City Council Approves Totem’s Broadway Junction Rezoning

The long road to approval for Totem’s rezoning in East New York is over. The real work is set to begin.

City Council gave final approval last week to Totem’s plans for a two-acre site surrounding the Broadway Junction transportation hub in Brooklyn, Crain’s reported. Construction is expected to begin early next year.

The project, known as Herkimer-Williams, has been in the making since 2021. That’s when Totem, led by Vivian Liao and Tucker Reed, filed preliminary plans for the site. Since then, hundreds of meetings with residents and stakeholders yielded changes, including reducing the maximum height of the buildings from 405 feet to 345 feet.

The “vote by the City Council marks a historic milestone not just for Herkimer-Williams, but for the future of East New York,” Liao said in a statement.

The development is slated to include almost 1,000 affordable housing units, an increase from the roughly 600 proposed earlier. There will also be 25,000 square feet of public open space, 85,000 square feet of community facility space — to be anchored by a higher education institution — 114,000 square feet of retail space, 440,000 square feet of commercial space and 100,000 square feet of industrial space.

The 10-year development plan is expected to unfold in four phases. The first phase will include the public space and roughly 200 of the affordable units.

The project falls outside of the borders of the controversial East New York rezoning, hence Totem’s need for its own rezoning. The wider rezoning has yet to pan out and has fallen short of expected housing goals.

Meanwhile, roughly $500 million in city and state funding was recently announced for Broadway Junction to improve accessibility, safety and open space, an eye towards unlocking the potential of the area.

Elsewhere in East New York, Gotham Organization, Monadnock Development and nonprofit Christian Cultural Center scored a $315 million loan in April for their project at 12020 Flatlands Avenue. The loan will fund the construction of 453 rental units at the site, which used to be a vacant parking lot at the church’s 10-and-a-half-acre Brooklyn campus.

— Holden Walter-Warner