The shadow fight at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden has been settled

After years of struggle and many, many development proposals, there will be sunlight at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and at least some new affordable housing in Crown Heights. The Botanic Garden and Continuum Companies CEO Ian Bruce Eichner have reached an agreement that will protect the garden's greenhouses from shade and allow the developer to finally move forward with the Franklin Avenue project, according to the Botanic Garden.

The terms agreed upon by both parties will allow Continuum to build a 14-story tower with 355 apartments, 30 percent of which will be affordable, albeit for people in higher income brackets. (The affordable housing units are “workforce housing,” reserved for those earning between 80 and 120 percent of the area median income, which would be about $124,000 to $186,000 for a family of four.) The project will include Endorsed by Councilmember Crystal Hudson will appear before the City Council's Zoning and Franchise Subcommittee on Tuesday, followed by a vote Wednesday by the Land Use Committee. “After more than six years of discussion, debate and vigorous public advocacy, the threat of permanent loss of sunlight to our living plant museum has passed,” Benepe said in a statement this morning.

Additionally, the building's sloped plane will be reduced to 10 degrees “to ensure that necessary sunlight reaches the garden's plant nursery and other key areas,” according to the BBG. That's less than the 15 degrees the city Planning Commission approved in September has. At the time, Eichner surprised everyone by saying he would withdraw his application for the project once the city received approval. Continuum claimed that reducing the aircraft's angle would reduce the number of units from 475 to 355, making the affordability requirement financially infeasible. However, using a different affordability formula at a higher income bracket appears to have changed the math and allowed the project to move forward.

Continuum's original development proposal would have built two 39-story towers on the site of a spice factory on Franklin Avenue between Eastern Parkway and Empire Boulevard. This proposal, despite significant drawbacks – half of the 1,500 units were to be affordable and financed and built by unions – ultimately failed due to the shadow it would have cast on the Botanical Garden's greenhouses and some of its winter gardens. Adrian Benepe, the Botanical Garden's president, was frustrated at the time by what he considered unreasonable proposals and argued that Eichner should build what the area's zoning allowed – that is, a relatively low-rise, six-story building. Eichner argued that building what the zoning allowed would constitute market-rate development — that is, condos. This smaller squatter project, also funded and built by union workers, dates to 2022.

But despite some tense negotiations — at one point Eichner offered the garden half a million dollars to install lights and other equipment if it agreed to the 475-unit plan, an offer the garden rejected outright — the two sides eventually agreed an agreement around time. This means a lot less affordable housing, but it doesn't endanger the garden and is a better result than an empty lot or a completely market-rate development. It is scheduled to go before the full City Council on Nov. 21, where it will be approved under a protocol in which the council follows the council member's lead.