A long-neglected state-owned site in Brooklyn that has sat in redevelopment limbo for decades is once again up for grabs.
Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a request for proposals on Thursday for 1024 Fulton Street, seeking a developer to take over the 12,800-square-foot Clinton Hill site. The request comes with conditions: The new owner must build apartments where all rents are at or below 100 percent of the area median income, and the new building must include at least 100 units. The RFP also calls for a community center on the building’s ground floor.
Whoever is selected to take over the site will pay a nominal fee. The state may still opt to create a ground lease on the site rather than handing over full ownership of the property.
Plans to redevelop the site have been snarled up in attempts to transfer the property to a nonprofit.
In 2014, the Cuomo administration halted plans to auction the site at the urging of then-Assembly member Walter Mosley, who wanted to sell the property to the nonprofit Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corp., the New York Daily News reported at the time. When that plan fell apart, the state legislature approved a bill in 2020 to sell the property to Philadelphia-based TCH Holdings for “fair market value.”
That proposal also didn’t come to fruition because TCH didn’t file the required paperwork outlining its plan for a senior center on the site, The City reported.
The latest RFP requires that the development team be 51 percent owned by a nonprofit, and it gives a slight edge to those wholly owned by a nonprofit (five points out of a maximum of 100 a bidder can earn based on criteria outlined by the state).
The state budget for fiscal year 2024-2025 allocated $3.7 million to demolish the 33,000-square-foot vacant building on the site. The building served as a showroom for Brooklyn Union Gas in 1912 and then for manufacturing and commercial uses.
The state’s Office of Children and Family Services bought the property in 1997, hoping to develop a community center. However, “due to structural issues,” the agency abandoned that plan, according to the RFP. The building has since sat vacant.
The site’s current zoning allows residential space that is four times the size of the lot (or a floor area ratio of 4), with a maximum building height of 85 feet. If a building includes affordable housing, the FAR can go up to 5 and the height to 115 feet. The RFP notes that the state is willing to override local zoning to maximize the amount of affordable housing, and will consider additional density, height and other modifications if they “support a superior design and site plan while being cost-effective.”
The RFP for the Fulton Street site is the latest effort by the Hochul administration to build on state-owned land. The state budget last year created a capital fund to build more than 15,000 homes on state-owned properties.
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