Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Brooklyn Eagle: Forest City Plans New Highrise East of Flatbush


Get ready for the Flatbush Avenue Corridor. This is the newest name for the Houston-style buildings sprouting up in the area straddling Downtown Brooklyn and Fort Greene. The Brooklyn Eagle reports on the most recent skyscrapers in "Forest City Plans New Highrise East of Flatbush:"
In a surprise development, this newspaper has learned that Forest City Ratner Companies plans to build the largest residential building so far announced east of Flatbush Avenue.
For those of you who do not follow development issues manically, this is part of the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, a massive development that is going up near the proposed Atlantic Yards development in neighboring Prospect Heights.

It appears that no major variances are needed for this project. At 405 feet, the new building would conform to the height guidelines of 415 feet as set in the 2004 rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn.

Although the site is not technically within the BAM Cultural District, it joins the 28-story Forte residential building in the next block on Fulton Street.
Here's the Duffield Street connection. The EDC continues to claim that the destruction of the historic Abolitionist homes is necessary for the development of Downtown Brooklyn. The fact that massive buildings are shooting up suggest that big developers don't need extra incentive. And it's a mighty strange incentive that EDC is offering on Duffield– an underground parking lot instead of Abolitionist homes that have promising links to the Underground Railroad.