Cobble Hill

Atlantic Avenue gas station is going, going, almost gone

December 16, 2014 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Get a good look at the Shell station at 112 Atlantic Ave. The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a plan to replace it with an apartment building. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan
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So where will Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill drivers buy gas?

The last service station in their neighborhoods just got a step closer to demolition Tuesday — when the city Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) greenlighted a revised design for an apartment building to replace the Shell station at 112 Atlantic Ave.

Commission chair Meenakshi Srinivasan called architect Stephen Byrns’ revamped design for an eight-unit brick and glass residential building with storefronts in the Cobble Hill Historic District “a much-appreciated improvement.”

The design that Byrns, a partner at BKSK Architects, presented at a public meeting at the preservation agency’s Lower Manhattan headquarters Tuesday has more masonry and less glass than the design he had initially presented to commissioners in November.

The new plan also has a bulkhead on the building’s roof that would be less visible from the street than the one in the original design.

The commissioners’ vote to approve the design was unanimous.

Avery Hall Investments and OTL Enterprises, which are partnering on the residential project, need additional city approval before constructing the planned apartment building — from the Board of Standards and Appeals. Storefronts are not allowed at the site under current zoning.

A Cobble Hill resident — and car owner — who didn’t want her name published was sorry to hear that the plan to tear down the gas station on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Henry Street is advancing.

“Real estate is taking over our neighborhood,” she told the Brooklyn Eagle. “We are losing what Cobble Heights and Brooklyn Heights used to be.”

John Yee, a limo driver waiting near the Shell station for a scheduled customer, said once the station is demolished, the closest place to buy gas will be on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope.

“It’s like in Lower Manhattan, where all the gas stations are gone because of rising property values,” Yee said.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s decision to approve the apartment construction plan made at least one person very happy, however.

“I feel wonderful,” the man in charge of the Shell station told the Eagle Tuesday in a brief conversation. He identified himself as the gas-station operator and the property’s former owner.

An entity connected with Avery Hall Investments bought the site for $7.75 million in April from 112 Atlantic Realty LLC, city Finance Department records indicate. Theodoros Zorbas is the managing member of the seller’s LLC whose name is on the deed.   

 

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