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Chair of Crown Heights Community Board Resigns Amid Rezoning Fight

 Dwayne Nicholson, chair of Brooklyn Community Board 9, resigned from the board and the chair position on Monday.
Dwayne Nicholson, chair of Brooklyn Community Board 9, resigned from the board and the chair position on Monday.
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DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith

CROWN HEIGHTS — The chairman of Brooklyn Community Board 9 — where protests over rezoning areas of Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens have rocked the board for months — resigned on Monday after less than a year in the position.

Chairman Dwayne Nicholson submitted a letter to district manager Pearl Miles, who alerted the board of the resignation in an email Monday afternoon.

“Please be advised that Dwayne Nicholson has submitted his resignation from his position as Chairman of Community Board 9 as well as from the Community Board,” she wrote. “Mr. Nicholson wishes the board good luck and is requesting that his email address and other contact information be removed from your list serves.”

When contacted at the board office, Miles said Nicholson did not offer much explanation for the move, saying only that “he wanted to move onto other things.”

Inquiries to Nicholson were not immediately returned Monday.

CB9 has been racked by protests in past months over the possibility of changing land use rules in the district, a process that began last year with a letter sent by the board to the Department of City Planning to start a rezoning study in the area.

In the fall, that document became the focus of protests by the activist group Movement to Protect the People. MTOPP became a constant presence at CB9 meetings, using noisemakers, chanting and racially charged literature to get its message out, which included asking Nicholson and others to step down. When asked on Monday about the resignation, MTOPP’s leader Alicia Boyd refused to comment.

Nicholson took over the CB9 chairmanship last summer, elected to the position over longtime board chair Rabbi Jacob Goldstein, who had led the group for more than 30 years.

On Monday, Goldstein did not rule out the possibility of running for the position again, but said he’d had to think about it given the “highly chaotic situation” at CB9.

He said he hopes the next chair “is somebody who will move the board forward and will have the understanding to govern … not what we’ve had until now, which has been total chaos, turmoil and indecisiveness.”

First Vice Chair Laura Imperiale will act as interim board chair of CB9 until a new chair is elected in April, sources on the board said.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who oversees community board appointments, had been made aware Nicholson stepping down Monday, a spokesman for the office said, but had no comment about the resignation.