WATCH: Brooklyn Mega-Development Protesters Arrested In Public Hearing

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Police pulled a group of shouting activists out of a public hearing for protesting a proposal for a new mega-development in Bed-Stuy.

The protesters stormed into the a City Planning Commission hearing at 22 Reade St. around 12:50 p.m. Wednesday, just as a proposed development for the Pfizer Sites in Bed-Stuy was about to be discussed.

“We renounce segregation,” yelled Juan Ramos, chairman of the Broadway Triangle Community Coalition, as a police led him and five other chanting protesters out of Spector Hall. “We will stand against the development in any way.”

The proposal Ramos and his organization hope to stop comes from the Rabsky Group, the Rheingold Brewery site co-owners who recently reneged on a non-binding affordable housing deal with the city. The developers originally promised to make 24 percent of units affordable in a development currently going up on Montieth Street and Bushwick Avenue, but announced in June that they would only provide the minimum the law required.

The Rabsky Group was about to ask City Planning commissioners to allow them to build eight new mixed-use buildings by rezoning a parcel of land near the Broadway Triangle — bordered by Walton Street, Union Avenue, Gerry Street and Harrison Avenue — when Ramos and five other outraged protesters burst into the hearing, sat on the floor, and refused to leave until taken away by police.

The Broadway Triangle Community Coalition activists are fighting the 1,146-unit apartment complex because it is “anti-Latino and anti-Black” and would displace lower-income residents in Williamsburg, Bushwick and Bed-Stuy, their attorney, Martin S. Needelman said in a statement.

“Broadway Triangle has been the site of extensive and deliberate discrimination,” said Needelman. “[The project] proposes simply to build a development that would house a predominantly white population at the expense of people of color who will be displaced.”

The protest in Spector Hall Wednesday afternoon was not BTCC activists’ first against the Pfizer Site development; organizers shut down a public hearing earlier this month to pressure Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams to oppose the proposal.

Adams responded with a recommendation that City Planning Commissioners require developers to provide a more specific plan with more affordable housing apartments than the 287 units originally proposed.

Developers have not specified how they will divvy up the space in the 1.7 million-square-foot development because they are applying for an as-of-right permit, which would allow them to adapt original plans without approval from the City Planning Commission.

The plan simply calls for eight buildings, with retail space on the ground floor with about eight stories of apartments above, plus 26,000 square feet of public open space and about 400 parking spaces, city records show.

The plans do not specify how many studio and one-bedroom apartments would be provided, which Bushwick City Councilman Antonio Reynoso pointed out Wednesday are badly needed in his district.

When City Planning Commissioner Joseph I. Douek asked Raymond Levin, the attorney who presented the Pfizer Sites plans, whether developers would work with the city's Housing Preservation and Development agency to create a more detailed plan, Levin replied, "We'll try."

Several City Planning commissioners, who have 60 days to decide whether to approve the plans and allow them to go to City Council for review, took umbrage with the lack of information provided in the proposal.

“Once you get our approval you’re free to go out on your own,” said Commissioner Irwin G. Cantor. “You’ve given us nothing to vote on.”

Michelle De La Uz added, “I think it will be challenging for us to vote without more information."

Photo and video by Kathleen Culliton