The city is moving to redevelop the Flatbush Caton Market into a mixed-use, affordable apartment building, and now a private developer has filed plans for a vacant lot on the next block, at 2155 Caton Avenue.
The five-story residential project would fill a hole on pretty active block lined with pre-war apartment buildings between Flatbush and Bedford avenues.
It would hold 27 units and 32,118 square feet of residential space, for average apartments measuring 1,189 square feet. The project is likely two- and three-bedroom condos geared toward families, who have begun flocking to nearby Ditmas Park. There would be three units on the ground floor, followed by six units apiece on the second through fifth floors.
The project would include an open parking lot with 14 spaces, which is the minimum required to fulfill zoning requirements.
The 13,600-square-foot site runs through the block to Lenox Road. It spans three tax lots and includes the vacant lot, a small house with a garage and a two-story building with a laundry and apartments.
Sammy Mah is the developer and Suresh Manchanda’s L&C Associates filed the permits. Over the course of the last two years, Mah – who lists a business address in Great Neck on the deeds – has spent a combined $3,490,000 acquiring the properties.
When Flatbush was rezoned in 2009, this particular set of lots was downzoned, and much of Prospect Park South and Ditmas Park got to keep their suburban-style zoning. Flatbush is facing rising rents, largely thanks to renters priced out of the surrounding areas, including Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, and Ditmas. Although the downzoning was designed to preserve the neighborhood’s character, it may also help drive up rents by limiting the number of new apartments that can be built in this transit-rich neighborhood near the B, Q, 2, and 5 trains.
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I don’t see the Ditmas Park demographic flocking to these apartments.
What is interesting here is that the 3 single family frame houses that were demolished were located on Lenox Road, 3 houses side by side. Shifting the building’s orientation to Caton Avenue is common here. That is what happened at Bedford and Caton, where the two buidings went up. One of them was BeCa Condos.