One Brooklyn
BROOKLYN, NY, May 2, 2014: Today, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, in advance of the announcement of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement to achieve 200,000 affordable housing units over the next decade, proposed an amendment to the zoning of the Broadway transit corridor, from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to Broadway Junction, to permit more residential density. He codified this proposition in his latest Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) recommendations that were submitted on Friday, April 25th, specifically his application response in regards to the development of Henry Apartments, a six-story, mixed-use supportive housing project in Ocean Hill with low-income rental units, commercial space and community facility use. Concurrently, Borough President Adams made an application response in regards to a major concession for Xavier High School to use and renovate Red Hook Park Ballfield Number Three; both items will have public hearings in front of the City Planning Commission at their meeting on Wednesday, May 7th.
“The Broadway corridor is an untapped opportunity to expand Brooklyn’s affordable housing capacity and to unlock the potential of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Ocean Hill and Williamsburg,” said Borough President Adams. “Now is the time for us to reexamine our borough’s zoning and identify opportunities for responsible development. I look forward to working with Mayor de Blasio and his administration to explore this and other ideas to grow and preserve our affordable housing stock.”
Regarding the development of Henry Apartments, Borough President Adams further called for both the supportive and non-supportive housing units to be permanently affordable. He also noted that blending family households with supportive households, rather than standalone supportive housing, is good public policy, and that steps need to be taken by all levels of government to reduce the reliance of homeless shelters and transitional housing through the creation of more permanent supportive housing units, such as Henry Apartments.
“The City needs to replace the costly and cumbersome shelter system with a permanent housing model which is more cost-effective and prioritizes moving away from the reliance on temporary housing,” said Borough President Adams. “Producing permanent housing is less expensive and more stable housing stock to serve the homeless population. As more permanent units come online, steps should be taken to reduce the capacity of area shelters and transitional housing accommodations.”
In both recommendations, as he did in response to the initial applications he responded to earlier this year, Borough President Adams advanced his call for more minority and women-owned business enterprises (MWBEs) and locally based enterprises (LBEs) from Brooklyn to be retained as contractors and subcontractors in both current and future projects throughout the borough.
“I am concerned that too many residents of Brooklyn are unemployed or underemployed, thus it is my policy to promote economic development as a means of creating more employment opportunities as well as promoting Brooklyn-based businesses, including those that qualify as MWBE and LBE,” said Borough President Adams. “The ULURP process is an important avenue at my disposal to put this policy into practice, and I intend to hold all those seeking to develop or redevelop in this borough to a high standard.”
As for the major concession for the use and renovation of Red Hook Park Ballfield Number Three, Borough President Adams celebrated the effective expansion of parkland access through improved utilization of the field, based on improvements to the playing surface and adding lights to add hundreds of additional hours of use; he also thanked the Department of Parks and Recreation for their intent to earmark the time slot of 6:00 PM until 8:00 PM, year-round, for youth play. Additionally, he called on construction to begin in the late fall, such as to minimize disruption of when the field is typically in use.
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