WATCH: Brooklyn Armory Developer Drowned Out By Angry Neighbors At Rowdy Meeting

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Neighbors, activists and other local stakeholders began packing into the ground-floor community room of the Crown Gardens housing complex around 7 p.m. Tuesday night. Over the next two hours, they would yell, cheer, whistle and boo their way through the rowdy first meeting in the city's lengthy land-use review process for the planned redevelopment of Crown Heights' historic Bedford-Union Armory.

The plan, drawn up by private developer BFC Partners, has quickly become one of Brooklyn's most controversial real-estate projects. For locals, it has also become the ultimate symbol of the gentrifying forces currently driving them from their homes.

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The old armory at Bedford Avenue and Union Street, built on public land, would be turned into a combination rec center, office space and half-affordable-half-luxury housing complex under the developer's proposal. (See "before" and "after" pics above.)

Read up on the plan, and the purpose of Tuesday's meeting, here.

And below, watch video from the meeting and the rally beforehand. Or scroll down for our live blog, updated in real time.

7:30 p.m.

Representatives for the city and for BFC Partners have barely gotten a word in so far. They're here to present the specs of their Armory plan to Community Board 9 — but they're being almost wholly drowned out by deafening screams and whistles from dozens of activists in the room who oppose the project.

"Kill the deal!" the crowd chants.

When a black community board member tries to start talking at the front of the room, one activist yells at him: "Black man sellout!"

7:45 p.m.

Activists are passing around flyers that say BFC stands for "Bad For Crown Heights." (Pictured below.)

Their main complaint about the plan, as it has been for months, is that only half the Armory's new condos would be deemed "affordable," and that the other half would be rented on the luxury market. (BFC Partners has said this is the only ratio it can afford, unless city or state officials want to throw in some subsidies.)

And even the new apartments categorized as "affordable," various activists argue in a chorus of overlapping shouts from the crowd, wouldn't be within reach for many Crown Heights families. Click here for a full breakdown of the Armory's proposed condo prices.

8:05 p.m.

BFC's people are still having a hard time getting through the slides they prepared — much less offering explanations for any of them without another roar of disapproval from the crowd.

"I know you're taking a lot of heat right now, but really the heat belongs on the people we've elected," one activist yells from his seat. Dozens of other audience members whoop in agreement.

"You're selling us out, Laurie!" another woman yells in the direction of City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, who represents Crown Heights at City Hall. (Cumbo recently came out against the current plan for the Armory. However, leading activists in the fight against the plan have said they won't be satisfied until she kills the deal once and for all.)

8:15 p.m.

Activists representing various labor unions just asked the BFC rep at the front of the room (pictured below) whether local, unionized workers would be employed to build the new Armory. We couldn't hear his answer — but the crowd didn't like it. The "boos" and whistles of dissent are positively ear-splitting.

"That guy's having the worst night of his life," an otherwise quiet Community Board member embedded in the audience whispers to the reporter sitting next to him.

Indeed:

8:25 p.m.

Our beleaguered BFC staffer (whom we later identify as John Valladares) is having a second wind. The crowd gives him a few-minute window of relative silence to explain what other perks the new Armory will provide the community, aside from a rec center.

BFC will offer cheap office space to local nonprofits, Valladares points out.

It doesn't take long, though, for more loud and angry commentary to start burbling up from within the audience.

Lydia Downing from the Economic Development Corporation — the city agency acting as a liaison between the municipal government and the private developer — steps in. She gets a fresh round of "boos" from the crowd upon introducing herself.

Undeterred, Downing tries to break down the math behind the "community benefit requirement" the city is imposing on BFC.

The crowd looks a little confused. So City Councilwoman Cumbo, dressed quite regally in green and gold, chooses this rare moment of calm to take the stage and speak to her constituents. (To watch her speech in full, skip to the 1 hour, 16 minute point of the Facebook Live video embedded earlier in this post.)

"Right now, affordable housing — low income housing, rather — is the most important issue of the day," she says.

8:30 p.m.

"I am asking Community Board 9... to vote this project down," Cumbo says, addressing members of the local Community Board, who'll be voting for or against BFC's plan later this month.

"Do not support this project," she says.

At this, Cumbo gets a rare murmur of approval from activists in the crowd, who've otherwise been fighting her at every turn of this whole process.

"Let me state this, because this comes up a lot in conversation: Before my election and after my election, I will not support a project with 58 units of luxury condominiums," the councilwoman says. (A reference to the plan's starring role in the current race to fill her seat on the City Council.)

"This project is bigger than me, OK?" she adds. "So we have to make sure we support a project that is reflective of the true needs of this community."

Cumbo says she can't stay any longer tonight. However, she leaves the audience with this parting sentiment: "I hope this project will not continue to divide the community, but that we can unite with the community to vote this project down."

8:40 p.m.

Skipp Roseboro, a 71-year-old Bed-Stuy resident representing the organization New York Communities for Change (pictured below), gets in what will be the last impassioned speech of the night.

"This deal is not a good deal, because what you're offering is not much, and even that goes away — and all we have is quicker gentrification," Roseboro says, addressing the city and the developer.

"Why would we vote for gentrification?" he asks.

Just before the meeting ends, BFC staffer Valladares squeezes in a response to all that: "All the affordability requirements are permanent... so I don't know where you're getting that information," he says.

8:45 p.m.

Community Board 9 member Michael Liburd, head of the board's Land Use Committee (which will be voting on BFC's proposal next Monday night), calls an end to the meeting.

But right before he does, he gives the crowd a spoiler for next Monday: His committee will not, he says, vote for any plan that includes luxury condos.

The next public hearing on the future of the Bedford-Union Armory will be held at 6:30 p.m. this coming Monday, June 19 at Middle School 61 (located at Empire Boulevard and New York Avenue). The Land Use Committee will take a vote at the end of the night.

Liburd urges Tuesday night's crowd to come out to that hearing as well. "Please don't come out just when things are bad," he says. "Come out to be part of the process."

After Liburd's committee takes a vote on the Armory plan, the full community board will vote on June 27. The plan will then likely head to the desks of elected city officials for a series of approvals.

9 p.m.

In a conversation outside the auditorium, we ask BFC Partners spokesman Sam Spokony how he thinks tonight's presentation went.

"BFC is really committed to following through on the proposal they put forth," he says — which, he makes sure to note, includes a rec center for the community, affordable office space for local nonprofits and a bunch of affordable apartments.

Asked whether BFC would really go into the red if they made all the Armory's apartments affordable, instead of just half, he responds: "You want it to be financially sustainable. You don't want to build something... impossible to maintain in the long-term."

Lastly, we ask him whether BFC will consider tweaking the current plan for the Armory if it doesn't get the blessing of the local community board. (Which, in the end, is just a non-binding recommendation to city officials, meant to represent the interests of the community — not a vote that could actually kill the plan.)

Spokony says it's too soon to comment on that. "It's an ongoing process," he says.

This story has been updated. Photos by Patch. Armory rendering courtesy of BFC Partners