Most Brooklynites know that Borough Park and Midwood are Orthodox Jewish strongholds, but fewer people are familiar with the somewhat smaller, tight-knit Jewish community in Mill Basin, a coastal neighborhood along Jamaica Bay. A developer plans to build six stories of faculty and staff housing next door to a Hebrew-language charter school, according to new building applications filed yesterday.
Plans call for a six-story building at 2150 Mill Avenue, a rather isolated industrial property next to one of the bay’s tributaries. It would hold 50 units divided across 53,921 square feet, for spacious average units of 1,087 square feet. Apartments will begin on the second floor and continue through the sixth, with 10 units per floor.
The first floor will have 16 covered parking spots, and an open lot will offer 47 more spaces, going above and beyond the city’s requirement of one parking space for each apartment. Zoning caps new building heights at 35 feet on this block, but the school will probably be able to secure a variance to go higher.
The school is the Hebrew Language Charter Academy, a dual-language school that serves 475 students from kindergarten through fifth grade. It took over a sprawling three-story warehouse next door at 2186 Mill Avenue last year.
Downtown Brooklyn-based Ralph Albanese is the architect of record for the school and its new housing. The developer on the permits is Paul Grosman, headquartered in Lido Beach, N.Y.
Grosman picked up the school’s 60,000-square-foot building for $1,751,425 in 2011, and then he purchased the 25,600-square-foot lot next door for $2,000,000.
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“Faculty & staff housing”? I think we heard this before in south Park Slope & Greenwood Heights. Can we have a school, any school, vouch for this and claim it will not be secular luxury condos?
This article is misleading and we would like to provide a clarification: Hebrew Language Academy (HLA), part of the Hebrew Public national network of dual-language charter schools, is the charter school mentioned in the second sentence of this article. It is incorrect to say that the school is “planning to develop six stories…” That is completely false. The developer of the project is Paul Grosman, who is mentioned later in the story. Neither HLA, nor Hebrew Public are involved in this project outside of the fact that the proposed building is near the school.
Jon Rosenberg, President and CEO
Hebrew Public
New York
Hi Jon. I just updated the post.
Hello, Rebecca – please remove the word “Jewish” from that sentence you corrected in the first paragraph. We teach Hebrew, but are not a Jewish school by any measure. As a public school (all charters are public) we cannot teach religion. Also, the headline is still misleading. We are NOT in any way planning housing. The developer is not part of us at all. Thank you.