Affordable Housing on a Megachurch Parking Lot? This Brooklyn Pastor Hopes So

NEW YORK — On Sundays, hundreds of cars squeeze into the 10-acre parking lot of a sprawling megachurch in East New York, Brooklyn, that caters to the largest evangelical congregation in the city.

Other days, the expansive lot — part blacktop, part gravel — mostly sits empty in one of the poorest pockets of the city.

For decades, the Rev. A.R. Bernard, pastor of the Christian Cultural Center, has had a vision for his underutilized parcel near Jamaica Bay: to construct an urban village, as he calls it, of affordable housing, local shops and a new performing arts center.

That dream may finally come true.

Bernard has partnered with the Gotham Organization, a real estate developer, to transform the land around the church into an all-encompassing campus of nine residential buildings with 2,100 units for very low to middle-income residents, as well as a school, a grocery store and on-site services for seniors.

“The mindset in inner-city conditions is doing everything you can to get out and not come back,” said Bernard, whose 43,000-member congregation makes the church, founded as a storefront church in Williamsburg in 1978, a requisite stop for any politician on the campaign trail. “Here you’re talking about, ‘Wow. I want to stay. I want to experience this community. There’s a future. There’s hope.'”

The development would mark one of the most ambitious projects in an area of Brooklyn that has seen a spur in construction. In 2016, a section of East New York was the first area to be rezoned under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s strategy to promote affordable housing and spark economic development in blighted neighborhoods.

The rezoning plan faced fierce opposition from many residents who, pointing to nearby gentrified neighborhoods like Williamsburg, feared an influx of new residential buildings would invite wealthier newcomers, displace longtime residents and alter the character of the neighborhood.

Since then, developers have flocked to East New York: It trails only Long Island City in the number of permits to build new apartments that have been approved between July 2017 and July 2018.

Most of the developments slated for construction are aligned with the city’s policy to only finance buildings that are 100 percent affordable. But many residents fear it is only a matter of time before rents in East New York go up, enticing developers to construct luxury buildings with market-rate units.

The site next to the megachurch is about 2 miles south of the section that was rezoned two years ago. Bernard built his 96,000-square-foot church on land he bought in the 1990s from the former owners of the abutting property, Starrett City, the nation’s largest federally subsidized apartment complex. The pastor, who has a master’s degree in urban studies, has long been a vocal supporter of preserving the affordability of the 5,581 apartments at the complex and was even immersed in a group that tried to buy it.

Bernard, a spiritual power broker who was the first religious leader to step down from President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board last year, said his new development would act as a bulwark against gentrification. Construction workers would be hired locally, much of the retail space would be reserved for local entrepreneurs, and there were no tenants to displace, he said.

“The gentrification of Brooklyn is not the future,” Bernard said. “It’s happening now, and I think that this is a very creative response to that reality.” The plans include curbless streets that lead to the heart of the complex, where the church, the school, a 299-seat theater and a community center surround a green quad similar to those on college campuses. The shops, on the ground-floor of the residential buildings, mostly face public avenues around the development’s perimeter.

“We need to rebuild an infrastructure of opportunity in this country,” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder of PAU, the company overseeing the design. “All of the things that create social mobility, whether it’s affordable housing, cultural institutions, health care, education — this project is about all of that. That was very fundamental for us.”

Construction would take place over a decade and would not begin until at least mid-2020. The project must go through the city’s public review process, which includes feedback from the local community board and approval of the City Council. Reviews typically take six to eight months and show great deference to the local Council member’s position.

Councilwoman Inez Barron, whose district includes the church, said the plan was ambitious and had great potential. She initially raised concerns about the proposed heights of the buildings, which the developers eventually modified: Most will be 13 to 15 stories high, lower than the looming towers of Starrett City.

Barron’s biggest point of contention, however, is that the units might not be truly affordable to those who need them most. The project would be a mix of income-based apartments for residents making 30 to 130 percent of the area’s median income, or $28,170 to $122,070 for a three-person family in the New York City region.

But Barron noted that the median household income in East New York, which has one of the largest proportions of homeless families, is significantly low: $34,512. And more than a third of families there might not qualify for an apartment because they fall below the 30 percent threshold and are considered “extremely low-income.”

“I think that housing in East New York should be affordable to the people that live in East New York,” Barron, a Democrat, said. “We don’t have a significant amount of people that live at 130 percent of area median income.”

And while many residents in the area said they supported the project, in no small part because of Bernard’s stature in the community, others remained skeptical.

“How many more buildings do you need in this neighborhood? It brings in too many people,” said Daniel Sedney, 59, who lives in East New York and was visiting his mother in Starrett City on Sunday.

He added, “Affordable housing has turned out to be a lot of garbage. A lot of it is for middle-income people,” said Sedney, who said he had unsuccessfully applied for an affordable unit on multiple occasions.

Bernard, citing the deterioration of public housing in New York City as an example, argued that mixed-income buildings, in which units with higher rents help subsidize the lower-rent units, were one of the few viable ways of creating a sustainable model of housing.

“We cannot warehouse one income level,” Bernard said. “The only way that we can change the community and respond to the gentrification of Brooklyn is to have a mixture of income in our communities. We have to create an environment where a manufacturing worker can live down the hall from a doctor and lawyer, or some other individual who is a professional.” Bryan Kelly, executive vice president at the Gotham Organization, said it was too early to determine how many units would be set aside for each income band. But he noted that, under a city law passed in 2016, more than 30 percent of the units built would remain permanently and deeply affordable for tenants in the lowest income bands. All of the units would be rent-stabilized.

“If we can adapt in any way, we will,” Kelly said.

Andre T. Mitchell, chairman of Community Board 5 in Brooklyn, said he was grateful the developers met with him early in the process and was impressed by the aspects of the plan that addressed social ills. Like Barron, he said ensuring affordability was a priority “to make sure that it’s a win-win for everybody.”

“As a board, we understand that East New York is the new ground zero of all these new developments,” Mitchell said. “There is still a lot of apprehension in the community. Often, we hear one thing and it’s something else that’s done. Developers have also played Three-card Monte with us, and often times they don’t come through.”

He added, “We have to make sure that promises made are kept.”