With children on Big Wheels crushing piles of amber leaves and fashionably antique Victorian homes hidden behind lush gardens, Stratford Road is a postcard collector’s dream. Yet in the center of this hushed Victorian neighborhood in Flatbush sits a vacant lot guarded with eight-foot-tall plywood fences like some dilapidated fortress.
The lot did not always look that way.
One of those proud Victorians once stood there, but was purchased by a developer in 2006 and quickly demolished. The lot has been empty since and no new construction has started—a sign of what happens when a developer’s coffers run dry. The lot is overrun with weeds. Orange safety cones and pallets decorate the land.
“It’s horrible. There’s empty pallets, leftover construction material and trash,” said urban gardener Margaret Dunn-Carver, who rents a room in the house next to the lot. “It could be so much more.”
What a prospective new owner of the lot has in mind, though, isn’t likely to please Dunn-Carver.
The company interested in purchasing the lot at 480 Stratford Road, 10 Stratford Associates, is seeking approval for a legal maneuver allowing it to erect a seven-story building among the decades-old Victorians, setting up a fight with the residents of District 14, who insist such a building would violate a rezoning law passed in 2009.
This legal maneuver, known as common law vested rights, has become increasingly frequent since the end of the recession when a number of zoning changes occurred throughout the city, pitting developers against the communities that supported the rezoning. The Board of Standards and Appeals received 25 common law applications in 2009 and 2010, according to its Executive Director Jeffrey Mulligan.
One such zoning change was the 2009 Flatbush Rezoning, which changed the status of the lot from R6—a designation allowing multifamily dwellings—into an R3X, which permits only single-family homes to be built. The prospective owner of the lot on Stratford Road has filed an application for “common law vested rights,” which would allow the company to build according to the original zoning status of the property.
Community Board 14 unanimously voted Nov. 14 to send letters asking the BSA and the Department of Buildings to reject the buyer’s application.
The letters, copies of which were attained by The Brooklyn Ink, portray 10 Stratford Associates and the current owner in a negative light.
“Due to our concerns related to the non-owner applicant and our belief that the current owner has acted in bad faith,” says one of the letters, “Community Board 14 recommends that the BSA deny the application for common law vested rights.”
The community board’s concerns toward the buyer, according to the letter, is that the applicant does not own the property but is claiming financial hardship if the appeal is denied. The allegation of “bad faith” on the part of the current owner is not spelled out, but seems to be the result of five years of tensions between him and the community.
Jay Loeffler, the current owner according to Department of Finance records, purchased the land from Maurice Pinkster in April 2006. Loeffler surprised residents by quickly demolishing the Victorian, according to Henri Pinkster, Maurice’s brother, who has lived in the house next to 480 Stratford Road since 1988.
The demolition was the beginning of Loeffler’s plans.
Blueprints of the proposed structure, drafted before the rezoning change, show that Loeffler planned to build the seven-story complex on the lot, which connects Stratford Road to Coney Island Avenue, and use floors three through seven for apartments. Floors one and two were to be leased to a business.
Two similar structures were built at the end of the street long before the zoning change. But the proposed apartment’s central location angered the community.
At the time, however, there was not much residents could do to prevent the high rise.
The area along Coney Island Avenue was zoned R6, which permits the construction of tall residential or community structures. So Loeffler began construction on the foundation, which cost approximately $160,000, according to documents filed with the BSA.
Then, the recession hit. The construction stopped.
“My client had some financial problems, as have a lot of people in the last few years,” said Jordan Most, the lawyer representing both Loeffler and 10 Stratford Associates.
That was the way things stood in 2009, when the Flatbush Rezoning changed the status of the area comprising his property in order to prevent new high rises.
“I wanted to make sure we protected the beauty of the neighborhood,” said Flatbush’s Councilman Mathieu Eugene, who supported the plan.
The statute, though, does provide a two-year grace period for owners to re-file with the DOB and retain the original permit.
That deadline expired this year—about the same time Loeffler agreed to sell the lot to 10 Stratford Associates, contingent on its ability to build the high rise on the now low-rise-only lot.
So Loeffler filed an application to allow the building’s construction under common law vested rights.
Under common law, a property owner is allowed to continue a project that defies new zoning laws if significant work had been done prior to the law’s passing. But under common law, “significant work” is ambiguous.
“The common law is a more liberal application [than the statutory law],” said BSA’s application examiner Toni Matias.
As long as the DOB finds the original permit valid, it will refer the matter to the BSA to decide, Matias said.
“[The applicants] have to pass a three-prong test,” Matias said. “We look at work done, expenditures and possible incurred costs [if application is not granted].”
That is where the debate with the community comes in.
Residents challenge the idea that 10 Stratford Associates can take credit for the work, expenditures and possible costs of a property it does not yet own.
Unfortunately for the community, the BSA allows future owners to file the application, Mulligan said.
Still, the community board seems determined to fight against the application, which could take months to resolve.
“We asked the community residents,” said CB 14 Chairman Alvin Berk. “They are for not having the building.”
“We are allowed to build there. I’m going to try to build an old-style building,” said Igor Zangranichny, co-owner of 10 Stratford Associates. He also contemplated what would occupy the bottom floors.
“Maybe a doctor’s office or a kindergarten, something good for the community,” he said.
Leave a Reply