The Key for Park Slope to Keep Its Big Grocery Store: Less Parking

The notion that New York City housing construction shouldn’t be weighed down by mandatory parking minimums got a combative response from some City Council members at a hearing today. Streetsblog will have a thorough round-up of who said what tomorrow morning. In the meantime, here’s a quick detour to Park Slope for a related story about how parking rules everything around us.

At issue is the redevelopment of a 36,000-square-foot Key Food and adjacent parking lot by Fifth Avenue in north Park Slope. The store sells groceries at affordable prices and is an emblem of the organizing that helped turn around the neighborhood in the 1970s and 80s. Replacing it is a big deal.

In addition to about 400 locals, Council Member Brad Lander, Borough President Eric Adams, and Public Advocate Tish James were on hand for the meeting last night where developer Avery Hall Investments presented its plan, DNAinfo reports. The project would consist of 165 apartments, ground floor retail, a car-free “piazza” between two new buildings — and 182 underground parking spots (the site currently has about 100 surface spaces).

The aspect that has people most up in arms is the smaller size of the replacement grocery store. It would only be 7,500 square feet, about one-fifth the size of the Key Food.

As Stephen Smith pointed out on Twitter, you can swap in a much bigger grocery store if you lose some parking:

@joshgreenman Waiving pkg req would give them a lot more room for a grocery store. Underground space doesn’t count to FAR @bradlander

— Market Urbanism (@MarketUrbanism) February 10, 2016

Lander says the developer doesn’t want to apply for a waiver to the parking requirements, but some negotiated deal along these lines could be in the cards.

It’s a story that illustrates a terrible tradeoff happening all the time all over the city. In New York, it’s harder to acquire the necessities of life — food, shelter — because the law compels construction of something most New Yorkers don’t need at all — car storage.