After six years of dispute, an agreement has been reached between the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG), New York City Council Member Crystal Hudson, and Ian Bruce Eichner’s Continuum Companies regarding the proposed residential tower at 962-972 Franklin Ave in Crown Heights.
On Tuesday, the City Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises approved a revised proposal from Continuum. The full Council is set to vote on it on November 21st.
The main point of contention was the potential for BBG’s plants to be deprived of sunlight due to two originally proposed 39-story towers by Continuum. However, under the new agreement, there will only be one 14-story tower with a total of 355 apartments. Thirty percent of these units will be designated as workforce housing. Additionally, there will now be a slope angle of ten degrees instead of fifteen degrees as previously approved by City Planning.
BBG expressed their gratitude towards elected officials for their unwavering support and hard work in creating this plan that not only preserves sunlight access for plants but also protects BBG from permanent damage while providing affordable workforce housing options.
The image accompanying this article is courtesy NYC Tourism with photo credit given to Tagger Yancey.
