Last-Ditch Effort Aims to Save Crown Heights Apartment Project

Bruce Eichner’s controversial project across from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is clinging to life, three weeks after the developer said he would pull the plug.

The City Planning Commission had approved a rezoning to allow a scaled-back version of Eichner’s multifamily development at 962-972 Franklin Avenue, which Eichner said was not feasible.

The commission’s plan, which the Adams administration described as a compromise, will go before the City Council’s zoning subcommittee Wednesday, but Eichner’s Continuum Company will propose an alternative, an attorney for the developer said.

The developer wants to set aside 30 percent of the units for workforce housing instead of what the commission approved: 25 percent for low-income units, that is, affordable to tenants earning 60 percent of the area median income or less, lawyer David J. Rosenberg said.

“Since the CPC vote, we have worked tirelessly with our partners to try to find a way to bridge the gap between maximum affordability and project viability,” Rosenberg said in a statement on behalf of Continuum’s LLC for the project, Franklin Ave Acquisition.

Eichner must come to terms with the local City Council member, Crystal Hudson, after which the planning commission would vote on the modified plan. Rosenberg said Continuum had been in discussions with Hudson’s office. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After years of setbacks, Eichner seemed to have finally notched a win last month when the Planning Commission approved a rezoning designed to reduce the shadows that the project would cast on the nearby Brooklyn Botanic Garden. But that same day, Rosenberg sent the administration a letter saying the revision would not work.

Eichner had proposed 475 apartments, including 119 income-restricted. The city’s action would allow for only 355 units, of which 91 to 106 would be income-restricted — not enough market-rate units to offset the cost of the affordable ones, in Eichner’s view.

After the vote, the Botanic Garden called for additional modifications that would decrease the slope of the building from 15 degrees to 10 “to prevent serious shadow impacts to BBG’s most vulnerable collections.”

Rosenberg said a further reduction in density would render the project “entirely unworkable.”

The attorney said the rezoning approved by the Planning Commission would effectively devalue the site, preventing anyone from building on it. Lenders require projects to be profitable enough, on paper, to compensate for the risk that they will fail. Without financing, Eichner cannot build.

The development would be the first “union BFO” project — built, financed and operated by unions — in New York City. It has been championed by construction unions and 32BJ SEIU, which represents doormen and other building service workers.

Despite organized labor’s support, Eichner’s previous attempt to rezone both 960 and 962-972 Franklin Avenue, to build two 39-story towers with 1,500 units, never got far because of objections by the Garden and the de Blasio administration.

The modified plans for the latter site followed tense negotiations involving Eichner’s firm, Deputy Mayor Maria Torres Springer, the Parks Department, the Department of City Planning, the Botanic Garden and the mayor’s office.

Eichner faces an uphill battle because Hudson would prefer the project be more affordable to renters than the planning commission’s version would be. He is asking it to be less affordable, under the workforce housing option allowed by the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing law.

But the developer has leverage: If no rezoning is approved, the most likely project to result would be an entirely market-rate condominium, which requires no political approval.

That is what is happening at 960 Franklin, the parcel next to his, following the rejection of his two-tower plan. Yitzchok Schwartz filed plans in May to build 300 condo units.