Rezoning Debate Ignores Safety Questions

Situated on a notably treeless stretch of street, 1123 Myrtle Avenue is not a building you’d want to look at twice. The Myrtle Ave Line elevated railway, abandoned and partially demolished since 1969, looms above the expansive one-story concrete building.

The building on the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Lewis Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant once housed the Social Security Administration (SSA) and, though it still bears the SSA’s namesake on its greying metal doorframe, it now serves as a temporary office for the United States Census Bureau. The SSA’s long-term lease has expired and the Census Bureau will be vacating in a year.

Now, the owner sees an opportunity for demolition and redevelopment. SYU Properties LLC, aims to turn the property into a rental apartment complex. However, the company’s track record in the Brooklyn housing market suggests that the rezoning decision may be the least of the Committee’s worries.

“We want to revitalize the area, which can use improvement,” Ilan Elishayev, son of the family behind the LLC, stated in an interview after the Committee meeting. He added that his family wants to bring more businesses to the area, and perhaps even get the abandoned rail track taken down.

First, they have to get approval from The Housing & Land Use Committee within Brooklyn’s Community Board 3 to allow the rezoning of a privately-owned lot on a block they had already worked hard to rezone.

The Myrtle Ave lot sits in an area designated for mandatory inclusionary housing. At least 30% of the site’s rental units must be dedicated to affordable housing for incomes averaging 80% Adjustable Mean Income (AMI), while the remainder of the units can be reserved for market-rate housing. At last week’s meeting, SYU Properties and Pryor Cashman, its legal representation, proposed rezoning the area to allow for the building’s overall height cap to increase from 95 feet to 115 feet. This adjustment, which the Committee views as significant, would add 3 more floors of rental housing and an extra 30,000 square feet.

Chairperson C. Dorris Pinn explained at a September meeting that the Committee “worked very hard block by block to rezone certain areas” of CB3. “We don’t want to rezone the rezoning,” she said. In an interview after the meeting, she explained that the Committee’s main concern with the proposal is the height of buildings in the neighborhood. “We don’t want to be Downtown Brooklyn,” she said matter-of-factly.

Under the current zoning, SYU Properties and Pryor Cashman estimate that the new development could accommodate 117 total rental units: 82 market-rate and 35 affordable. If approved, the rezoning could accommodate as many as 150 total units: 105 market-rate and 45 affordable. Though this would generate significantly more profit for SYU Properties, it would also create 10 more affordable units, a much-needed addition to the community.

Though SYU Properties LLC has only owned 1123 Myrtle Avenue for about 10 years, the firm has decades of experience holding residential and commercial properties throughout the 5 boroughs, as its website claims. One of its buildings, a residential apartment complex located at 265 Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, is registered not under SYU Properties but under a separate company called 265 Ocean Parkway LLC, despite being advertised on SYU Properties’ website as one of its holdings. Public records show that 265 Ocean Parkway LLC currently has one active case against it in the New York State Civil Supreme Court, as well as 3 additional disposed Civil Supreme Court cases — two from 2010 and one from 2011.

According to the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB), over 60 complaints have been submitted against the building since 2008, for offenses including: illegal dumping, boulders and chunks of rock falling onto neighboring buildings, construction work without a permit, construction work with an expired permit, and failure to maintain safe construction practices, to name a few. On August 13, 2019 Brooklyn Borough Commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik issued a “full stop work order” on the property until it can adhere to safety code. The property had already had a partial stop work order issued against it in June due to a failure to provide protection to adjacent properties. There are currently 11 open DOB violations against the LLC dating back as far as 2009, each indicating that compliance has not been recorded and fees of up to $24,000 per violation remain due.

Among the 164 total complaints, DOB violations, and Environmental Control Board violations, a pattern emerges. That is, regardless of what construction company was working at the site in the 11 years that 265 Ocean Parkway LLC has owned the property, there’s an extensive record of mismanagement, misconduct, and disregard for community complaints. When asked in a phone conversation about his stance on the violations, Ilan Elishayev of SYU Properties would not provide comment.

The violations against 265 Ocean Parkway LLC, otherwise known as SYU Properties LLC, indicate that the greater issue at hand for Community Board 3 — beyond the proposed height increase — may be the unsafe and illegal practices the company continuously employs in at least one of its other residential housing developments.