PRESENTATION
Anthony Drummond, Katherine Gray, Serin Choi Present the Brownsville Arts and Apartments Project
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·
15 min
Anthony Drummond, Katherine Gray, and Serin Choi present the Brownsville Arts and Apartments Project, focusing on its affordable housing, cultural benefits, and community engagement initiatives.
- The project entails creating a nine-story building with 282 affordable rental apartments and a community facility dedicated to arts and cultural uses.
- It aims to respond to the Brownsville community's needs through a community-based planning process, contributing to affordable housing and cultural development.
- The presentation covers sustainable design features, including compliance with passive house standards and solar energy use, to minimize environmental impact.
- Community engagement is emphasized through local hiring commitments, MWBE contractor involvement, and supportive housing provisions.
Anthony Drummond
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My name is Anthony Drummond.
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I'm a senior planner at the Department of Housing Preservation And Development, and I'm joined this morning by Elena Forschatti, who is our director of Brooklyn Planning, Hollis L odds, our deputy director of Brooklyn Planning, the members of the development team from Blue Sea.
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And Gilbane, and we're excited to be presented on the Brownsville Arts And Apartments Project, which was certified into Uler on August 21st.
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We are seeking a series of land use actions to facilitate the development of the Brownsville Arts Center And Apartments, which will include a urban development action area that designation and project approval of UDAP, disposition of city owned land, zoning map amendment to rezone from existing R6c2 dash 3, and c 4 dash 3 district 2 and r 7 a and r 7 a c 2 dash 4.
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A zoning text amendment to establish the rezoning area as a mandatory, inclusionary housing, NIH.
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These actions will facilitate a new nine story building with approximately 200 and 82 affordable rental apartments with 1 additional unit for us superintendent, approximately 25,000 square feet, of Ground Floor Community Facility space dedicated to arts and cultural uses in several outdoor spaces.
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This project is being developed as a joint venture between Blue Sea Development, Gilbane And Art Space.
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Next slide.
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And next slide.
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The site was designated through the Brownsville RFP in August 2017, and we required that proposals be responsive to the visions and goals of the Brownsville plan.
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This plan was developed through a community based planning process with the support of CB 16 to develop a shared vision and plan for the future of Brownsville.
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We held a series of public workshops, community events, in conjunctions with local partnerships, and a major component of HPD's investment in the neighborhood is creating new affordable housing on vacant city on land.
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The plan acts for a cultural community facility that promoted and supported arts and cultural activity in Brownsville in addition to affordable housing.
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The site is the last one of 3 city owned sites developed identified in the RFP to move forward into Europe.
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Next slide.
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Alright.
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So the Brownsville plan has resulted in a series of neighborhood accomplishments such as the creation of 24100 new affordable homes under construction are completed with $1,000,000,000 plus invest in the Brownsville community, and over a $150,000,000 plus of city invested in parks, night shift, open space, and streetscape.
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And now I will pass it on to my development colleagues on the next slide.
Katherine Gray
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Good morning.
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Kathryn Gray at development.
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Gildan Development Company.
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I'm gonna just start by saying, you know, this project is a mixed use endeavor combining affordable housing with cultural center.
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And we Frank.
UNKNOWN
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Could you turn on your mic?
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Sorry.
Katherine Gray
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Can you hear me?
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Sorry.
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We've been working on it since 2018.
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To bring as many cultural partners as possible to Brownsville.
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And I'm really proud to say we've got a variety of arts groups that are supportive of the work, but who including flex dance program, downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance, New Yorkers for culture certain arts.
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We also in the next slide have been working very hard to identify a range, broad range of anchored tenants for the cultural center.
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So we're bringing brick that will be doing multimedia.
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They're the group that do free parks concerts in Prospect Park every summer.
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Pure Elements, which is a homegrown dance group that does classes for children starting at 5, going all the way through high school, and then additional classes for adults.
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The Brooklyn Arts Council that will be offering affordable studios space, Brooklyn Music School, which is over a hundred year old settlement house that again focuses on music, but will also be doing music production.
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And youth design center, which is a graphic design outfit that is also homegrown to Brownsville.
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We didn't start with all of these groups in 2018.
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We've expanded and we continue to be flexible and open.
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And as we find additional groups that are interested in taking space, we will make room for them.
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We're also including a large black box theater, which is also available for rehearsal space and additional educational space that will be available for groups in the community, not just arts groups, but the community board or other community based organizations that want a free or affordable space to use.
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Next slide.
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The project as a whole is a 9 story structure.
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It started with 291 apartments, and it's now down to 283, which is the a response to ongoing communications with the councilwoman and the community board where they were really focused on making sure that the individual apartments were as large as possible.
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So working with HPD on their design guidelines, trying to redesign the spaces to maximize bedroom sizes, living rooms, etcetera.
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Again, it's a 25,000 square foot ground floor arts facility.
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And then there are a range of amenities specifically for the residents.
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There's laundry on every floor.
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There is a free storage in the cellar for every apartment with assigned to every apartment in the development.
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We have a focus on active design, so there are fitness rooms as well as community rooms in the space.
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We also have a range of outdoor spaces, which we will discuss later in the presentation.
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Just want to stay on this slide and focus on the facade.
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Again, we have the facade design has evolved, and this is the the latest image.
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That really created in response to consultation with the councilwoman and responding to critiques that we received starting with the community board, really trying to bring a building that's beautiful and response to the concerns and interests of the community itself.
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So we're building something that the residents of Brownsville want.
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The site is through lots on Rockaway Avenue through to Chester, just north of Pittkin Avenue.
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Next slide.
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Sorry.
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In south of East New York, the lot areas 57,000 square feet and the current zoning is an R6.
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We're going up to an R7a, which is a contextual zone.
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And I'm going to hand it over to my colleague, Seren Choi, to finish off.
Serin Choi
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Hi.
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Next slide, please.
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So the open space that's getting developed as part of this project is in line with citywide goals or creating not only more publicly accessible space in the community, but also to create, like, a nicer experience for all the residents and participants at the art center.
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So the first type of open space that's available is a 51100 public square foot public plaza.
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It's right off Rockaway, and the idea is to kind of create sorry, Rockaway Avenue, and the idea is to create kind of like a segue into the cultural facilities, so it's right next to the theater space.
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Not only will it be accessible for the public to use, but the idea is so the arts operators could have, like, a maybe a flexible indoor outdoor component to any of the performances.
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And then the second category of, like, open space is approximately 11,900 square foot inside the building area.
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It's not only will there be private, passive recreational space for the residents, like department residents, they'll also be outer space for that's kinda designated for the arts facility users to use.
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So there'll be a little over 2000 square feet of an amphitheater space, so people can have a small formances outdoors and also kind more passive outdoor space for the arts facility operators in order for them to use it if they want to have an outdoor exhibit or gallery showing or anything of that nature.
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It's important to note that everything will be landscaped.
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The idea is to kind of increase the permeability to offset any, you know, storm water issue.
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Shoes that occurred during, you know, the course of the rainy seasons.
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But the landscape design is not only centered around making sure that the neighborhood residents can use the space, but also that it's a very enjoyable space for the arts operators and for the residents.
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Again, my slide.
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There's also oh, sorry.
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Next slide, please.
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There's another 3 components of the project that's really important to highlight is the social services component.
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So Approximately 42 Apartments will be set aside for supportive housing, run by the Brooklyn Community Housing Service is, what that means is that not only will there be set aside for people who need additional support, but they will be on-site supportive office.
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Where case managers up, you know, from the Brooklyn Community Housing Services will be there to offer on-site supportive services.
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The project is designed to the highest sustainability standards.
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The key ways to look at this is from a heating and cooling perspective, so it will be designed to passive house, which means that the building's insulation and windows and the way that's oriented around the sunlight is designed to minimize the an amount of energy needed to heat and cool the building, but also there is renewable energy component to it.
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We are using a canopy solar system on the roof that will generate somewhere between 3 to 400 kilowatt hours of energy to offset any energy usage to heat and cool the building.
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In addition to that, to address the city's concern around climate change affecting the city's landscape.
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We are incorporating on-site detention tanks.
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To minimize the amount of rain that can go on to streets and create flooding.
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Permeability is not only enhanced on the ground where there is, you know, the outdoor passive landscaping, but also on the roof, there's a green roof to kind of try to absorb as much water that comes down to avoid it from creating flooding issues on the street.
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But also, there is a workforce development component.
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So we have partnered with CBEDC, the local economic development core duration to identify not only MWBE contractors who'd be interested in bidding on the projects to ensure that the investments that we're making stay within the local community, but also to provide free OSHA training.
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The idea is OSHA certification is a kind of a key component for anyone who's interested in entering into the construction industry.
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So we kind of remove that kind of barrier to entry through the project.
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We also are partnering with the Brownsville Community Justice Center.
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We are providing some on hand like, marketing and place making experience for the local youths.
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So they'll get paid, like, a stipend to kinda learn and work with us on the project kinda get out the war to do some place making around the project.
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And then in addition to that, we have a local hiring commitment for juction and permanent jobs, where within CB16, approximately 50% of jobs will be open for those residents who live there.
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So again, the idea is to not only ensure there's a big investment in Brownsville, but keep the investment within the neighborhood.
Katherine Gray
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Just like to supplement what Sarah said.
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We were
Darlene Mealy
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we were
Katherine Gray
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At the Community Board meeting earlier this week where there was an update on the Brownsville plan and many of the Community Board members commented on the fact that they felt they still weren't being heard, that there were all these accomplishments, and yet their basic needs were still not being met.
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And I just wanted to say, you know, The end of the usurp is not the end of the consultation from our point of view.
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We're building a community center, that's cultural center, which we hope is really gonna flourish and be both a place where people are making art but consuming art, and everyone feels welcome.
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And we know that doesn't happen in a day, in a space, in a community where there haven't been a lot of opportunities for formal cultural spaces.
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So I just wanted to leave some thoughts that, you know, we're continuously working in the community, working with local elected officials to identify other arts groups that we should be communicating with who might wanna be part of this larger process, but also committed on the workforce side to work with the workforce.
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One office with New York City Housing Authorities REE's department, which has a very large footprint in this community, really to make sure that we use this project as an economic tool to improve the, you know, the financial capacity in the community.
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It's not just arts and it's not just housing.
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So thank you.
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Next slide, please.
Anthony Drummond
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Sorry.
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Thank you, Catherine.
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So in response to council member to the council member in the community, bore's feedback, we have also made changes to provide deeper affordability while also maintaining the proportion of family sized units.
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So the proposed project will be developed under HPD's extremely low and low income affordability program under Ella.
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Approximately 74% of the units will be affordable to individuals and families earning up to 60% of the AMI.
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That's up to $76,260 for a family of 3.
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The project will include a range of units from studios, 1 rooms, 2 Bedrooms, 3 Bedrooms, and over the 3rd of those units are family sized units.
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And 15% of the units will be set aside for formally homeless individuals and family.
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Next slide.
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Alright.
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To summarize, we're here today before you.
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As we conclude, are you a process for the Brownsville Arts Center And Apartments and seek the approval of the land use actions from the sub committee on Landmark's public sightings.
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Public cities and dispositions.
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We are currently in the 50 day review period with the city council, which the Euler clocks ends March 19th.
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Of this year 2024 at which we will at which point we would anticipate the conclusion of the Euler process.
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Thank you again for this opportunity to present before you, and we can open it up to any questions that you might have.
0:19:59
Thank you very much.
