The New York City Council approved a rezoning that could add up to 4,600 apartments around Atlantic Avenue in Central Brooklyn. The vote comes eight weeks after the City Planning Commission okayed the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan.
The Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan rezones approximately 21 blocks along Atlantic Avenue, stretching from Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights to Nostrand Avenue at the border of Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy, allowing buildings of up to 185 feet (roughly 18 stories) along certain stretches of the rezoned area.
Forty percent of the new housing, or about 1,900 units, will be priced as permanently affordable, including 1,000 units priced at an average of 60% of the area median income. Another 900 affordable units will be built as city-financed development at seven public sites. The rezoning plan that will dramatically reshape a swath of central Brooklyn replacing low-lying industrial buildings towers containing potentially thousands of new units.
Nine hundred of those affordable units will be in 100 percent affordable, fully subsidized developments, spread over seven city-owned sites, according to local council members. These fully subsidized units will be targeted at households earning an average of 50 percent of Area Median Income.
Council Member Crystal Hudson, who represents much of the rezoning area, including Crown Heights and Prospect Heights, called the plan “the culmination of more than a decade of advocacy from local residents and nearly three years of public engagement, hard work, and tireless negotiations.”
She emphasized that about 40 percent of the new units will be affordable to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers — equivalent to the median per capita income across the entire city of $50,776, according to the census — and said the plan also includes more than $215 million in public investments. These span infrastructure upgrades, park and playground renovation, local hiring initiatives, and tenant and homeowner protections.
“The Atlantic Avenue Mixed Use Plan will produce more affordable housing units than was built collectively over the past decade in this area of Central Brooklyn,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said Wednesday.
City leaders say the rezoning will turn Atlantic Avenue into a calmer, greener corridor where kids, seniors, and small businesses can thrive.
