The City Council on Wednesday approved a major rezoning of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, which promises to transform a thoroughfare lined with warehouses and auto shops into a mixed-use neighborhood with some 4,600 new homes.
The years-in-the-making Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan updates the zoning on 21 blocks in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant that surround the busy street, where only light manufacturing is currently allowed despite the area’s proximity to transit and in-demand residential neighborhoods.
“For decades, this area has been frozen in place by antiquated zoning that restricted housing and encouraged a low-slung, car- and truck-centric streetscape despite great access to public transit and jobs,” City Planning Director Dan Garodnick said in an interview hours before the council approved the plan by a 47-0 vote.
Besides permitting 4,600 new homes — including 1,900 that will be permanently affordable — city officials say the changes will facilitate some 2,800 permanent jobs by creating 800,000 square feet of retail, office and light industrial space. Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is also committing some $235 million to carry out infrastructure improvements on the notoriously unsafe avenue, renovate six parks and playgrounds, and give local City Council offices more money for tenant legal services.
Crucial to the plan’s approval, it had early support from local City Council members Crystal Hudson and Chi Ossé — progressives who have nonetheless embraced the need to build in order to ease the city’s housing shortage. The lawmakers inherited the plan from a neighborhood-driven effort that began in 2013, when a community board began studying ways to shift Atlantic Avenue toward a more housing-centric future.
The two council members touted the plan in a social media video posted Wednesday, typical of the 27-year-old Ossé’s style, in which they framed the upzoning as a way to reduce landlords’ leverage over tenants.
“Landlords love a housing shortage because it drives up rents,” Ossé says. “People who oppose new housing constitute a pro-landlord lobby.”
Atlantic Avenue is the first of four neighborhood-wide rezonings the Adams administration is hoping will pass this year, collectively enabling some 40,000 new homes. Others in Midtown South, Jamaica and Long Island City are set for council votes in the summer, fall and near the end of the year, respectively.
More neighborhood plans are in the works. To help secure approval for the City of Yes housing plan last fall, the Adams administration committed to studying possible zoning changes on Coney Island Avenue and East Flatbush in Brooklyn, and White Plains Road and the Harlem River North area in the Bronx. The department began gathering community input on White Plains Road last week.
The Midtown South rezoning notably takes advantage of the new extra-dense residential districts created by City of Yes, enabling that plan to more than double its projected unit count from 4,000 to 9,700. But Garodnick said there was no discussion of whether to use those districts on the Atlantic Avenue site, which is surrounded by relatively low-rise residential neighborhoods.
The Atlantic Avenue plan will allow a mix of zoning schemes, including a high-density residential layer along the avenue itself that would allow buildings as high as 14 or 15 stories — akin to those found in Chelsea or Tribeca. Ground-floor commercial or office uses would also be allowed.
The blocks being rezoned sit mostly between Vanderbilt and Nostrand avenues. It also tweaks the zoning on the block of the landmarked Bedford Atlantic Armory, presently used as a homeless shelter, which the city says can be more easily redeveloped by being brought into compliance with existing zoning.
Other fans of the rezoning include Partnership for New York City president Kathryn Wylde, who said it would enliven a “long-underutilized corridor.
“This action will stimulate significant private investment and benefits for Brooklyn neighborhoods along this stretch of Atlantic Avenue,” Wylde said.
