Park Slopers Reject Plans for Smaller Grocery at Key Food Site, Heckle Developer
A community meeting on the proposed redevelopment of Park Slope’s 5th Avenue Key Food grocery turned into a public roasting of developer Brian Ezra Tuesday night, with an audience of nearly 400 area locals hissing, booing and laughing at explanations for the financial difficulties in creating a new supermarket to meet local demand. Developer Avery Hall Investments…
A community meeting on the proposed redevelopment of Park Slope’s 5th Avenue Key Food grocery turned into a public roasting of developer Brian Ezra Tuesday night, with an audience of nearly 400 area locals hissing, booing and laughing at explanations for the financial difficulties in creating a new supermarket to meet local demand.
Developer Avery Hall Investments is in contract for the property — a single-story, 36,000-square-foot supermarket at 120 5th Avenue in north Park Slope — with plans to redevelop it as a mixed-use, mixed-income complex designed by SLCE. Construction would begin in 2017 and take an estimated two years.
The store would be replaced by two buildings — a six-story building and a four-story building — with some 180 subterranean parking spots beneath, 52,000 square feet of retail on the ground floor retail, 165 rental apartments (41 affordable), a public pedestrian plaza, and a 7,500-square-foot grocery store.
A number of community members, however, object to the new store’s size — roughly a fifth of the size of the current store.
There is no shortage of grocery stores in the area — Union Market, the Park Slope Food Co-op and Associated among them — although residents say this is one of the more affordable options.
Calling the development a “huge opportunity for Park Slope,” Ezra — himself a native Park Sloper — responded to harsh critique of the reduced size by noting it is “difficult to produce enough revenue” with groceries.
The Key Food holds significant weight for the community, which spent a decade fighting for its creation in the face of urban blight during the 1970s.
In 1981, activist group the Fifth Avenue Committee also won the adoption of the “Baltic Street Community Development Plan,” setting a strict height variance at the site and requiring affordable housing if it was redeveloped. Many members of the Committee were in attendance at the meeting.
To amend the Baltic Plan to allow for a taller building, the developer would need to get the approval of both the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the City Planning Commission. However, Avery Hall has not expressed any intention to do this.
Elected officials in attendance were strongly in support of the community’s demands. Borough President Adams told the audience, “We’ve got a major problem in this city and that is supermarkets that are closing.”
Public Advocate Letitia James closed the evening by expressing gratitude toward Ezra and Avery Hall. “We thank them for their bravery to come to Park Slope,” she said (and smiled) to applause, then noted that everyone had been “very disappointed with this presentation.”
[Photos by Hannah Frishberg]
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I agreee. the 5th ave committee has become an agency looking for work and it will do whatever it has to .
Brad Lander who cannot be trusted shills for them
This article is pretty badly written.
“The store would be replaced by two buildings — a six-story building and a four-story building”
“In 1981, activist group the Fifth Avenue Committee also won the adoption of the “Baltic Street Community Development Plan,” setting a strict height variance at the site and requiring affordable housing if it was redeveloped. . . To amend the Baltic Plan to allow for a taller building, the developer would need to get the approval of both the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the City Planning Commission. However, Avery Hall has not expressed any intention to do this.”
So the six and four story buildings as-of-right under the Baltic plan and he doesn’t need the variance? What is the height variance at the site and what would the height limit be without it?
The plan calls for 41 affordable apartments, and 124 un-affordable apartment, for those who are keeping score.
I was a long time customer at the Key Food, mostly because it had easy free parking…. and I noticed many of my neighbors at the beginning from Fort Greene and then Crown Heights also used it for the easy parking, so by no means were most of its customers Park Slopers
But as other Supermarkets opened all around over the years, first the Pathmark at the Atlantic Centre, then Fairway in Red Hook and finally the Whole Foods at 3rd & 3rd, at each addition I could see the struggle for this Supermarket to stay in business and stock the whole spectrum that it once did.
But also for a large Supermarket, you need large spaces for access for trucks, no one wants to live above idling unloading trucks every night, this is why Supermarkets in residential areas do not and cannot work, if this sight is to become residential, it cannot have a large Supermarket.
This is a great solution. Trade the parking for a Key Food of equal size.