Opponents Paint Doomsday Vision Of Mega-Development At Town Hall

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Activists painted a doomsday vision of a proposed mega-development at 960 Franklin Ave. — replete with feces corrupting New York waterways, dead birds falling out of sky, cars melting in the street and burning plant deaths — but said none of those issues are the central problem.

"This development has not committed to building one affordable apartment in this community," Todd Baker, one of several guest speakers at a Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network town hall meeting Monday night, told about 100 attendees.

"Every apartment would lead us rent burdened."

Anti-gentrification activists made their case against multiple high-rise developments proposed for Franklin Avenue between Sullivan Place and Montgomery Street, which developers would like to rezone to allow for two 39-story, approximately 420-foot tall towers 150 feet away from the garden, city records show.

While developers Lincoln Equities and Continuum Company said they would bring 700 much-needed affordable housing units into Brooklyn at a City Planning Commission hearing held in March, activists questioned for whom the proposed units would be affordable.

Baker argued that because developers set rent prices to the city's area median income— which can skew high because it includes affluent areas in Westchester and Rockland counties — Crown Heights residents would not meet income requirements for even the most affordable units, 316 apartments set at 50 percent AMI.

"You won’t be allowed to apply if this is a rent burden to you," said Baker, who's published a breakdown of his math on the website for Movement To Protect the People, which hosted the event.

The group also raised concerns that rezoning plans would endanger rent-stabilized homes nearby. Panelist Julia Bryant pointed to the developers' request to rezone 1015 and 1035 Washington Ave. and almost double the allowable building height on the land.

Bryant argued the increased allowance would make it irresistibly profitable for current owners to demolish 180 rent-stabilized units and rebuild high-cost luxury properties.

"That's an incentive," Bryant said.

And while several panelists focused on the developments' shadows and their potentially fatal affect on Brooklyn Botanic Garden plant life, MTOPP activist Alicia Boyd argued attention should be paid to the influx of thousands of new residents and how they would tax a vital city infrastructure system.

Several opponents have questioned the impact the new residents would have on the city's sewage and wastewater systems, arguing environmental studies not inadequately examined if New York waterways would be contaminated.

"What we poop into the toilet goes straight into the harbor when it rains," said Boyd. She pointed to developers' plans. "How many toilets is that?"