80 Flatbush gets shorter and slimmer
In a negotiation that went down to the wire—past the start of a scheduled City Council subcommittee hearing Thursday—months of debate over the scale of the ambitious two-tower 80 Flatbush project concluded with a compromise agreement for modest cuts in its height and bulk. The promised public benefits in the project—two schools and 200 units of affordable housing—will remain in place, according to the deal reached by City Council Member Stephen Levin (33rd District), Alloy Development, and city officials.
The mixed-use mega-project, which has been strenuously opposed by nearby residents as having unacceptably massive scale near low-rise blocks, was able to overcome resistance because of the popular momentum to maintain its proposed benefits and the emergence of a moderately smaller revision that the developers revealed this week.
The willingness of Alloy Development to accept a 12.5% cut in the project’s bulk suggests that the original rezoning proposal, made in partnership with the New York City Educational Construction Fund (ECF), called for a somewhat bigger project than necessary to cross-subsidize the public benefits.