Revised high-rise plans will still cast shadow over BK Botanic Garden, cause ‘existential harm’ for ‘generations to come’

A battle over a proposed high-rise near the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is still blooming — despite the developer behind the project claiming it amended its plans to avoid casting shadows on the green space.

Dozens of critics gathered at a public hearing Wednesday to disavow developer Continuum’s pruned proposal, which garden officials said would still cast damaging shade on sun-loving tropical, desert and Mediterranean plants.

The new plans will create “existential harm to Brooklyn Botanic Garden for generations to come,” Adrian Benepe, Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s president and CEO, said at the hearing.

“Developers saying they’re advocates for the health needs of plants is like the chairman of Dow Chemical Company saying chemicals are good for rivers and streams,” Benepe said.

The changes by Continuum followed mounting criticism from garden staff and community members over the potential shade that would be cast on the greenhouses by its planned 14-story tower at 970 Franklin Ave.

Brooklyn’s Community Board 9 also unanimously rejected the project (with two abstentions) in June due to the potential for “significant adverse effects on portions of the community district including the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) and the Jackie Robinson Playground.”

Council Member Crystal Hudson convinced BBG officials to meet with developers back in July about the modifications, Benepe said. He called the changes “marginal improvements” and surely not enough to ensure the exotic plants will survive.

If approved, the developer’s project would create 475 apartments – including 119 permanently affordable. The lot is currently zoned for buildings between six and eight stories, though developers are seeking an exception for the high rise.

The project would also spur hundreds of union jobs in construction and building management, which has been supported by Community Board 9’s Beverly Newsome and the labor groups 100 Blacks in Construction and the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. It would be the first Union BFO residential project to date, the developer said.

Efforts to curb overshadowing included in the plan consisted of lowering the building’s bulkhead height and adding a sloped roof to eliminate “virtually all shadows” on the garden’s public areas — all the while keeping the 475 units of housing, attorneys for Continuum told The Post.

Other “non-public” areas of the garden would see a potential reduction in sunlight of no more than .3 to .4% annually, the developer’s attorney David Rosenberg said during the hearing.

“As the city asks all of us to help address our housing crisis, are we going to let .4% stand in the way of 475 apartments, permanently affordable units and hundreds of union jobs?” Rosenberg said. 

“To those who were concerned about shadows and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden: We heard you,” Roseberg added. “The revised application … ensures the BBG’s sun-sensitive area will continue to flourish.”

But Rowan Blaik, BBG’s Vice President of Horticulture, alleged the developer’s own study into the building’s impacts “cherry picks” data and measures the sunlight in areas taller than the plants, like rooftops rather than plant beds.

Developers also didn’t study the specific needs of individual plants, only focused on sunlight in July (which is not accurate to sun most of the year) and used old photos from Google Maps that don’t reflect current sunlight or trees in the garden, Blaik said.

“It’s like having a thermostats for heating and cooling your house and putting it up on the roof. It’s totally irrelevant,” Blaik testified.

“You’re cutting out 15% of the possible sunlight that they could get in Brooklyn, which is already less than they would receive in the wild,” Blaik added. “So there is a substantial impact to these facilities.”

Rosenberg, the developer’s lawyer, admitted that some of the garden will still be impacted — including tropical orchids, tropical desert plants and South African bulbs.

He floated “artificial light” or moving greenhouses as two ideas for shadow mitigation.

“The goal isn’t zero shadows, the goal is a tolerable amount,” Rosenberg said. 

City Planning Commission officials also pressed Rosenberg on the affordability of the apartments, with Commissioner Leah Goodridge referencing developers’ comments in a recent New York Times article that said if Continuum can’t get the rezoning then they will be building luxury market-rate condos instead.

“This is really antithetical to community engagement,” Goodridge said. “There’s already a lot of skepticism about private developers who come into communities and don’t listen.”

There’s “no economic way” to build affordable housing without doing it this way, Rosenberg responded.

The City Planning Commission’s vote on the proposal hasn’t been scheduled yet, but is expected to take place in about two months, a spokesperson said.

Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso last month called for the rejection of the developer’s application.

“@BrooklynBotanic is sacred, and this one-of-a-kind community resource deserves one-of-a-kind consideration,” Reynoso wrote on X.  “I will not support any development here that will create additional shadow impacts. This proposal fails to meet that standard.”