The 23-story mixed-income building at 626 Flatbush Avenue, in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens section of Flatbush, has attracted quite a bit of controversy, including a (failed) lawsuit and even the threat of a building moratorium from Councilman Mathieu Eugene.
But since the 254-unit, 225,000-square foot apartment tower conforms to the zoning code, the anti-development forces had no way to stop the project, and its ascent has begun.
626 Flatbush Avenue, photo by Tectonic
The building looks to be about half a dozen stories high, according to construction shots taken by YIMBY Forums user Tectonic, with work progressing on the tower that will be set back 100 feet from Flatbush Avenue. The site includes a narrow lot on Flatbush Avenue, plus a wider piece of land along the Brighton Line right-of-way, which now carries the B and Q trains, with the latter offering a speedy 20-minute trip to Union Square from the Prospect Park station. 626 Flatbush will also include a low-rise retail structure fronting on Flatbush, which will be two stories tall.
While project opponents complained about the tower’s 236-foot height, it’s hardly the only residential high-rise on Prospect Park. The first wave of tall buildings started rising in the late 1920s, around the northwestern corner of the park, on Prospect Park West, Grand Army Plaza, and Eastern Parkway. A second wave of high-rise construction happened right before the 1961 zoning code, with a few buildings around Grand Army Plaza and one adventurous developer also constructing a pair of 16-story red brick buildings on Flatbush Avenue, just a block north of No. 626.
626 Flatbush Avenue, rendering by Marvel Architects
Hudson Companies is the developer, and Marvel Architects is responsible for design.
As Hudson notes on its website, when they acquired the site, “it contained only a small commercial building and large parking lot,” so “no residential units were lost or residents displaced in the process.”
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