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After years of getting the brush off on requests to limit building heights in Prospect Lefferts Gardens to six stories, PLG residents, activists and community board members are now meeting with City Planning to consider how the neighborhood should be rezoned.

In addition to supporting a rezoning of Flatbush Avenue, pictured above during this past winter, that would limit building heights there to six stories, neighborhood group The Movement to Protect the People (MTOPP) opposes a brand-new move to rezone commercial district Empire Boulevard to allow residential, MTOPP President and PLG homeowner Alicia Boyd told us.

We had not heard that any proposal to rezone Empire Boulevard was in the works, but Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams spoke in favor of it at an impromptu appearance at a Crown Heights tenant association meeting June 8 and the PLG community board also requested it, Boyd said.

MTOPP opposes market-rate luxury housing and development over six stories, even “under the guise of affordability,” as Boyd put it, because PLG already has the highest population density of any neighborhood in Brooklyn. As well, expensive new market-rate buildings, even with a large percentage of “affordable” units, will cause a wave of rent increases across the neighborhood, displacing current residents, MTOPP believes.

“We don’t need more people in this community,” said Boyd. “We wait three or four buses to get a seat. We wait three or four lights to go one block.”


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Upzoning is one tool that deBlasio wants to use to increase housing construction. The city wants to upzone huge portions of Brooklyn and Queens in particular. Problem is in many neighborhoods people just don’t want it, especially in established communities of 1 and 2 family homes.

  2. Ms Boyd was in rare form tonight at the CB9 city planning meeting: “We don’t need affordable housing in this neighborhood”. Nice. Thanks for dominating the entire meeting. That’s the way to progress. And more fast food, gas stations, and self-storage.

  3. It is not true at all that PLG is the most densely populated in Brooklyn. I found a website that shows population based on ZIP CODE which is what you need to do to really see how dense PLG is specifically (not the entire Flatbush area which is huge) and that website showed there is twice the population in Park Slope as in PLG. Which I predicted. It’s visible to the naked eye that’s the case.

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