PARK SLOPE — Developers planning a residential project on the site of Park Slope's Key Food market will unveil their plans to the public at a Feb. 9 meeting, City Councilman Brad Lander announced Monday.
Lander and the nonprofit Fifth Avenue Committee will co-host the 6:30 p.m. meeting at P.S. 133 at 610 Baltic St., where developer Avery Hall Investments will share its vision for 120 Fifth Ave. near Baltic Street.
The site has held a Key Food and a 100-spot parking lot since the early 1980s. Avery Hall plans to build roughly 165 rental apartments and 52,000 square feet of ground-floor retail there with underground parking for 182 cars, according to a flier distributed by FAC.
The developer has said it will make 25 percent of the apartments affordable to "low, moderate and middle-income families," according to the flier.
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The land is governed by a decades-old urban renewal plan and any changes must be approved by the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the City Planning Department, which will get input from Community Board 6 on the issue, according to FAC.
The property's backstory parallels the vast changes that have swept through Park Slope in the past four decades. In 1972, the land where the Key Food now stands was a rubble-strewn empty lot that stretched from Fifth Avenue to Fourth Avenue, between Baltic and Douglass streets, according to FAC.
The city had created the vacant lot by demolishing 400 units of housing and factory buildings targeted for "urban renewal." The city had planned to build a new school on the property, but that never came to fruition because of New York City's fiscal problems.
Neighbors rallied to do something about the city-created blight and came up with their own vision for townhouses and a grocery store on the property. The residents, some of whom went on to form the Fifth Avenue Committee, wanted to build housing, including affordable units, atop a supermarket, according to FAC.
But at the time "suburban-style" redevelopment was in vogue, according to FAC, and the city ultimately decided to build the supermarket and parking lot, which is now considered a poor use of urban space.
Since then, the Key Food has become a shopping destination. News that Avery Hall Investments wants to develop the site, which DNAinfo New York first reported in November, worried residents who fear losing Park Slope's largest supermarket. Locals quickly formed a group to advocate for keeping a grocery store on the property.
Avery Hall has said it's open to input from locals and is considering including a supermarket in its new development.
The meeting on the future of the Key Food site is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 9, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., P.S. 133, 610 Baltic St., off Fourth Avenue. For more information, check the Fifth Avenue Committee website.
