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Sunset Park Rezoning

Sunset Park residents envision neighborhood growth

Planning the Scale of Future Development

The Pratt Center worked with Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez and Community Board 7 to help residents of Sunset Park, Brooklyn weigh in on current development and a potential rezoning. The project has its roots in a grassroots campaign waged by area residents, who successfully lobbied against one developer's plans to construct a twelve-story building that would have marred the view from Sunset Park. After convincing the developer to significantly scale down plans, residents recognized the larger need to rezone the neighborhood, where new development currently faces no height restrictions. The community momentum around rezoning also presented an opportunity to address pressing related issues, notably the need to preserve and create affordable housing.

At a town meeting over the summer, Mayor Bloomberg and the NYC Department of City Planning agreed to conduct a zoning study of Sunset Park. In order to gather residents' input into the rezoning process, the Pratt Center worked with CB7 and Councilwoman Gonzalez to convene a series of community workshops in the fall of 2007. After a Zoning 101 presentation, subsequent workshops featured small-group discussions to discuss concerns and priorities surrounding new development, where new development should and should not occur, and strategies for creating and preserving affordable housing.

The Pratt Center prepared a report, Sunset Park Voices in the Rezoning Process, which summarizes feedback these community conversations, and provides analysis of related issues. Community members were united in their goals to:

  • Prevent out-of-scale development
  • Preserve and create affordable housing
  • Preserve the view from Sunset Park, a neighborhood treasure
  • Reduce commercial overlays from 150' to 100'

However, there was not consensus on the best way to achieve the preservation and creation of affordable housing. Some residents supported the idea of additional density on one or more of the neighborhood’s commercial avenues to generate affordable housing. Other residents and community organizations, however, fear that upzoning avenues that include rent-stabilized housing might displace low-income residents and eliminate more affordable housing than it would create. Our report explores these issues and analyzes several options.

Our report:

Community Positions:

In addition to the community conversations, several community-based organizations developed their own principles for rezoning:

Additional Resources:

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