You can also see the DDRB plans for the Independent Life Building and Central Fire Station here:
https://dia.coj.net/Meetings/Upcoming-Meetings/DDRB/DDRB-Meeting-December-2020
Maybe I don't understand, but the DDRB packet says it recommends rejection of the hotel project unless they seek a deviation because of their surface lot? I assume this means either the design will be tweaked to conform further to the downtown zoning layout banning visible surface lots or they'll work with them to get them a deviation granted?
Basically, the building frotange doesn't wrap around enough of the surface parking lot.
Frankly, I think the recommendation is absurd. The building fully abuts Park Street.. which is your main artery. There is an outdoor seating amenity proposed along Roselle, to complement the first floor ground retail space along Park Street. Although the Code is insufficient because it doesn't identify what should be pedestrian-oriented/retail arteries and what should be considered service arteries (if it did, Roselle would be a service artery)... Park Street is where you should most care about how the building interacts on a pedestrian scale. Quibble if you want about requiring an overhang/awning at both the Park Street hotel entrance and restaurant entrance.. that's fine, requiring that doesn't even move a decimal point in the project's construction budget. On the proposed site design, a surface parking lot (on what would be considered a service road) is directly across the street from a drive-thru fast food restaurant (the irony is thick in that 'deviation').
Across the street, the dialysis clinic (!) was approved with a surface parking lot that required the same deviation (and has no transparent windows along Park Street... the hotel will at least have 35% of its ground floor frontage with full-length windows dedicated to an on-site gym, and about 20-25% each for a hotel entrance and a restaurant entrance). One block away, a suburban-oriented gas station was approved, and a parking garage was approved and constructed in a manner which will never provide ground-level retail (despite whatever the nonbinding language in the approval read.. it was not built with a facade that can be easily converted for retail). A block away from that, a hotel was approved that doesn't even front the street at all... in fact, its about as a suburban layout as possible. Two more blocks away, the Vestcor podium style building has only a slightly less % of a parking deviation... and two blocks from that, a surface parking lots fronts more than 50% of your main arterial across an entire city block within the Fresh Market grocery store-anchored strip mall.
The biggest irony, is that the current property owner (who is under contract to sell to the proposed developer) tore down two buildings on this site about 5 years ago.. and about a year and a half ago, was somehow permitted to build a surface parking lot for Florida Blue on the site.
Forget about overlay deviations... the specific act of tearing down buildings to build surface parking lot is ILLEGAL (no exceptions, no deviations, etc) in the current code. Furthermore, the current parking lot doesn't even conform to the current parking lot standards if it was a grandfathered use (it was not a grandfathered use.. it was just built less than two years ago... a decade after the parking lot standards went into effect).
The hotel fixes, in very real terms, something that was never allowed to happen in the first place... tearing down buildings to build a chain link fence-bordered surface parking lot. And it does so in a much better site design than anything that was previously approved within a 5 block area.
It's perfectly in line or better than most everything else approved in Brooklyn. The use meets a very unmet need (long term hotel accommodations near two Fortune 500 companies and a vibrant commercial district). You have an experienced hotel operator and an an experienced local developer. Approve the damn thing and get it built already!
