Push for High-Rise Next to Beloved Garden Becomes Battle Over Shadows
The New York Times
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden and its supporters are fighting a proposal to build a 14-story apartment building that would cast shadows on the garden.
Most people agree that New York City needs more housing. But in the heart of Brooklyn, a proposal for a high-rise with hundreds of new apartments has hit an unlikely sticking point: orchids.
As envisioned by its developers, the building would be 14 stories with a mix of affordable and market-rate apartments in the high-demand neighborhood of Crown Heights, just north of its border with Prospect Lefferts Gardens.
But the building would cast shadows over a celebrated botanic garden’s collection of rare and exotic plants. Orchids might stop flowering, ficus trees could shrink and dozens or even hundreds of species would have to be sent to other gardens in sunnier parts of the country, according to garden officials.
On one level, the fight is another example of the city’s fraught debates about the housing crisis. It underscores the tension between accommodating all the people who want to live in New York and safeguarding the kinds of things that make it appealing in the first place.
But the back-and-forth also highlights the strange cross-pressures that city planners must sometimes face in New York, such as weighing the need for new housing against the preservation of the beloved home of many unusual plant species.
“We are confident there is a solution that will protect the garden from severe shadows while allowing for much-needed affordable housing,” said Adrian Benepe, the president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, home to the plants at the center of the dispute.
