Clinton Hill Charter School Should Be Rejected, Opponents Say

CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN — Clinton Hill residents are demanding the city reject plans to build a charter school on what they say is an already overdeveloped block.

Tenants of 15 Quincy — an affordable housing complex that would share a lot with the proposed school — argue the 101-foot-tall building slated to house Unity Preparatory Charter School at 32 Lexington Ave. would block their light, ruin their views and jam up traffic.

“The development in our neighborhood is at capacity,” said tenant Chas Brak. “We welcome a new school in our community, but not at the expense of our health, views or the historical character of the neighborhood.”

Brak is one of 250 residents to file an objection letter to the Board of Standards and Appeals, the agency that will consider the developer’s proposal to rezone the land on Nov. 14.

Plans to build the seven-story school were initially approved by Community Board 2 in February, but residents argued the developers hid information from them and were granted a public hearing.

Advocates for the charter school — which houses its students in buildings it shares with P.S. 44 in Bed-Stuy and the Brownsville Academy High School — argued its students need a campus of their own in the neighborhood.

"I don't think people realize how awful these classrooms are," said Unity Prep teacher A. J. Hudson, describing windowless classrooms with structural columns that make it difficult to see his pupils.

"If we have to get uncomfortable traveling everywhere to school," added student Tashara Watt, who commutes to the Brownsville campus from Clinton Hill, "you can be uncomfortable building this building."

However, Community Board 3 members were not swayed by Unity Prep advocates' testimony and withdrew their recommendation to the Board of Standards and Appeals, DNAinfo reported at the time.

The Board of Standards and Appeals is not required to take the Community Board’s recommendation, or lack thereof, but it may influence the board's decision.

The proposed campus — which would include a parking area, five floors of classrooms, and a basketball court on the seventh floor — would rise 25 feet above regulation height and require an expansion to the maximum floor area permitted in the lot, city records show.

Photo of the lot in question courtesy of Lupe Todd-Medina