and generate the homes New Yorkers need across the city,” Garodnick said. “That’s what City of Yes for Housing Opportunity will do, allow for a little more housing in every neighborhood to take a big bite out of our housing crisis citywide.”
But the plan must pass one final hurdle: Majority approval by the 51-member City Council.
Mayor Adams, in a Wednesday afternoon statement, urged the City Council to greenlight the suite of zoning changes in a vote before the end of the year.
“Now, it is time for the City Council to meet the moment,” Adams said. “I urge councilmembers to join New Yorkers in supporting this proposal and building a future that’s more affordable for working-class families, that provides peace of mind for older adults who want to age in place, and that allows our young people to live comfortably in the greatest city on the globe. That starts with them saying ‘yes’ to this once-in-a-generation housing proposal.”
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, in a statement, said her office will “thoroughly review” the plan before the council votes on it.
The zoning text amendment contains eight core proposals including eliminating a requirement that new residential buildings include off-street parking, allowing builders who include affordable units in their developments to increase the number of dwelling units by 20% and over depending on the zoning district and authorizing small apartment buildings near all train stations. Other proposals in the plan would make it easier to convert office buildings into housing and allowing homeowners to add accessory dwelling units on their properties by converting garages, basements or backyard spaces.
One commissioner who voted against the plan, Fred Cerullo, blasted the plan as “one-size fits all.” Cerullo, who hails from the mostly low-density borough of Staten Island, argued the borough is already doing its part under the current rules.
“While I completely agree with the principle and the goal of City of Yes for Housing, I have to say that the current zoning structure already provides many opportunities for new housing units, and does it in a way that enables the communities where new housing occurs not to have undermined all the reasons why they chose to call their neighborhood home,” Cerullo said.
Progressive housing attorney Leah Goodridge, another commissioner who voted against the plan, said she thinks it will hurt the populations it is intended to help — namely Black and brown communities struggling to find afforable apartments. She framed it as a giveaway to big developers that does not secure enough affrodable housing for Black and brown New Yorkers.
“This framing of housing, to address the housing shortage and to address the housing crisis as making it a supply and demand issue, to help Black and brown New Yorkers, is wrong,” she said. “It’s inaccurate framing.”
Several other commissioners enumerated the parts of the plan they disagree with, but ultimately concluded that it was still worth voting for.
The panel also made a couple of tweaks to the plan before passing it, in response to feedback during a 15-hour public hearing in July. One of them would exempt public housing campuses from a proposal under the plan to make it easier to build new housing on different kinds of campuses.
The City of Yes will have the most trouble winning support among council members representing outer-borough neighborhoods comprised of homes for one or two families and low-rise apartment buildings.
Some of the plan’s most vocal opponents are council members representing swaths of Queens and Staten Island — such as Council Members Joann Ariola (R-Queens) and Robert Holden (D-Queens). They have cited concerns that the proposals would destroy the character of lower-density areas of the city, which are more akin to the suburbs, while also arguing those areas do not have the infrastructure to support more homes.
They also argue the plan is unpopular with most communities around the five boroughs, pointing out that a majority of the city’s community boards have rejected it.
Yet a survey of 1,733 registered city voters released Wednesday told a different story — with 72% of those polled approving of the plan and only 22% opposing it. The plan has also received support from four of the city’s five borough presidents.
Shortly before the vote, Holden released a statement urging the panel to delay the proceedings and instead be put before the city’s voters in some form.
“The last thing we should be doing is pushing forward a rushed plan that most community boards and countless civic associations oppose,” Holden said. “We need to step back, delay this proposal, and put it up for a vote as either a ballot proposal or an election topic for next year’s municipal elections.”
While those lawmakers, who are among the mayor’s most reliable allies on the council, are against the zoning changes, Mayor Adams’ political foes on the body’s progressive wing are broadly in favor of it — setting up an awkward political dynamic.
Further complicating matters is the storm of federal inquiries surrounding the Adams administration, which has led several of his top officials to resign over the past couple of weeks. The turmoil could make it harder for Adams to maintain support among the left-leaning lawmakers who are critical of his mayoralty overall.