Park Slope Neighbors Seek to Block New Apartment Buildings on Industrial Site

Arrow Action wants to see “truly affordable housing” on the sites, said member Christopher Huntington, but it also wants low-rise buildings of a similar size to other housing on the block.

The group is still looking into how that could be accomplished, he said. Building deeply affordable housing generally requires significant government subsidies or philanthropic support.

“We will do more homework on what are some other options,” Huntington said. “It’s frustrating that others aren’t asking the same question.”

One way to produce affordable housing without public subsidies is through a city program requiring buildings that get zoning boosts to make at least a quarter of their apartments affordable. Under the current rezoning proposal, the sites would participate in this program, meaning that the higher the buildings go, the more units of affordable housing they will produce.

Arrow Action has also raised concerns with the Department of City Planning that the towers could overcrowd public schools, strain local sewers, and increase traffic. Impact on sewers from a project of this size is unlikely. Earlier this month, the department released a study of over 400 recent developments of 250 units or fewer that found that only one needed to take steps to avoid negative impact on local sewers. That development also included a shopping center and parking garage.

The district’s median income is twice that of the city average, and many of Arrow Action’s members are distinctly well-heeled homeowners. Huntington, for example, owns a home in the neighborhood valued at $2.8 million. But they reject any characterization of their members as “rich folks who live in fancy houses,” Tisne said.

“A lot of the people that are coming to our meetings have owned their houses for decades or more — bought them when they cost $20,000,” he said. “A lot of them live off pensions.”

Another member, Kate McCabe, currently lives in a townhouse near the rezoning area that her parents purchased with a $118,000 mortgage in 1986, shortly after she was born, according to public records. Her parents, one of whom served on the New York City Council, still own the home, which is now worth close to $2 million.

McCabe is an affordable housing planner who works for Phipps Houses, a major affordable housing nonprofit, and before that worked at the New York City Public Housing Agency, according to LinkedIn. She declined to comment.

Some neighborhood residents support the proposal, like Ben Furnas, a board member of the pro-development group Open New York, which says it has collected over 700 signatures on a petition in favor of the project.

“It feels like a nice opportunity to build something that wouldn’t require the displacement of neighborhood residents,” said Furnas, who rents an apartment a few blocks away from the site. “I resent the idea that we should deprive dozens of families the chance to live in our neighborhood because we don’t want to see an apartment building of a height that is common across the city.”

In a statement to New York Focus, Arrow Linen spokesperson Michael Woloz said the company “is proposing a transit-oriented housing development on the site of its facility that is responsive to the citywide housing crisis.”

But Arrow Linen has lost Carroll’s favor by not contributing to the community, he said.

“I’ve never remembered Arrow Linen donating to the local public school down the block,” he said. “Arrow Linen has not been a good neighbor.”

Woloz, the company’s spokesperson, said that it has been “a major employer and good neighbor for 75 years.”