Bedford-Union Armory Developer, Activists Disagree On How White Its Condos Will Be

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — A plan to redevelop the historic, city-owned Bedford-Union Armory into a rec center, office building and apartment complex would only accelerate "the whitening of Crown Heights," a local activist group said in a scathing new report on the plan.

The report, drawn up by researchers with New York Communities for Change, compares rent and sale prices at the Armory's planned apartments and condos — more than half of which would be market-rate — with income statistics in the area.

Their conclusion? The Armory, as envisioned, would end up bringing more wealthy white people to the neighborhood — while driving more low-income minorities out.

"It's clear that this project is not after delivering any meaningful benefit to the community," NYCC Research Director Cea Weaver, who wrote the report, told Patch. "The housing that is being built, whether they call it affordable or not, is not actually affordable."

"The people who face a housing crisis are overwhelmingly low-income people of color," Weaver said. "This project won’t serve them."

Reached by phone, a spokesman for BFC Partners — the private developer chosen by the city to reinvent the Armory — argued that tens of thousands of people of color in Crown Heights would qualify for the "affordable" units in the complex. He also pointed out that cheap office space in the new Armory has been awarded to five nonprofits serving minority groups.

He then sent an email containing statements from two black community leaders connected to the project.

"I don’t accept this report because I know that revitalizing the Bedford-Union Armory will empower communities of color across Crown Heights," one of the statements, attributed to Reverend Daryl Bloodsaw of the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights, said. "It would be a huge mistake to kill this project. We must work together to make it a success for everyone in our neighborhood, regardless of their background."

(Bloodsaw will oversee a $500,000 fund, financed by BFC from Armory condo sales, that will go toward other affordable housing in the area.)

According to NYCC's analysis, which jived with Patch's own back-of-the-napkin math, 83 percent of the Armory's rentals and condos will only be affordable for families who make around $90,000 a year.

While we couldn't find government statistics for that exact income level, U.S. Census data shows that 58 percent of families in Brooklyn who make more than $75,000 per year are white. That gap widens as incomes go up.

The median income in Crown Heights for a family of three in 2014 was between $41,867 (in Community Board 9) and $44,961 (in Community Board 8), according to an NYU Furman Center report.

Weaver, who has lived in Crown Heights for four years, said the NYCC wants the Armory and the land it sits on to remain 100 percent public, instead of bringing in a private developer. And any housing component, she argued, should be 100 percent affordable.

"We don’t want this for-profit, Trump-supporting developer to get control over this massive public resource," Weaver said.

But in another statement passed along by the developer, William Howard — president of the West Indian American Day Carnival Association, one of the nonprofits tabbed to get cheap office space in the Armory — rebuked the notion that the facility would only benefit white people with money.

"This report is blatantly inaccurate," Howard said, "and only shows that New York Communities for Change doesn’t speak for people of color in Crown Heights."

You can read NYCC's full report below:

Image: BFC Partners

Editor's note: This story was originally published on Friday, March 17