Brooklyn Community Board Votes to Stack Condos Atop Public Library

UPDATE, Dec. 10: The library-condo hybrid plan has been approved by the Land Use Committee of the New York City Council. There’s now only one City Council vote left to go before the developer is given the go-ahead.

Depending on who you talk to, last night’s Brooklyn Community Board 2 meeting was a big win or a catastrophic loss for Brooklyn’s public library system.

The board reportedly voted 25-14-4 to allow developer Hudson Companies to demolish the old public library in Brooklyn Heights (pictured above) and turn it into a tower of condos.

In return, though, Hudson Companies has agreed to integrate a replacement library into the bottom of the new building at 280 Cadman Plaza. And, as a bonus, they’ll throw in 114 new affordable-housing units in nearby Clinton Hill.

A rendering of the new property shows it as a sparkly apartment tower looming over Cadman Plaza Park.

Brooklyn Public Library President Linda Johnson has expressed her support of the plan. She tells the New York Times that the library system doesn’t have the $9 million it needs to repair the old Brooklyn Heights branch. Plus, she says, most of the money from flipping that branch — $40 million out of a total $52 million — would go toward revitalizing the rest of the system.

“The current building is inefficient on many fronts,” she says. “We want a neighborhood library that’s worthy of the neighborhood.”

Not everyone agrees. Citizens Defending Libraries, heading up the opposition, released this statement the day before the vote:

If the board votes “NO,” it will constitute a rejection of the “City For Sale” agenda launched and in full swing when the Bloomberg administration left office. If the board votes “YES” to approve the proposal it will set the table for future developers to feast on public assets, laying out an exact playbook developers and complicit public officials can use to target which assets they want.

We’ve reach out to the Citizens Defending Libraries for comment, now that we know it’s a “yes.” But if this video from the rowdy meeting is any indication, library preservation activists are none too pleased with the voting members of Brooklyn Community Board 2.

Because this plan involves selling public land, according to the Times, it still requires approval from Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and the City Planning Commission.

If Team Redevelopment triumphs, though, construction would begin next year and finish around the year 2020.

Note: A previous version of this article miscalculated the number of abstentions in the vote as two. There were in fact four abstentions. The article’s original title has been altered from “Brooklyn Community Board Votes to Replace Public Library With Condos,” as it was determined to be misleading.