“Brooklyn Botanic Garden is sacred, and this one-of-a-kind community resource deserves one-of-a-kind consideration. I will not support any development here that will create additional shadow impacts.”
– Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso
Close followers of Brooklyn Botanic Garden will know that in recent years, the Garden has led a high-stakes campaign to oppose a rezoning that would allow developers to create tall buildings that would cast shade on our most sunlight-sensitive resources.
In 2021, the Garden, with significant community support, helped defeat a proposal that would have led to the creation of a 34-story complex just 150 feet to the east of the Garden. Now, in summer 2024, the Garden is actively opposing a smaller project that still poses an existential threat to its collections.
The new proposal calls for a 14-story building occupying the southern half of the originally imagined design. But because of its massing, density, and proximity to the Garden’s propagation facilities and education greenhouses, this project is far from innocuous. In fact, the applicants’ own environmental review indicates that their proposed building — roughly twice the height permitted under current zoning — would cause substantial, unmitigable loss of sunlight to the Garden’s most sunlight-sensitive collections.
The proposed building would lie in an area adjacent to the Garden that was rezoned back in 1991 specifically to cap building heights to protect the Garden from shadow impacts of future developments and prevent proposals like this one.
Founded in 1910 on 52 acres of City-owned land, Brooklyn Botanic Garden is part of the consortium of 34 New York City institutions operated in partnership with the City by independent nonprofit organizations on City property. In essence, the Garden is owned by the City of New York and belongs to the people of New York. For many years, the City has invested in the Garden to keep it affordable and state of the art in terms of design, accessibility, and sustainable practice.
Even as a City-owned asset, the Garden is being forced to defend its right to sunlight, in a newer context that is more favorable to the developer’s stated desire to create affordable units in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. That is why, throughout the City’s Uniform Land Use Regulatory Process (ULURP), BBG has worked to galvanize its supporters to come out and give public testimony, as well as to submit letters to the agencies in the path to approval of the project.
Beginning with the local community board and followed by the borough president’s hearing and the first hearing of the Department of City Planning, BBG has drawn passionate supporters giving voice to the vital importance of protecting this precious green space in the middle of Brooklyn. We were grateful that the community board and the borough president’s offices both issued sweeping condemnations of the proposal. The continued strength of this advocacy has demonstrated the strength of BBG’s commitment to the community, and the community’s commitment to BBG.
The Olmsted Network has been supportive of BBG’s work to preserve the existing zoning since the cycle of ULURP hearings began in 2021. Currently, the proposal is being reviewed by the NYC Planning Commission. It will either be approved by the Commission and sent for consideration by the NYC Council or rejected by the Commission and sent back to the developer’s drawing board.
Head to bbg.org/sunlight to find more information about the Garden’s Fight for Sunlight.
Our letter supporting the Brooklyn Botanical Garden in their 2021 fight can be read here.
