The part of Bushwick that once housed the Rheingold Brewery, a major beer producer for New York State in the 1950’s and 60’s, is a pretty sizable parcel of land. Its boundaries include Flushing Avenue to the north, Evergreen Avenue to the east, and a stair-step on the southwest side that goes from Melrose to Stanwix to Forrest to Garden Streets.
Rheingold has been shut down since the mid-seventies, but a lot has happened on its old grounds in the meantime: the lot is adjacent to the Opera House Lofts, St. Mark’s Lutheran at 626 Bushwick Avenue and DIY megacenter Silent Barn. However, some proposed development plans for the neighborhood hinge on the rezoning of the lot to make way for–you guessed it–a giant luxury condo building with ground-floor retail.
Some questionable Community Board 4 meetings were held at which CB4 voted (in private) to rezone the area this past summer, which stirred fear of displacement among many of long-time Bushwick residents. After a few weeks of radio silence on the issue, Bushwick Daily got word that public hearing of the City Planning Commission will be held to discuss the rezoning on Wednesday, September 11th, at 10AM at Spector Hall at 22 Reade Street in Manhattan.
An Environmental Assessment Statement regarding the rezoning is nearly eighty pages long and includes some images of the affected neighborhood and lots of versions of the zoning maps. If this document, or the bigger picture of the issue, stirs up some intense feelings for you, but you can’t make the meeting, you can email any concerns you want to present to the City Planning Commission to Yvette Gruel at Ygruel ATplanning.nyc.gov.
Any thoughts on this, Bushwick? We’d love to hear them. Email us at bushwickdaily at gmail dot com or get at us in the comments below and we’ll go from there!
