Brooklyn’s Arrow Linen Project Gets Green Light

The developer of a controversial project that pitted YIMBYs against NIMBYs in a high-income Brooklyn neighborhood has won the critical support of local Council member Shahana Hanif.

Hanif’s sign-off did not demand that the developer of the Arrow Linen site in Windsor Terrace decrease the number of units in the mixed-use project. Instead, it increased to 40 percent the number of units that will be set aside for those making an average 60 percent of the area median income. This is more than required by the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing law, which requires about 25 percent affordability and allows for higher rents in those units than Hanif secured.

The City Council’s Land Use Committee unanimously approved a rezoning of the property, clearing the way for a full Council vote.

The final version of Apex Development’s project to rezone 441 and 467 Prospect Avenue in Windsor Terrace is shorter and wider than the initial proposal. It includes two 10-story buildings with 250 apartments, 100 of them affordable, plus a child care center and community space for survivors of domestic violence.

The project is one of the first rezonings up for approval following the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity text amendment, whose tenets allowed more flexibility to make the building bulkier and shorter without reducing the number of units, a spokesperson for Hanif said.

Hanif, whose endorsement essentially determined the fate of the project, called it a “win-win” that would “provide desperately needed affordable housing in Windsor Terrace.”

The proposal now goes back to the Department of City Planning as a formality and then to a vote by the full chamber.

“After a lengthy process, thoughtful modifications were incorporated into the application through a collaborative process,” Apex’s Andrew Esposito said, adding that the affordability and building height changes felt like a “fair and balanced compromise.” He is developing the project for the property’s longtime owners, the Magliocco family.

Future plans for the former linen supply factory brought drama to the neighborhood. Hundreds of residents protested the proposed development as too big, its units too expensive. At a recent rally against the project, one resident said the buildings ”would stick up like a couple of big middle fingers,” Brooklyn Reader reported. Another suspected the units would only be affordable for “kids who work at Goldman Sachs.”

The project also had a substantial number of supporters who called the opponents perpetual naysayers.

Arrow Linen, founded in Brooklyn in 1947 by Sicilian immigrant Ambroglio Magliocco, has a modern laundry facility in Garden City, New York. The Magliocco family plans to consolidate their laundry operations elsewhere.