Holy cow: A church-owned property across from a former dairy factory in East New York is slated to become a 14-story apartment building.
The 362,000-square-foot project at 2797 Atlantic Avenue would include 353 apartments. The property owner is listed in city records as St. Malachy RC Church.
Rocklyn Asset Corporation filed the plans. The group is connected to the Diocese of Brooklyn, the Catholic organization encompassing the borough’s estimated 177 parishes. (Coleen Ceriello, Rocklyn Asset’s executive director, has an email address with the diocese, and the organization’s phone number forwards to the diocese.)
A representative for Rocklyn said it is merely a property manager and has partnered with a developer who will handle the project. The representative declined to name the developer.
The project’s architect of record, Marvel Designs, referred an inquiry to a person who did not make the developer available for an interview by press time.
In 2016, the de Blasio administration upzoned a large swath of East New York. The neighborhood was seen as a proving ground for the former mayor’s development model. Developers have filed plans for 58 new rental buildings in East New York since the rezoning, according to data from TRD Pro.
In recent years, some ambitious projects have come to the neighborhood, including Bushburg and Moinian Group’s 370,000-square-foot redevelopment of the former Empire State Dairy factory at 2840 Atlantic Avenue.
The church lot across the avenue sits in a “growth corridor” established by the 2016 rezoning, meant to encourage mixed-income housing and commercial development along major thoroughfares. The development will include zero parking spaces, according to filings, but the site is within walking distance of the A, C, J, and Z subway lines, and 12 blocks from a Long Island Rail Road station.
It’s unclear how many of the apartments will be income-restricted, but the two major developments near it were subject to the city’s mandatory inclusionary housing law. The filing indicates the project will include at least some low-income housing.
The lot formerly housed St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church, which was demolished in 2011. It still includes a two-story building for the St. Malachy’s Child Development Center on 220 Hendrix Street.