Thursday, March 10, 2022

I hope this email finds you well in the wake of March’s full board meeting. It was a busy meeting, and I’ll summarize in the upcoming paragraphs and follow that with a suggestion to scroll further down this email.

I hope this email finds you well in the wake of March’s full board meeting. It was a busy meeting, and I’ll summarize in the upcoming paragraphs and follow that with a suggestion to scroll further down this email.

Looking back to last night, once we had a quorum, the meeting was called to order, and we heard from Council Member Lincoln Restler who was followed by our new  Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. It was great to have the BP be part of the meeting and hear about interfacing with community boards and other parts of his new role. However, I know many folks were especially grateful for the praise he gave for the Gowanus rezoning, referring to it as  “a model for rezoning.” 

After that, our Chairperson, Peter Fleming continued with the Gowanus rezoning and announced that we’d named four people to the initial stage of the rezoning’s oversight committee. Those four folks were David Briggs, Angelica Ramdhari, Tiffany Reid-Brown, and Alec Schierenbeck, with the focus for the group at this stage being the hiring of a facilitator. As noted last night, as the committee grows, so will the number of people named to it.

The next portion of the meeting presented four new on-premises liquor licenses from our Permits and Licenses (P&L)  by Committee Chair, Rachel Freeman. All four applications were approved overwhelmingly. For those wondering the 4 licenses will be at,215 Union Street, 787 Union Street, 278A 5th Avenue, as well 74 5th Avenue.

After P&L, we moved to items from our Landmarks & Land Use Committee (LMLU). With our LU Chair Alec Scherinbeck unavailable to attend, the LM  Chair, David Briggs, pinch-hit and presented all five of the committee's items. Three of those five were applications to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for "Certificates of Appropriateness." All three were approved unanimously. The "C of A" 's were at 305 President Street, 480 Henry Street, and 243 Garfield Place, respectively.

The LU items were for a ULURP and a variance and were approved overwhelmingly. The BSA item was to reduce the total number of required accessory off-street parking spaces from 75 to 38 at 218 Hamilton Avenue. The very need for this request led to the committee asking that the city looks to update requirements for parking and pedestrian safety along Hamilton Avenue. The ULURP was to rezone 41 Summit Street (Block 352, Lot 60 and p/o Lot 1) from an M1-1 to R6B zoning district to facilitate the development of a Use Group 2 four-story plus basement residential building with a total floor area of 5000 sq. ft. (2.0 FAR) and four dwelling units. As mentioned in the chat, and during the community session last night, Borough President Reynoso is holding a hearing on the 41 Summitt Street rezoning tonight at 6 PM. 

When we finished the voting portion of the meeting we heard from representatives from Nydia Velasquez, Assemblymember Simon, Senators Kavanah and Myrie, Councilmembers Hanif and Avelis, as well as the Captain of the 78th Precinct. The meeting adjourned a little after 8:30 and if that summary doesn’t cut it you can watch the entire meeting on our Youtube page.

More things are listed below my contact info, and I recommend checking them out. But enjoy the rest of your day no matter what you choose to do.

This is the web archive of a newsletter originally sent by email to Brooklyn Community Board 6 subscribers on Thursday, March 10, 2022. The email edition may contain additional event listings and links.