A parking lot on Fulton Street is turning into 297 apartments. There was no rezoning, no community board vote, no public fight. The neighborhood got no say, because under the existing zoning the developer did not need to ask.
The site is the parking lot of the Brooklyn Gardens nursing home, which spans the block between Herkimer and Fulton streets, between Rochester and Buffalo avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant. According to the Brooklyn Paper and Brownstoner, the westernmost building, at 1826 Fulton Street, has already topped out at 11 stories and will hold 213 apartments. Excavation has started on a second building, and together the two will bring 297 units.
The key phrase is “as of right.” Because the lot’s zoning already permits residential buildings of this size, the project does not go through the city’s land-use review, which is the process where community boards weigh in and the local council member can extract concessions or kill a project. Build as of right and you skip all of that. The first sign many neighbors get is a building topping out over the block.
In Bed-Stuy, displacement is the constant worry. The Brooklyn Paper reports that only a portion of the project is affordable, with 52 income-restricted units in the larger building and 17 in the smaller, 69 of the 297 total. At what incomes are those units set, and for how long? As-of-right gets the building up fast. It does not guarantee the people already living nearby can afford to move in.
The towers are going up now, one topped out and one in the ground. The questions are the affordability terms and the construction timeline. The developer and the local council office have those answers. If you find out about a building when it’s already 11 stories tall, ask questions before the leasing office opens.
