Council Member Inez Barron/Image Credit: John McCarten

The development will bring 503 permanent housing units, both affordable and supportive, to East New York. On December 10, 2019, the City Council approved a land use application for the development of four mixed-use buildings to replace a three-story homeless shelter at 515 Blake Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn. The buildings will be a combination of residential use, commercial use, and community facilities. The land use application, submitted by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, includes a rezoning to a residential district that allows taller and wider buildings to support the project’s size, a transfer of formerly City-owned land to HELP-USA, the project’s developer, a modification of bulk regulations, and a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing designation. The Council modified the project from providing temporary and permanent housing to providing only permanent housing.

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Street view of 118-27 Farmers Boulevard. Image Credit: Google Maps

Board granted the variances despite divided community support. On September 23, 2014, the Board of Standards and Appeals voted to grant five variances to St. Albans Presbyterian Church for the construction of a five-story mixed-use facility at 118-27 Farmers Boulevard. The development site is located in St. Albans, Queens, and bounded by Farmers Boulevard to the west, 119th Avenue to the south, 189th Street to the east, and 118th Avenue to the north. The facility will feature two floors in the cellar for community space and five stories for residential space containing sixty-seven units of affordable housing, as well as seventeen parking spaces, and a thirty-five-foot perimeter wall.

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