CROWN HEIGHTS — The City Council has approved a tax exemption for a Crown Heights complex set to become rent stabilized in a 30-year agreement with the city, officials said.
The council unanimously approved a measure Tuesday afternoon which would waive property taxes at the six-building Brooklyn Jewish Hospital complex in exchange for regulatory agreements that would make all units there rent stabilized and guarantee rent stabilization for future tenants, according to the resolution and Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
The tax exemption will go into effect when the regulatory agreements at each building in the Classon Avenue complex are completed by owner Alma Realty, according to staff of Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, who represents the area. That process could take two or three months.
But HPD and Alma has already shared many of the details of the tentative stabilization deal with tenants ahead of the vote Tuesday. At a meeting with residents in late May, representatives of the agency and the realty company said the agreements will stipulate that all 700 units in the complex will have rent stabilized leases for the next 30 years.
They also said that any new tenants who move to the former hospital building during that time must make less than a preset income cap based on New York’s area median income, or AMI. At the May meeting, Alma said those caps would be 120 or 150 percent of AMI depending on the building, or less than $103,560 and $129,450 for a family of four.
The tax break deal, also known as an Article XI incentive, comes after a long negotiation between the city and Alma to regulate the complex after tenants and elected officials publicly called out the realty group for pushing market-rate rent hikes on some residents in the fall of 2014.
The Brooklyn Jewish Hospital served as a medical facility from the early 1900s to the late 1970s, according to Brownstoner, and was refurbished into rental apartments in the late 2000s.
