Development

Workers Tear Up Public Plaza Outside Fort Greene's 300 Ashland for Repairs

The public plaza outside the mega-development at 300 Ashland, Whole Foods 365 and Fort Greene’s Apple store on the corner of Flatbush Avenue is under construction.

by Craig Hubert

05/09/2019 2 minute 0

The public plaza outside the mega-development at 300 Ashland is under construction.

Strolling past the site earlier this week, we noticed workers have cordoned off a section of the public plaza, removed the trees and perennials, and excavated planting beds along the cascade of steps at the corner of Flatbush and Lafayette avenues in Fort Greene. When reached for comment, a representative for developer Two Trees said it was simply “repair maintenance work.”

We thought it might have something to do with the long-promised Brooklyn Public Library and cultural organizations that were planned for the development, totaling 50,000 square feet.

They were announced in 2013. But in the time since — the residential building opened in 2016 — nothing has arrived, even after Brooklyn’s second Apple store opened at its base in 2017, and a Whole Foods 365 debuted in January 2018.

When we last reported on the missing cultural institutions and public library in October 2018, we were told that the completion date had been pushed back to 2020. As of February, the city had still not acquired the spaces from Two Trees, Brooklyn Paper reported at the time.