Brooklyn Papers reports that a group called Fourth Avenue Neighborhood Preservation wants to downzone Fourth Avenue just three years after it was upzoned. The city should really take another look at it, said Jerry Speier, a committee spokesman. Aesthetically, these buildings [are] quite ugly. It would be a bad mistake to build them. As unimpressed as we are with the tall buildings that are rising on the upzoned stretch of Fourth Avenue, we gotta say this sounds like a silly–and far-fetched–idea. It’s not like most people had any illusions about the aesthetics of the buildings that would be put up between 6th and 15th streets when the rezoning was passed in 2003. It was a trade-off that helped preserve the scale of the side streets of Park Slope. And as readers remind us all the time, you have to build up somewhere to accommodate Brooklyn’s rising population.
Downzone on 4th Three Years Late [Brooklyn Papers]
Photo by Betty Blade