By Helen Klein
Now that the Department of City Planning (DCP) has committed itself to a rezoning of Canarsie, one local elected official is putting the pressure on the agency to get the work done by summer. At the January meeting of the United Canarsie South Civic Association (UCSCA), which was held at the Hebrew Educational Society, 9502 Seaview Avenue, City Councilmember Lewis Fidler told his listeners that it was his opinion that the agency could complete its work, “soup to nuts,” in a period as short as six months. “I would hope that sometime by the summer, maybe the end of spring, we would have a completed down-zoning in the Canarsie part of Community Board 18,” Fidler remarked. According to Fidler, he got the city to move on the rezoning by striking a deal. “At a moment when the Bloomberg administration needed my vote for something, I was able to extract that commitment from them,” he told his listeners. “The entire Community Board 18 will be studied for zoning changes, beginning with Canarsie.” Coming up, said Fidler, would be a meeting between DCP and civic association representatives, so that those who live in Canarsie will be able to tell the agency what they see happening, and what they want done to put the brakes on it. Nonetheless, Fidler stressed, “We’re not going to be able to undo any damage that’s been done, but on blocks that have one and two-family homes, the zoning will be changed so that someone can’t sell one of those homes to a developer, have the developer rip it down and put up a three-story condominium in its place. “The idea,” he added, “is that the character of this community shouldn’t be altered by over-development. This neighborhood is crowded enough as it is.” Activists in Canarsie, who met with DCP back in August, have been pushing for a rezoning for the past several years. The neighborhood, while primarily low-scale one to three-family homes, has zoning in many places that permits the construction of denser, multi-family structures, even small apartment buildings. The result was that, as real estate became an increasingly hotter commodity, developers began tearing down the older one and two family homes, particularly those on larger lots, and replacing them with multi-family structures that are not only out of character with surrounding buildings but also increase the strain on city services in the community, from schools to sewers. According to DCP, the study will include the residentially-zoned areas between Paerdegat Basin and Fresh Creek, south of the community board boundary and the Belt Parkway. Besides Canarsie, CB 18 includes the communities of Bergen Beach, Mill Basin, Flatlands, Marine Park, Georgetown and Mill Island.
