Plans For Park Slope Grocery Store Project Near Finish Line

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A plan to turn the Key Food on Fifth Avenue and Baltic Street in Park Slope into an apartment complex, retail space and new grocery store is almost finished with the approval process needed before construction can begin.

Community Board 6's land use committee will consider the proposal Thursday night and discuss changing limits to the height of buildings in the area to allow the Key Food plan to move forward.

After the committee and the full board vote on whether to recommend the project, it will go before the City Planning Commission for final approval.

"I wholeheartedly support the project that’s being presented to the community board committee," City Councilman Brad Lander told Patch on Wednesday. "I'm optimistic that it will get community board support."

The agreement between Avery Hall Investments and 10 community groups, including Lander's office, calls for 41 units of housing that are designated "affordable," including 16 units of "deeply affordable," for families making up to 40 percent of the area median income.

The 41 affordable housing units are part of 165 total units planned across two apartment buildings, each less than seven stories tall.

However, a 1982 document called the Baltic Street Urban Renewal Plan forbids buildings in that area from being built more than 40 feet high. The groups are looking to modify that plan to remove the height limit on that lot and restore it to the 75-feet limit allowed if that plan wasn't in place.

The agreement also calls for a 22,000 square-foot supermarket (the current Key Food is 30,000, including storage) as part of 56,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. The new supermarket will have a 20-year lease and will be chosen following a request for proposals that excludes five "high-end grocers," according to the plan.

Original plans from the developer did not include a supermarket and only had 32 "affordable" units. Those plans changed, though, after significant community push-back.

"After 16 months of negotiation I very much stand by the deal that we struck. It was a challenging situation," Eric McClure, a co-founder of Park Slope neighbors, one of the community groups that worked on the project, told Patch. "I think we ended up in a really good place for the community. And credit to the developer for coming to the table."

Lander similarly credited AHI for its willingness to engage in the discussions.

"This was one of the best examples of community engagement with a development to achieve a real win-win that I have seen," Lander told Patch. "I give credit to the community for organizing and for AHI for being willing to listen and go back to the drawing board and engage in genuine negotiations and the city for helping make room for that."

Rendering via AHI