NEW YORK — Entirely landlocked, Brooklyn’s District 35, one of the more densely populated sections of the borough, will see changes to its zoning restrictions that city officials claim will ease effects of high traffic volume, add to the housing stock and improve the road’s safety along an arterial roadway that stretches across the district’s bottom half.

The Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan, or AAMUP, is a comprehensive rezoning plan developed by Brooklyn Community Board No. 8 and the Department of City Planning after a decade of research, proposals and community input.

According to the AAMUP fact sheet, the plan uses zoning map amendments and land use tools that speed up review and approval for developing city-owned land—like Urban Development Action Area Program designations—to help fast-track the construction of 4,600 new homes, nearly 2,000 of which would be income-restricted.

The proposal also aims to create new jobs and service spaces, improve pedestrian safety, and spark investment in neighborhood infrastructure. City Council Member Crystal Hudson has championed the plan as “community-driven.”

But just as the avenue splits the district, residents are divided on how to address safety and neighborhood revitalization.

“You’re talking about moving in 15,000 new people,” said Lynda Balsama, a community organizer and co-founder of United Neighbors of Prospect and Crown Heights. “That right there tells you this housing is not being built for us.”

Balsama, a 20-year resident of District 35, has witnessed the neighborhood undergo numerous changes, but none so threatening as AAMUP. She worries the plan will accelerate gentrification through market-rate housing that attracts newcomers with less personal investment in the community.

According to a development framework document generated by Council Member Hudson’s office, District 35 has experienced significant changes in its population over the last two decades, with the overall population growing from an estimated 168,000 people in the 2000s to 188,000 people as of 2020.

“We were told that the only way to build affordable housing is to get these market high rises,” Balsama said. “That’s definitely the easy way to do it. But that’s not the only way to do it.”

There is consensus in the community about the need for revitalization, but to many residents, the form it takes matters. Other residents see the plan as a much-needed step toward making the neighborhood safer and more accessible.

Katya Willard, 31, who has lived in the district for 10 years, is more interested in prioritizing safety over affordability. At the City Council’s Subcommittee for Zoning and Franchises meeting, Willard gave public testimony during a hearing on the Atlantic Avenue Mixed Use Plan in late March.

“I’m in favor of all of these zoning changes, my number one priority is, I don’t find it safe to cross Atlantic Avenue,” Willard said. “I think having more people here will be helpful and make it safer. I’d love to see a narrowing of Atlantic Avenue.”

Atlantic Avenue is dangerous; a 2015 Department of City Planning study designated it a Vision Zero priority corridor due to frequent crashes, many involving serious injuries or fatalities. The study identified three particularly hazardous intersections: Nostrand Avenue, the most dangerous for pedestrians by far; Bedford Avenue, with the highest number of vehicular crashes involving a truck at 12%; and Vanderbilt Avenue, in the corridor’s densest part, where a more significant number of accidents and deaths involve pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists.

Alex Morano, 29, a District 35 resident and safer streets advocate whose family has lived near Atlantic Avenue since the 1950s, also testified in support of redesigning the avenue for safety.

“Atlantic Avenue has been dangerous,” Morano said, during his 120 seconds of allotted public testimony. “We can’t drop thousands more people into the project zone and leave the street the way it is. It’s just not possible.”

Both Willard and Morano supported redesigning Atlantic Avenue for safety, but only Willard acknowledged the community’s broader concerns about maintaining deeply affordable housing.

She feels that keeping people in their homes means providing new spaces for new people moving into the neighborhood to go to, and Willard believes that could be achieved through rezoning.

“I’m a huge fan of large amounts of upzoning for housing, even if it’s not deeply affordable,” Willard said. “There are people who will live in those homes and therefore won’t kick you out of your brownstone if you’ve been living there for thirty years.”

At the same City Council meeting, Council Member Hudson addressed the Department of City Planning and other agencies involved with executing the plan.

“AAMUP must significantly increase our community’s supply of deeply affordable housing through new construction and strengthened preservation investments,” Hudson said. “My community has advocated for these incentives for years, and this is a core pillar of our plan. It is unacceptable that my colleagues and I were initially told these tools could be included, only to now have DCP change its mind.”

Deeply affordable housing refers to households earning less than 30% of the area median income, a point of contention for many in the community, as the question of what constitutes affordability and to whom it applies often arises.

Hudson highlighted that many community-based organizations involved in the rezoning plan were instrumental in identifying “numerous city-owned sites that could be ideal for redevelopment.” Throughout this process, members of the steering committee, the community board, and community organizers all identified six non-negotiable points of agreement for them to support this plan.

Points that include deep affordability, tenant protection funding, and offering density incentives for light industrial uses in mixed-use zones.

Taking up the hard-line on the community’s behalf, Hudson indicated to DCP that a promise is a promise.

“I want to make this abundantly clear: if we cannot include these zoning incentives, it will jeopardize the future of this plan. We can’t claim to be doing good community planning if the community’s top goals are ignored.” Hudson said.

For District 35, AAMUP’s primary goal is to “ensure a diverse and vibrant mix of uses, space for jobs, services, and local retail,” among other things.

Residents like Balsama would also like to see that happen. Still, they would first like to see an end to “policy through pain” and more “policy through incentive,” and much more communication with the community about what is happening.

“We try to go to these meetings and they … boy, they love their acronyms,” Blasama said about the agencies responsible for rezoning. “You can’t understand anything they’re talking about.”

DCP, HDP, DOT, MTA, CPC and the city council are just a few city agencies involved in the neighborhood rezoning.

But, having no traditional comprehensive plan has left the city with a veritable acronym stew of agencies arguing over where to zone and rezone, and an alphabet soup of terms that obfuscate a community’s ability to envision what positive development can look like in their neighborhood.

“My main concern, as somebody who’s been community organizing here for the last two years, is that every time we hear about this plan, it is touted as a community-driven plan,” Balsama said.

“It is community forward, community devised, community driven. There were all these visioning sessions. Photographs are in the plan, but when you drill down into the appendices and look at the makeup of the people who actually showed up, it’s only 270 people.”

On Monday, May 12, 2025, the City Council and Land Use Committee voted to approve the latest revision of the AAMUP proposal, advancing the process beyond the Uniform Land Use Review Process and bringing the project closer to realization.

Adopted by the City Council on May 28, 2025, officials consider this an excellent achievement for District 35; still, it remains to be seen whether a plurality of the community truly shares the same sentiment.