In Downtown Brooklyn, there’s a section of the Farragut Houses that sits on Navy Street, and across the street is a low brick building that used to be the site of the Navy Yard Boys & Girls Club at 240 Nassau Street.
For decades, the Navy Yard Boys & Girls Club was the safe space where children from the Farragut, Ingersoll and Whitman Houses went after school. Operated by the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club Foundation, it had enrichment programs for 6- to 18-year-olds. But the clubhouse was shut in June 2023 after the Foundation was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy because it had to pay for more than 140 child sexual-abuse claims. A former volunteer doctor was accused of abusing children beginning in the year 1948 and up until 1984. Lawsuits were filed against the Foundation under the New York State Child Victims Act. A bankruptcy court approved a $22 million settlement.
In November 2023, the Foundation sold the clubhouse to the real estate company, Alloy Development, for $15 million. Now, the former youth center is the central part of a proposed 1.4-million-square-foot redevelopment site that will feature 73- and 63-story buildings. Many neighbors have said this kind of project will only accelerate the erasure of Black people in Downtown Brooklyn.
Alloy’s project will cover 240 Nassau and the neighboring P.S. 287 site at 46 Navy Street, between Navy and Gold streets. The site is near the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
After neighbors protested the initial loss of the Navy Yard Clubhouse, Alloy donated $2 million to help restore interim after-school services and offered free space to six local groups who offer youth programs. According to information provided to the Amsterdam News, Alloy has spent more than three years engaging with local residents in more than 150 community meetings and events. The developer also works with a community liaison and a 17-member advisory group.
Alloy has also partnered with GFB Development, the company founded in 2024 by NBA veteran Taj Gibson and his friends Tameek Floyd and Malik Brown. Gibson grew up in Ingersoll Houses; Floyd and Brown attended P.S. 287 and belonged to the Navy Yard Clubhouse. Alloy said the partnership shows that longtime community members are helping shape the project.
Plans are for the new site to have 1,502 apartments in three buildings, including 302 permanently affordable units. A separate building would have 100 affordable apartments for seniors. The site will also have a new 120,000-square-foot K–8 school to replace P.S. 287 (students at P.S. 287 would attend P.S. 67 starting in the 2027 school year, until their new building is built –– the New York City Educational Construction Fund is the main public applicant). The project would also have a community center, cultural center, retail space, and open public space. The proposed cultural center could end up housing the Cultural Museum of African Art’s Eric Edwards collection.
The project is still going through the city’s land-use review process and has not yet received a final City Council vote.
But Eric Blackwell — an urban planner, former Fort Greene News publisher and longtime Brooklyn political strategist — has been one of many locals speaking out against the project. Blackwell thinks the project’s benefits don’t justify its size. “It was not necessary –– and actually harmful –– that they be even allowed to build a 73-story and a 63-story building right next to each other… [T]hey’re saying we’ve got to build 1,500 units to create 200 units of affordable housing.” City filings now say there would be 302 affordable units, but Blackwell is pointing out that some four out of five apartments would be market-rate.
Blackwell also questioned whether Alloy’s outreach means consent. He said a Farragut board member described “incredible opposition from the community against this project’s height, scope, and size,” and warned that the towers “would exacerbate every gentrifying principle that is affecting our community right now.”
Alloy rejects the idea that its meetings with community members were cosmetic. In a statement, it said, “240 Nassau was shaped by more than three years of community engagement, including over 150 meetings and feedback from more than 1,000 neighbors, NYCHA Tenant Associations, elected officials and local organizations. After decades of disinvestment in this area, the development team is seeking to rezone the site to maximize the amount of community benefit and housing in the project without any subsidy from the city.” The company says the advisory group it’s been working with will remain active during construction to aid quality-of-life concerns.
“We’ve been under attack,” Blackwell said, while pointing out that housing and economic exclusion in the broader Downtown Brooklyn–Fort Greene area has drastically changed the district’s demographics. Recent American Community Survey estimates show that about 16% of people in the Downtown Brooklyn–Fort Greene area are non-Hispanic Black, compared with about 49% who are white.
Alloy says its 240 Nassau project will reconnect the block, restore community uses, and create housing –– and all without city subsidies.
