Public review has officially kicked off for the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan, a community-led proposal for new housing, jobs, and infrastructure investments in Brooklyn. The proposal focuses on a 21-block stretch of Atlantic Avenue and neighboring blocks in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Developed by the New York City Department of City Planning in collaboration with NYC council members Crystal Hudson and Chi Ossé, the plan aims to create approximately 4,600 new homes, including 1,440 permanently income-restricted affordable units, along with 2,800 permanent new jobs.
The proposal also includes traffic safety projects along Atlantic Avenue to improve pedestrian visibility and accessibility. Proposed revisions include new planters and bike corrals along with investments in public spaces, including improvements to St. Andrew’s Playground and Lowry Triangle.
Map of areas impacted by the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-use Plan, via nyc.gov
Currently, the 21-block area that the proposal covers is primarily zoned for one-to-two industrial buildings and storage. If approved, it will rezone the area into a mix of residential, commercial, and manufacturing spaces.
“The Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan is a community-driven vision informed by extensive engagement and resident input,” said New York City Executive Director for Housing Leila Bozorg. “It is a model for how we should plan for the future of our neighborhoods: building more housing with permanent affordability, improved safety, quality jobs, better public spaces, and investments in infrastructure, all for current and future residents. We’re excited to kick off public review, and I thank council members Hudson and Ossé, and the many community members and agency staff who have brought the plan to this important milestone.”
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Can you provide more specifics about what’s allowed under the proposed zoning? There are already three 17-story buildings under construction on this stretch, two of them topped out. Lots of potential for additional development though, obviously. We should really be building 30-40 story towers along Atlantic Ave all the way to Broadway Junction and beyond.
It would be nice to have some taller towers here and there at major intersections BUT these enormous developments going up, even capped at the 17 floor height, packs a pretty big punch with unit count. I would imagine they have as many if not more units than what would be in taller tower with a smaller footprint. The cost savings for a developer, especially one that is building in a significant percentage of affordable units, to build lower instead of taller is real. A taller building has codes that eat away at usable floor space as well as the requirement of additional expensive elevators.
I actually really dig the vernacular that’s developing with these scaled buildings along Fourth and here on Atlantic. It’s definitely URBANE. I think a pretty good argument could be made that buildings like this are superior to Chinese style 25+ floor towers in a row all floating in an ill defined parklike space pulled back from the street wall line. That said, I do think a few taller towers at pronounced locations like Broadway Junction is definitely called for, and with the case of Broadway Junction seems to be the plan. A corner anchoring taller tower every handful of blocks piercing the plateau would look great along the way.
more market rates and few call affordable rent. See Atlantic yards now Pacific yards. Keeep dreaming
Based on all the developments that have been executed across downtown Brooklyn, Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, it’s clear this is another ethnic cleansing project. The affordable housing promised woth the Pacific Avenue development was never delivered. Now we are handing over another swath of land to developers to further make the area even more expensive. In just 10 years, Brooklyn has been made unaffordable. I’m so scared what the next ten years will bring. In the end, everyone will realize how we got played by the developers who are the ones responsible for the mess we’re in to begin with.
There is a housing shortage and we need more housing to be built! 1440 permanently income-restricted units is very much not “ethnic cleansing.”
What you mean is the choice neighborhood you would like to live in has become “unaffordable”. There is a plethora of affordable areas left in Brooklyn. Give me a break. Where does it say anywhere that people are entitled to their desired neighborhood regardless of their financial ability to live there? Are we just supposed to suspend the free market? Do you walk into the Benz dealership and declare that you deserve to be sold a car at half the sticker price? Or do you think there should be carve out’s for people for no other reason than you’ve lived there a long time? The housing MARKET doesn’t work like that. Affordable housing arrangements and requirement help ease the challenge but even those are technically manipulation of the market to achieve a desired outcome. The better solution would be to invest in other areas, bringing lots of housing online in those places instead of having this strange point of view that you for some reason deserve something you can no longer afford.
What you are saying is that systemic ethnic cleansing is ok, as long as it doesn’t involve you.
We absolutely DO need more truly affordable housing, including in this area, I agree. BUT – these new buildings are not replacing low-income housing, they are replacing garages, junk yards and empty lots. I walk across Atlantic multiple times a day and it’s just ugly and not particularly safe for pedestrians and not at all for bicyclists. I don’t think keeping parts of the city unattractive and unlivable is the way out of the housing crisis. The city needs to take a more active role in building affordable units. But again that doesn’t mean that these new developments shouldn’t happen. Blaming developers is just a lame cop-out.
“The city needs to take a more active role in building affordable units.”
Expand that lens. Our national government should get back to playing a larger role in creating the affordible and dignified housing that the market can not or will not provide for. We’ve learned a lot of lessons from the 20th century, it’s time the federal government started putting real money behind truly impactful and badly needed publically owned housing ventures and not just the management of older buildings and the administration of private housing vouchers… like every other functioning country.
No taller buildings, we need the sun and clean air to flow through
That’s not how it works. The sun and air don’t stop working bc a building is thinner and taller. Short, squat buildings block more sun than tall, skinny ones, and obviously air is unaffected either way. And obviously large highrises are appropriate for a major arterial in the middle of NYC.
Hello
I’m very disappointed that the city allows big box storage companies like CubeSmart to panel over older architected to create these gaudy monolithic cubed advertisements. The building near Nostrand on the south side of Atlantic is a real setback to the development of a shopping area in the area.