BP MARKOWITZ URGES DEVELOPER TO BRING WATERFRONT DESTINATION RESTAURANT TO BROOKLYN BAY CENTER/BJ’S WHOLESALE CLUB DEVELOPMENT

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz released today his ULURP recommendation on the Brooklyn Bay Center development, as well as a letter to Thor Equities urging the developer to locate a waterfront destination restaurant at the 214,000-square-foot retail development at 1752 Shore Parkway that will also be the future home of a BJ’s Wholesale Club. (ULURP recommendation and letter attached).

“Given Brooklyn’s population, the borough is truly lacking when it comes to having waterfront dining opportunities,” wrote BP Markowitz in a June 9, 2011, letter to Joseph Sitt of Thor Equities. “There are really only a handful of opportunities that I believe can entice destination restaurants such as Legal Seafood and Grand Lux Café to open the first venue in Brooklyn. This is the perfect site. Having such a dining opportunity would benefit the publicly accessible area by bringing more people to enjoy this waterfront, while the landscaping of the open space would provide the perfect foreground to the marvelous harbor vistas extending from Sea Gate to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.”

As part of the ULURP approval with modifications/conditions, BP Markowitz made the following recommendations:

• Jobs: That BJ’s Wholesale Club make respectable efforts to hire willing residents from the local community, and that during the construction phase of the project, the applicants develop a strategy to include Brooklyn-based contractors and material supply firms, maximizing the number of jobs for Brooklyn residents.
  
  
• Traffic mitigation: That the developer work with Community Board 11 and elected officials to examine traffic congestion mitigation strategies that should be implemented now in the Bath Beach/Gravesend communities, and then perform a traffic analysis approximately one year after the opening of the primary tenant. BP Markowitz also expressed concerns about access to Belt Parkway as well as certain proposed traffic mitigation measures that would eliminate parking along the Shore Parkway service road.