Revealed: 8 Possible Sites for New Schools in Brooklyn's Overflowing District 15

By John V. Santore and Simone Wilson

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — The city's School Construction Authority (SCA) is seriously evaluating at least eight properties in Sunset Park where brand-new schools could be built and opened within Brooklyn's severely overcrowded 15th school district, Patch has learned.

SCA officials listed the sites in an October letter sent to Community Board 7 (representing Sunset Park and Windsor Terrace at the community level) and City Council Member Carlos Menchaca (representing Sunset Park and Red Hook at City Hall).

The full letter is embedded further down the page. And here is a list of the sites under city consideration:

• 5020 4th Ave. (Sunset Park), pictured above. Better known as the classic pink "Parkway Garage" building at the corner of 4th Avenue and 51st Street, with views of Wall Street and the Statue of Liberty. Reportedly sold earlier this year for around $8 million.

• 138-160 35th St. (Sunset Park), currently a single-story warehouse space in the shadow of the Gowanus Expressway, stretching halfway down a long block of 35th Street. Across from Sunset Park High School up near the Greenwood Heights area.

• 768 5th Ave. (Sunset Park), another long, flat warehouse space up north, directly across the street from Greenwood Cemetery. Former site of Time Warner Cable.

• 199 28th St. (Sunset Park), a parking lot on the same block as the Time Warner warehouse.

• 234-248 27th St. (Sunset Park), another long, brick warehouse across from some row houses and next to the cemetery. (Originally reported as 234-248 7th Ave. in Park Slope, due to a typo on the city's part. More on the mistake here.)

• 850 5th Ave.(Sunset Park), the massive Jackie Gleason Bus Depot just south of Greenwood Cemetery and directly across the street from the old Melody Lanes bowling alley.

• 775 5th Ave. (Sunset Park), yet another one-story warehouse along 5th Avenue facing the cemetery — this time, the old, brick Staplex building between 28th and 29th streets.

• 4511 8th Ave. (Sunset Park), or the building formerly known as the C-Town Supermarket, a budget grocery store on the corner of 8th Avenue and 46th Street.

Sunset Park's historic old police station at 43rd Street and 4th Avenue is also still a possibility, pending "public review," the SCA said.

(FYI, if the SCA chooses any of the above sites to host future schools, current structures on the properties could very well be torn down and replaced with new, more school-ish structures.)

School District 15 includes most of Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Gowanus and Red Hook.

The district needs to add thousands of new school seats to meet the demands of local families. Specifically, the SCA said in its letter to neighborhood leaders that over the next five years, the city will spend more than $325 million adding 3,840 classroom seats within the district — including 1,096 seats in Sunset Park alone.

That's even more than the 3,500 seats recently demanded by Community Board 7.

Still, the community board — along with Council Member Menchaca and the local parent group Make Space for Quality Schools in Sunset Park — haven't been taking any chances. All year long, they've been pushing the SCA to quickly identify more sites where schools could be built within District 15.

In February, board members sent the SCA a list of their own (embedded below), containing 30 properties they felt had potential to become schools.

Then, in June, they invited SCA officials to a contentious community meeting on the possibility of turning the neighborhood's old, out-of-use castle of a police station into a schoolhouse.

And finally, in August, the board and Menchaca sent a frustrated follow-up letter to SCA officials, asking them to "work with the Sunset Park community to create an open process and dialogue so that we can work collectively to finally resolve the chronic school overcrowding in our community."

The letter pointed out, rather diplomatically, that the SCA's past dealings with the community had led to the successful construction of Sunset Park High School, P.S. 971, P.S./I.S. 437 and other local schools.

Even so, board leaders and Menchaca said they were often "at a loss to explain... why certain proposed sites were deemed unfit for a school."

They asked SCA officials to publicly explain all decisions going forward, in order to "help to educate our community members as to the attributes that were deemed unacceptable" and "allow us to refine our search for properties to better conform to standards."

The SCA's October letter — embedded below, and featuring the list of eight possible school sites — was the city's official response.

Oct. 17 SCA Letter to Menchaca and CB7 by JVS Patch on Scribd

In the letter, SCA officials list a variety of reasons why many of the 30 sites won't work. Among them: Some are too small (new elementary schools need "at least 20,000 square feet"); some are adjacent to problematic properties or would run into traffic issues; some have red flags in their history, such as "environmental challenges"; and in some cases, the city would have trouble cutting a deal with the property owners (although "eminent domain" land grabs are still on the table).

Community Board 7's education committee will discuss the SCA's letter at a public meeting scheduled for Dec. 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the board's office, located at 4201 4th Ave.

The agenda includes the following three items:

• "Advocacy for the new year surrounding overcrowding and school construction"
• "Response to School Construction Authority’s letter regarding potential school sites"
• "Role of local administration in advocacy work"

(Community District 7's manager, Jeremy Laufer, clarified to Patch that the third agenda item refers to finding ways that school administrators and staffers can be brought into the campaign for new school seats in the district.)

For some more background reading before the meeting, here's the February list of school site proposals that Community Board 7 sent to the SCA.

And here's the letter board members and Menchaca sent to the SCA in August, asking city officials to please be more forthcoming and clear with the community.

CB7 Letter to SCA, August 2016 by JVS Patch on Scribd

Lead photo via Google Maps