Continuum Reaches Deal for Approval of Crown Heights Project

After repeated setbacks, developer Ian Bruce Eichner has reached a deal with City Council member Crystal Hudson to build apartments near the shade-averse Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

As part of the agreement, Eichner’s Continuum Company downsized its project at 962-972 Franklin Avenue, while securing changes that will allow higher rents in the below-market-rate units. Hudson’s consent guarantees approval of the necessary rezoning by the full Council.

The project will include 355 apartments, of which 106 will be income-restricted, down from the 475-unit building Eichner proposed. In exchange for lower building heights to minimize shadows on the Botanic Garden, Hudson let Continuum use the “workforce housing” option in the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program.

That means 30 percent of apartments will be affordable to households earning, on average, 115 percent of the area median income, the highest average income threshold permitted under the program.

The project now also has a 10-degree slope, down from the 15 degrees approved by the City Planning Commission, “allowing for necessary sunlight to reach the Garden’s plant nursery and other crucial areas,” according to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

“After more than six years of discussion, debate, and vigorous public advocacy, the threat of permanent loss of sunlight for our living museum of plants is over,” Adrian Benepe, its president and CEO, said in a statement.

The road to consensus was long and rough.

The developer in 2017 had sought to build two 39-story towers with more than 1,500 apartments on a site that also included 960 Franklin Avenue. Roughly half of the units would have been set aside as affordable.

Because Eichner promised to use union construction and building service workers, the project enjoyed strong support from the Building and Construction Trades Council and 32BJ SEIU. But it drew the ire of community groups and politicians because of the towers’ height and the shadows it would cast on Garden plants that need ample sunlight.

In a rare move, in late 2020, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio withdrew his support in the midst of the project’s public review, calling the towers “grossly out of scale with the neighborhood.” Eric Adams, who was Brooklyn borough president at the time, also rejected the project. The City Planning Commission made its defeat official in September 2021.

Continuum didn’t own 960 Franklin, site of a former spice factory, but was in contract to buy it from Zev Golombeck for $42 million if the rezoning went through. When it failed, Golombeck sold it to Isaac Hager and Daryl Hagler for $43 million.

The new owners put forward an as-of-right project for 300 market-rate condo units, to the dismay of Hudson, an advocate for affordable housing. That gave Eichner leverage to get her approval for a mixed-income project.

Eichner filed a new application to rezone his remaining portion of the site, but it was still too tall for Garden officials. The City Planning Commission shortened the towers to reduce the shadow impact to roughly half an hour per day, only to have Eichner deem that financially infeasible and threaten to withdraw the application.

That set the stage for the compromise replacing low-income units with workforce housing. A Continuum executive told Hudson the projected profit margin was “extremely tight” but declined to specify a number.

The saga underscores the challenges of building housing in New York. The usual scenario is for a large-scale project that would deliver hundreds of affordable units to be downsized to a smaller, sometimes entirely market-rate building. In this case, only 13 percent of the below-market-rate units originally proposed will be built.

The project will include parking, although far less than normally required, and 8,500 square feet of retail.

The modified rezoning is expected to be approved by a City Council committee today. A union pension fund will finance the project, making it the first union built, financed and operated development in the city.