Park Slopers Reject Plans for Smaller Grocery at Key Food Site, Heckle Developer

The planned development for the 5th Avenue Key Food site. Rendering from Avery Hall Investments via Curbed

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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.

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The planned development for the 5th Avenue Key Food site. Rendering from Avery Hall Investments via Curbed

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.

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Photo via Save the Fifth Avenue Key Food/Facebook

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.

 

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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.”

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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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