City Planning stays mum on shady Bushwick rezoning vote

Despite an outcry from Bushwick residents, the City Planning Commission won’t challenge the local community board’s hush-hush approval of Read Property Group’s plan to build apartments and retail space at the former Rheingold Brewery site.

Neighbors accused Bushwick Community Board 4 of illegally approving the plan in a meeting closed to the public. Read Property proposed changing nine blocks of Bushwick from industrial use to residential use to accommodate several rental buildings on a mostly vacant 6.7-acre site.

“A quiet proud neighborhood of homeowners will be dwarfed and shadowed by this proposal and the promise of industry forever pushed out of our side of Bushwick,” said Brigette Blood, who lives near the Rheingold Brewery site.

Community Board 4 district manager Nadine Whitted said the public hearing was held in June, but the vote was delayed so that members could receive more details from the developers. City Council member Diana Reyna, who had said she was investigating it, has not indicated since then that she is still looking into it, DNAinfo reported.

City Planning has refused to comment on the legality of the board’s vote, the website said.

Read Property plans to add 977 apartments, retail space and a park to the area, near Woodhull Medical Center. [DNAinfo] — Mark Maurer