A fight over a proposed high-rise near the Brooklyn Botanic Garden continues, even though the project’s developers claim they’ve revised the plans so they don’t overshadow the green space.
Dozens of critics gathered at a public hearing Wednesday to reject developer Continuum’s pruning proposals, which garden officials argue would still create harmful shade for sun-loving tropical, desert and Mediterranean plants.
Adrienne Benepe, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, said at the hearing that the new plan would “pose existential harm to future generations of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.”
“For a developer to claim to be defending plant health needs is like the chairman of Dow Chemical saying chemicals are good for rivers and streams,” Benepe said.
The changes by Continuum come after growing criticism from garden staff and local residents about the potential for a 14-story tower planned for 970 Franklin Avenue to shade the greenhouse.
Brooklyn’s Community Board 9 also unanimously rejected the project (with two abstentions) in June, citing “the potential for significant adverse impacts to portions of the community district, including the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) and Jackie Robinson Playground.”
Councilwoman Crystal Hudson convinced BBG officials in July to meet with the developer to discuss the renovations, according to Benepe, who said the changes were a “marginal improvement” and not enough to ensure the invasive plants would survive.
If approved, the developer’s plans would build 475 apartments, 119 of which would be permanently low-income housing. Currently, the land is zoned for six- to eight-story buildings, but the developer is seeking an exception for a high-rise.
The project will create hundreds of union jobs in construction and building maintenance. It is supported by Community Board 9’s Beverly Newsom, labor unions 100 Blacks in Construction and the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. It will be the first union BFO housing project ever, the developer said.
Continuum’s lawyers told The Washington Post that the plans include shade-reduction efforts, such as lowering the building’s bulkheads and adding sloping roofs to eliminate “nearly all shadow” in the gardens’ public areas, while keeping the 475 housing units intact.
Other “non-public” areas of the gardens are expected to experience a sunlight loss of less than 0.3 to 0.4 percent per year, David Rosenberg, an attorney for the developers, said at the hearing.
“At a time when the city is asking all of us to address the housing crisis, are we going to allow 0.4 percent to block 475 apartments, permanently affordable housing and hundreds of union jobs?” Rosenberg said.
“To those of you who were concerned about shade and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, we listened to you,” Roseberg added. “The revised application ensures that the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s sun-sensitive areas can continue to thrive.”
But Rowan Blake, BBG’s vice president of horticulture, argued that developers’ own studies of the buildings’ impacts were “cherry-picking” data, measuring sunlight higher than the plants, for example on rooftops rather than in plant beds.
The developers also did not study the specific needs of each plant, focusing only on July sunlight (which doesn’t match sunlight most of the year) and using old Google Maps photos that don’t reflect current sunlight or the trees in the yard, Blake said.
“It’s like putting a thermostat on the roof of your house for heating and cooling. It’s completely unrelated,” Blake testified.
“It would block 15 percent of the sunlight Brooklyn gets, which is already less than what we get in the wild,” Blake added, “so that would have a significant impact on these properties.”
Rosenberg, the developer’s lawyer, acknowledged that parts of the gardens would still be affected, including tropical orchids, tropical desert plants and South African bulb plants.
He suggested two ideas for reducing shadows: “artificial lighting” or portable greenhouses.
“The goal is not to have zero shadow, but an acceptable amount,” Rosenberg said.
City Planning Commission officials also pressed Rosenberg about the affordability of the apartments, with Commissioner Leah Goodridge citing developers’ comments in a recent New York Times article that if Continuum did not get rezoning, they would build the apartments. Instead, upscale market-rate condos.
“This really goes against community engagement,” Goodridge said. “There’s already a lot of skepticism about private developers coming into a community and not listening.”
Rosenberg responded that there was “no economical way” to build affordable housing otherwise.
A vote on the proposal by the city’s Planning Commission has not yet been scheduled, but is expected to happen within about two months, a spokesman said.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso last month called for the developer’s application to be denied.
“@BrooklynBotanic is sacred and this unique community resource deserves unique care,” Reynoso said. I wrote it to X. “I would not support any development that would create additional shadow effects here and this proposal does not meet that criteria.”
