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Crown Heights ‘miracle
deal’ in question
BY AIDAN GRAHAM
City lawyers were unable to
provide documents proving the
existence of the “miracle deal”
Council Majority Leader Laurie
Cumbo claims she brokered
with developers that would
bring 118 units of affordable
housing to Crown Heights.
Brooklyn Supreme Court
Justice Reginald Boddie ordered
the city to turn over proof
of the supposed agreement amid
a lawsuit brought by a local anti
gentrifi cation activist, who
claims there’s no guarantee the
community will see the promised
benefi ts from the massive
construction project.
“We had a discovery request
for documentation on the deal,
but she didn’t have it,” said Alicia
Boyd, who is representing
herself in a suit against the city
and developers. “It looks very
bad if you have an elected offi -
cial who made that promise on
the record to the public... and
then you fi nd out that the affordable
housing didn’t exist.”
The development — comprised
of two 16-story towers at
40 Crown St. and 931 Carroll St.
— has been jammed up in the
courts amid Boyd’s last-ditch
legal effort to halt the development,
claiming Cornell failed
to properly vet the residential
complex’s environmental impact
ahead of a City Council
vote to upzone the area.
Council Majority Leader Laurie
Cumbo Photo by Kevin Duggan
Cumbo made a big show of
grilling developers at a Council
hearing in November , asking
representatives for the builder
pointed questions about how
gentrifi cation made them feel,
but the councilwoman appeared
at a subsequent hearing the following
month to announce her
wonder deal , which added 118
below-market-rate units on top
of the 140 already promised by
the developer in exchange for
the city’s permission to exceed
existing height regulations.
“This is nothing short of a
miracle to announce I have secured
commitments to increase
affordable housing,” Cumbo
boasted at the Dec. 13 Council
hearing.
However, despite multiple
requests made between Sept.
19 and Sept. 24, Cumbo’s offi ce
was similarly unable to turn
Greenspace gurus and elected leaders break ground on a new entrance to Prospect Park on Sept. 19.
Photo by Aidan Graham
TOTALLY DIGGIN’ IT
Construction starts on new P’ Park entrances
over any formal paper trail related
to her pact with developers.
A spokeswoman for Cumbo,
after initially declining to comment,
provided a memo on Sept.
24 outlining the deal in bullet
points, but that document was
neither signed by any party,
nor dated. The spokeswoman
then did not respond to any of
Story on Page 4
several follow-up questions.
Both developers involved in
the project — Cornell Realty
and Carmel Partners — did not
respond to multiple requests for
comment.
A third-party, non-profi t contractor
tasked with construction
of some of the added affordable
units — Asian Americans
for Equality — declined to comment.
The Department of Housing
Preservation and Development,
which oversees the
city’s stockpile of affordable
housing units, claimed they
were not yet involved in the
agreement between the developers
and City Council — and
therefore had no knowledge of
deal.
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