Fenimore Street Residents Say Deed Outlaws Feared Residential Development

PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS, BROOKLYN — A Lefferts Garden community group is organizing against what they fear is a planned apartment building on their historic residential street, drawing battle lines they say apply not just to the corner lot in question, but to the neighborhood at large.

The Fenimore Street Block Association is already working to downzone 19 homes on the south side of Fenimore between Bedford and Rogers Avenues, plus two adjacent properties on Bedford. The area is currently an R6 zone, which allows for the construction of multi-unit dwellings. But the Association wants the properties in question to be placed in an R2 zone, which would preserve the single-family dwellings currently there.

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The goal, Association members say, is to prevent the rapid commercial development snatching up properties throughout the neighborhood from coming to their stretch of Fenimore Street. Last November, Community Board 9 voted to support the Association's rezoning effort.

However, on Jan. 25, plans were filed to demolish 174 and 176 Fenimore St., currently a single family home formerly used as a doctor's office. The properties are within the area the Association wants to rezone, but their owner, identified as Dr. Herold Simon, hasn't joined that effort.

Association members fear that what's coming is an application to build a six or seven story apartment building on the site.

"You have no idea how scary it is," said Edna Moshette, an Association leader who said she's lived on the block since 1973. A large apartment building "could have a negative impact on everything, including driving and parking," she continued. "It's very tight here anyway."

Moshette said Simon hasn't told his neighbors what he intends to do with his properties after the demolition, assuming it's approved. (A Department of Buildings spokesman clarified Wednesday that while the DOB's website states that the demolition applications were "approved on 1/25/17," they have yet to be examined by department staffers, which is why the website's "Last Action" entry reads "Application Processed.")

However, consultant Paul Graziano, who is helping the Association with its downzoning effort, noted that the demolition application lists developer Cheskie Weisz as being involved in the project. (The DOB documents actually list Weisz as the owner of the properties, though Graziano said he hasn't seen documentation showing that the properties were already sold.)

Weisz is behind numerous development projects throughout Brooklyn. Among them is a 96-unit mixed-use structure at 187 Kent Ave. in Williamsburg that Weisz bought for $45 million, as reported by The Real Deal. Weisz is also planning a 24 apartment development at 310 Graham Ave., as reported by New York Yimby, on a site very similar to the Fenimore Street property.

Weisz did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his plans for Fenimore Street.

But Graziano said the Block Association has an ace up its sleeve: a 1908 deed — or "covenant" — he found applying to the properties (embedded below) which stipulates they can only host "a private dwelling house for one family only."

The relevant section of the deed, as shared by Paul Graziano. Click to enlarge.

"We are going to enforce this covenant to the letter of the law," Graziano said. "There have been no demolitions on this block since the first house was built in 1886."

The stakes, Graziano said, are high.

"If we allow [a multi-unit] building to be built here, it is going to seriously compromise the ability to enforce the deed restrictions" elsewhere on the block, he argued. "And it would certainly compromise any argument of rezoning."

176 Fenimore Street Restrictive Covenant by JVS Patch on Scribd

Pictured at top: 176 Fenimore St. Image via Google Maps.