Owner claimed that narrow lot adjacent to elevated rail line could not accommodate conforming manufacturing use. Hayden Hester applied for a use variance to construct a three-story residential building on a vacant lot at 1978 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. Hester’s proposal called for a 4,200 sq.ft building with five dwelling units on a lot twenty feet wide and zoned for light manufacturing. A Long Island Rail Road elevated rail line runs along Atlantic Avenue in front of the project site.

Hester claimed the narrow lot and the presence of the elevated rail line would constrain a viable manufacturing or commercial development. The lot’s width would result in inefficient, small floor plates, and the rail line would interfere with loading and unloading from Atlantic Avenue. Hester submitted evidence indicating that a residential structure had formerly occupied the site and that there had been no manufacturing or commercial use on the site in the past 100 years. Out of the 103 lots fronting the south side of Atlantic Avenue, only two had twenty-foot frontages and commercial uses.

BSA granted the variance, finding that the lot’s narrow width created a hardship in developing a conforming use. BSA also found that introducing five residential units on the site would not negatively affect the neighborhood character, noting that the subject block’s southern portion permitted residential uses and that the proposal would be permitted as-of-right on the north.

BSA: 1978 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn (256-07-BZ) (March 23, 2010) (Rothkrug, Rothkrug & Spector, for Hester). CITYADMIN