City Council Greenlights Housing Over Borough Park Rail Line

The ambitious Brooklyn Yards development plan, an engineering feat that will build housing over an active rail line, was approved by the City Council on Thursday. The rezoning calls for a 14-building mixed-use mid-rise complex with 267 residences poised on a narrow platform spanning two blocks above a curved section of railway in Borough Park.

The unanimous vote is likely to conclude the public review process, during which the tallest building was reduced from 10 to nine stories and the number of parking spots doubled from 40 to 80. The zoning of the land slated for development has been changed from manufacturing to a mixed residential and commercial district.

Developers David Tabak and Meyer Lebovits, along with architecture firm STUDIO V Design + Planning, are behind the plans for the platform and complex slated to go up between 14th and 16th avenues and 59th and 61st streets. The project — comprising 10 four-story townhouses with penthouses, two six-story apartment buildings, one nine-story mixed-use building, and one two-story commercial building — won’t affect the rail line or its future development, they say in the rezoning application filed with the city.

Twenty feet below the proposed platform, a freight train rolls along the Long Island Rail Road track once a day. Owned by the MTA, the course as a likely route for the planned Interborough Express that will knit together Brooklyn and Queens.

The development team has been working with the MTA and other city agencies for years on the plans, and the MTA had to approve the final construction drawings, said Jay Valgora, a principal at STUDIO V Design + Planning, at the July Brooklyn Borough President’s hearing on the rezoning. The project allows for an expanded IBX line, he added.

“We even figured out how to do the structure to support the future rail lines which support both freight and passenger service, and that was a big thing,” he said. “We worked for years with the MTA, so they supported the project going forward because we’re actually helping create a prototype for how we can improve transit access to our neighborhoods.”

He said the development team, which includes the “best engineers, environmental consultants, land use council,” found the way forward was by building 14 separate smaller buildings rather than large towers, which he said was also commensurate with the scale of the community.

“A lot of people put a lot of effort into figuring out how you take a rail cut in the middle of a residential neighborhood, going through backyards, and you replace that with housing, including affordable housing,” Valgora said.

Brooklyn Yards will be built as one large-scale development where four-story walk-ups are flanked by the taller buildings – the tallest nine-story building being beside the elevated D train station on New Utrecht Avenue. A public park will be built at the New Utrecht Avenue end of the development with movable cafe tables and chairs, as well as a separate playground and public pathways.

According to Studio V’s website, the firm is leading a team that includes Arup, Ken Smith Workshop, and AECOM Tishman to handle the rezoning, design, and development of the “transit-oriented development.”

The developers specify in the filing that 81 of the 267 units will be affordable to those earning an average of 115 percent of Area Median Income, one of the options under the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program required for housing that takes advantage of a rezoning. The development will cater to Borough Park’s large Orthodox Jewish community, with balconies on most units, limited elevators, and plentiful bedrooms. Valgora said the residential buildings will have more three- and four-bedroom units than what is typical in new developments.

The complex, Valgora said, will be “a whole series of small walkups,” with different colors and textures to fit naturally into the surrounding residential buildings.

“The walkups are like classic Brooklyn walkups. They’re mostly four stories, they have stoop gardens, they have staircases. They’re fully accessible. We made sure that we meet all the accessibility requirements, including the ground floor…this was the amazing thing, that doing these smaller buildings actually not only fit into the community better, but it was more economic. It was actually easier. In other words, it was using classic Brooklyn prototypes.”

In order to provide the increased parking requested by the community, Valgora said the developer had purchased another site next door to hold vehicles. “Again, it’s a transit-oriented site, but for the community we committed to going from 40 cars to 80 cars. So we’re really trying to be responsive and work with them.”

Instead of the required rear yards, the development will have a private landscaped pathway that the application says would be “designed in the vein of traditional 17th and 18th century mews.”

The pathway will link the three tax lots together and give access to the adjacent streets through gated entrances. It will include raised planters, seating, gardens, and a perforated parapet wall.

“The green walkway actually connects through the whole neighborhood and goes through each of the blocks and connects into these series of arches,” Valgora said, “So it does create this kind of pedestrian connection.”

The rezoning proposal passed Community Boards 11 and 12 in June. The development area mostly sits in CB 12, and one CB 12 member said it was exactly the kind of development locals had been asking developers to do. “We have an opportunity here where they’re offering us three- and four-bedroom apartments, which almost never happens with a proposal for housing in our neighborhoods. Three- and four-bedroom apartments are exactly what our community has been asking to be built, and exactly what they’re building,” he said.

Following the July Brooklyn Borough President’s hearing, Antonio Reynoso in August gave his support to the project, but with the modifications that the parking be reduced to the original 40 spots and that the developer ensures the complex won’t interfere with the planned expansion of the rail line.

The Borough Park development isn’t a completely new idea: The air rights for three lots above the LIRR rail track were bought by a private developer in 1985. The rights were flipped in 1994, and Tabak and Lebovits, through Brooklyn Yards Development LLC, bought them for $4.25 million in 2019, city records show. As part of the deal, Brooklyn Yards Development LLC will also give the former air rights owners, LIBR Corp. of Manhattan, the deed to one 4,500-square-foot condo or its master lease once the project is complete.

Tabak’s Williamsburg-based Watermark Capital Group’s many projects in Brooklyn include a 19-story apartment tower that replaced a one-story church at 321 Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg and the adaptive reuse of an historic school at 125 Eagle Street in Greenpoint. The developer also recently bought and demolished St. Lucy-St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Bed Stuy.

The project is not without risks: The challenges associated with building above an active railroad are well known in New York City. Lawsuits, financial problems, and delays have plagued the more than decade-old unfinished Atlantic Yards development in Prospect Heights, which is in need of a new owner to take over. At Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, approximately half the development has opened on top of one of two planned platforms over rail lines.

Related Stories

• Ambitious Apartment Project Above Borough Park Rail Line, Possible IBX Site, Seeks Rezoning
• Local Coalition Decries Lack of Results on Atlantic Yards Ahead of Foreclosure Auction
• Developer Watermark Capital Plans 30-Story Tower for Landmarked Duffield Street Houses

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