The plan, approved by the City Council, focuses on boosting residential development and job growth in a 21-block area along Atlantic Avenue in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The plan, approved by the City Council, focuses on boosting residential development and job growth in a 21-block area along Atlantic Avenue in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The plan, approved by the City Council, focuses on boosting residential development and job growth in a 21-block area along Atlantic Avenue in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Vacant lots, warehouses and auto shops sit along the busy thoroughfare of Atlantic Avenue in central Brooklyn, an industrial tableau that stands in sharp contrast to the area’s reputation as a hip, desirable place to live.
For over a decade, residents have wanted changes. More and cheaper homes. Better and safer community amenities. But only now, in this political moment emphasizing affordability, is a project coming together that will not only revitalize the area with improvements to parks and streets, but also meaningfully address New York City’s housing crisis by making way for 4,600 new homes.
The City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved a major plan that targets a part of Atlantic Avenue in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant where areas zoned for manufacturing as far back as 1961 have left little room for residential development, even as needs have shifted.
Because the two neighborhoods are close to Prospect Park and many subway lines, they have continued to draw residents, pushing rents up and fueling gentrification. Several one-off, luxury apartment buildings have sprouted in between industrial and manufacturing lots, a haphazard upheaval that has angered local leaders.
The Council’s approval addresses several of these issues, and reflects how city officials are, at least in piecemeal fashion, making way for growth in the face of a housing shortage that is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of homes.
“There’s definitely been a culture shift in the last couple of years around housing,” said Councilwoman Crystal Hudson, who represents much of the area and who helped lead the plan’s development. “I think people understand a little bit better the reality of market pressures, and the housing and affordability crisis that is crunching everyday New Yorkers.”