Whole Foods Faces Final City Hurdle at BSA
GOWANUS — Whole Foods, which is close to beginning construction on its first store in Brooklyn, will face its final city hurdle Tuesday before the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) — the grocery chain’s requested variance to allow construction of the 52,000-square-foot store on a lot zoned for only 10,000 square feet of commercial space.
As the Eagle has reported, it has been eight years since Whole Foods acquired the property at Third Street and Third Avenue in Gowanus. In the interim it has cleaned up the toxic waste at the site, has dealt with the public’s concerns about parking and traffic and, as The New York Times noted in an article Monday, has opened four other stores in Manhattan in that time.
There is still some opposition in the community to the new market by a group of artists, residents and manufacturers who believe the new store will hurt the Gowanus area’s burgeoning creative and manufacturing industries and would like to keep the vacant lot zoned for small- and medium-scale manufacturing.