Use 25 Kent taxes to fund Bushwick Inlet Park project: activists

Toby Moskovits’ 480K sf project requires a zoning variance

25 Kent Avenue (inset from left: Steve Chesler and Toby Moskovits)
25 Kent Avenue (inset from left: Steve Chesler and Toby Moskovits)

Green space activists are hoping Toby Moskovits’ planned Williamsburg office project will also revive the city’s long-stalled plan for a waterfront park in the area.

Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park is endorsing Brooklyn Borough president Eric Adams’ plan to fund the park by earmarking property tax payments from the developer’s 480,000-square-foot 25 Kent Avenue project.

“It’s a good, creative way to solve the larger problem,” the group’s co-chair Steve Chesler told the Brooklyn Paper.

Moskovits’ Heritage Equity Partners is seeking a zoning variance for the planned eight-story office-and-manufacturing building.

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The city has promised to since 2005 to build a park on the Bushwick Inlet, adjacent to the 25 Kent Avenue site. Planners have acquired part of the required land, but the push stalled in the face of the area’s rapidly increasing land prices.

“This developer will basically be a revenue enhancer,” Chesler told the Paper, allowing the city the proceed with its plan.

Despite its the park’s budget issues, the city paid $53 million for a 7-acre site in the area last month.

Still, Adams’ plan is merely a recommendation. To be enacted, it requires approval by the City Planning Commission and the City Council. [BP]Ariel Stulberg