Controversial Summit Street Building Application Withdrawn

COLUMBIA WATERFRONT DISTRICT, BROOKLYN — A controversial proposal to rezone a section of Summit Street to make way for a seven-story apartment building has been withdrawn, Councilman Brad Lander's office announced Tuesday.

Developers originally planned to build the 65-foot-tall residential building in place of a two-story building at 41 Summit Street, a plan that would require rezoning a portion of the Columbia Waterfront District, according to reports from when the application was filed a few months ago.

But owners abandoned the plan, which was already shot down by the local community board, this week after they got wind that the City Council's Land Use Subcommittee might reject it as well. Lander said the applicant withdrew the proposal after he recommended a no vote to the subcommittee because the "public benefit did not merit its impacts."

The building would have been three times the size of the existing buildings on the block, would have blocked sunlight to the nearby community garden and did not include any affordable housing, Lander said.

"We need more affordable housing in the Columbia waterfront neighborhood, and throughout our community, and I will keep working with neighbors to find opportunities to build and preserve it," he said in a statement. "Together, as we are working toward the community planning for the Gowanus neighborhood rezoning nearby, we can find thoughtfully-planned, inclusive, mixed-income development that we can say yes to."

It is not clear what will become of the vacant two-story building, which has somewhat of a checkered past, now that the application has been withdrawn. According to the Star-Revue, the property was once a coffee shop that acted as a front for cocaine distribution before it was seized by federal law enforcement in the 1990s.

The proposal was not the first the city has received this year to rezone the Columbia Waterfront District. Developers Pilot Real Estate Group and Horrigan Development LLC filed plans last March to rezone nearby lots at 55-63 Summit St. to build up to four residential buildings.