Bedford-Union Armory Redevelopment Approved By City Council

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The New York City Council on Thursday approved a plan to turn a vacant armory in Crown Heights into a community rec center, office space and a housing complex.

The controversial project passed nearly unanimously and now heads to the desk of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is expected to sign off on the development he has championed for years.

Now, a lawsuit filed Wednesday could be the last hope for activists who want to stop the project and have said it will only accelerate gentrification in the rapidly changing neighborhood. A large group showed up to City Hall to protest the vote, shouting during proceedings and eventually being kicked out by security, according to reporters on scene.

An initial plan for the site, from developer BFC Partners, called for market-rate condominiums and a majority of rentals that opponents said were unaffordable for people making the median income in the neighborhood. The rents would subsidize inexpensive memberships to the rec center for people in the community.

Last week, officials announced a new housing structure that removed market-rate condos, increased the number of affordable units and lowered the income levels needed to rent them.

About 60 percent of the 415 apartment units in the new plan will be rented to people and families making between $27,000 and $57,000 per year. The median income in the area is about $45,000 per year.

Cumbo, explaining her vote, reiterated that there needed to be market-level housing in the deal to pay for the rec center.

"We could not get to 100 percent (affordability), because 40 percent had to be set aside to pay for the world-class recreation facility," Cumbo said Thursday. "I wish there was a way to pay for things without having to pay for things. but right now we have to pay for things."

Forty-three of the council's 46 members voted for the plan. Darlene Mealy, who represents Brownsville, and Inez Barron, who represents East New York, voted no. Jumaane Williams, who represents East Flatbush, abstained.

Some people in the community are still unhappy that any apartment rentals are going for market rates at all. They say that any housing built on public land should be affordable to people in the area.

"Today's vote by Laurie Cumbo and the City Council is nothing short of betrayal," Vaughn Armor, a member of New York Communities for Change, said in a statement. "They have decided to green-light the mayor's plan to further gentrify my neighborhood by building hundreds of luxury housing units on the public's land."

Wednesday's lawsuit, brought by the nonprofit Legal Aid Society, challenged the way the city studied the effects of new housing on displacement in the neighborhood.

The plaintiffs say the city only studied the displacement effects of people living in unregulated buildings and not those in rent-stabilized units.

"They're introducing 400 units of housing at a rate that will have tenants that are of a higher income than the surrounding area. That creates displacement pressures," Jennifer Levy, a supervising attorney for the Civil Law Reform Unit at Legal Aid, said Wednesday.

"It raises the rents in the buildings around the project. It encourages landlords to move tenants out so that they can increase rents and deregulate the apartments."

Image by BFC Partners