Brooklyn Community Board Cuts Off Developers' Fingers

Various parties outraged by the out-of-scale "finger buildings"

Earlier this week, Brooklyn's Community Board 1 approved the city's Greenpoint-Williamsburg Contextual Rezoning Plan, which would limit new building heights within a 175-block stretch of both neighborhoods to 50 feet on narrow residential streets and 70 feet on wider streets, while also closing certain loopholes that allowed for developers to add extra bulk.

The Brooklyn Paper reports that those narrow streets make up 80% of the proposed affected area—which itself makes up a big inlaid chunk from Grand Street up to Clay Street—so this is a fairly significant height cap. The land-use review process now takes the proposal to the borough president before votes by City Planning and the City Council.

The downzoning was unveiled last fall by the Department of City Planning after a long period of heated discussion and negotiation with community groups and various other parties outraged by the onslaught of out-of-scale "finger buildings" that popped up following the controversial waterfront rezoning back in 2005. We're not sure what was the straw that broke the camel's back and triggered such outrage...

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