Brooklyn’s Arrow Linen site has become a battleground and a litmus test for housing development, pitting NIMBYs against YIMBYs.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso stepped into the middle of the Windsor Terrace war on Wednesday, recommending the 244 apartments proposed by Apex Development Group not be reduced in number, but that more be set aside for lower-income residents.
If the two 13-story towers are shortened by the eventual rezoning, they should be widened so as not to lose any units, Reynoso said. Many of the surrounding buildings are two or three stories, and locals have become accustomed to their low-scale community.
His recommendation is advisory, but shapes the debate and offers political cover to Council member Shahana Hanif, whose sign-off is essentially required for the rezoning that Apex’s Andrew Esposito needs.
Reynoso, like his Manhattan counterpart Mark Levine, has emerged as a pro-housing voice in the city, and his decision on Arrow hammered home the point that more housing is needed to absorb demand to live in neighborhoods such as Windsor Terrace, which has added few units in the past 15 years.
“New housing options here will help alleviate, rather than create, additional market pressure in Windsor Terrace,” his opinion reads.
Hundreds of residents near the Arrow Linen site have protested the proposal as too large, although project supporters have also emerged in substantial numbers.
Reynoso also set an affordability goal that could be challenging to meet for Apex and its partner, the Magliocco family, which owns the Arrow Linen commercial laundry operation and most of the land to be rezoned.
The borough president said Apex should make 30 to 40 percent of units in the two buildings permanently affordable. The city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing law requires about 25 percent affordability.
Alternatively, he proposed a two-stage project, with one building meeting the MIH standard and the other being 100 percent affordable with Department of Housing Preservation and Development financing.
Reynoso’s mixed-income option could well be feasible in a strong housing market such as Windsor Terrace and Park Slope, but an all-affordable building would delay and complicate the project. The wait for such HPD funding is more than five years, and given development timelines, it would be closer to 10 years before an all-affordable building could be finished.
Such a wait can wreck a project’s finances as carrying costs — mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities and the like — pile up. The Magliocco family owns the site at 441 and 467 Prospect Avenue, and plan to consolidate their laundry operations elsewhere. Arrow Linen, founded in Brooklyn in 1947 by Sicilian immigrant Ambroglio Magliocco, has a modern laundry facility in Garden City, New York.
Constructing the mixed-income building first, while awaiting HPD funding for the second, would add costs and make it harder to rent the first building because tenants would have to endure years of construction next door.
Hanif, among the Council’s most progressive members, is certain to demand either lower rents or a higher portion of affordable units than is required by the MIH law for upzoned sites. But in recent months she has also shown signs of a belief that it is crucial to add housing to relieve upward pressure on rents and home prices.
Several months remain in the public review, known by its acronym Ulurp, and Apex is not tipping its hand.
“We greatly appreciate the borough president’s close attention and thoughtful review of the project,” Esposito said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to work with his office and Council member Hanif as we proceed through the Ulurp process.”
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