Derelict Clinton Hill Building a Monument to Hochul Official’s Failed Intervention

New York State is preparing to spend an estimated $3.7 million to demolish a state-owned building on in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, a decade after a local Assembly member stepped in to stop the sale of the derelict property.

That former elected official, Walter Mosley, is now New York’s acting secretary of state, after his nomination last month by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

In 2014, Mosley stepped in to get former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to pull the three-story building on 1024 Fulton St. off the auction block, state records showed, arranging instead to have a handpicked local nonprofit buy it at a negotiated price.

But the plan spearheaded by former state Assemblymember Walter Mosley fell through in 2019 after the nonprofit, the Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corp., or NEBHDCo, never came up with a required proposal for the location.

The onetime Brooklyn Union Gas appliance showroom , opened in 1912, has remained empty for four decades even as the Clinton Hill neighborhood around it has turned trendy, reversing years of disinvestment.

Now, Mosley’s successor in the Assembly seat, Phara Souffrant Forrest, and other elected officials who represent the area are going back to the drawing board. They’ve asked constituents what they want to see happen to the bricked-up structure.

They have also had “many, many meetings” with the state’s Office of General Services, which oversees state property, said Souffrant Forrest, who defeated Mosley in 2020.

“There’s clearly a need for housing,” she told THE CITY. “There’s a piece of land here. Why not make it happen? It’s gotten to the point that this place is cursed. It evades all attempts to develop it.”

A spokesperson for the Office of General Services said it will take an estimated two and a half years just to demolish the property, which is a former Brooklyn Union Gas showroom.

Asked why it is expected to take that long, Souffrant Forrest said it’s because OGS and the Hochul administration see no urgency.

“Of course it’s a priority to the community and to get something that reflects what the community needs,” the state lawmaker said. “However the state does not take that as a priority.”

Justin Henry, a spokesperson for Hochul, said the governor is “committed to increasing the housing supply in New York which is why she successfully pushed to include the boldest housing plan in three generations as part of the fiscal year 2025 Budget.”

The budget includes $3.75 million to “advance the project” at 1024 Fulton St., he added.

In March, Souffrant Forrest and state Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-Brooklyn) held a “community conversation” at St. John’s FBH Church of God next door to discuss the property.

The approximately 80 attendees at the gathering were mostly in favor of senior housing and are open to a commercial anchor tenant, Souffrant Forrest said.

They also overwhelmingly want the state to develop the property — not a private firm or nonprofit, she added.

The demolition proposal comes as the state budget passed in April, which presents multiple initiatives to spur housing, includes a $500 million earmarked to “advance conversion of state-owned sites into up to 15,000 new units of housing.”

One potential complication: the site comes with a city deed restriction permitting only a community facility at the location. After a 2016 scandal involving the sale of a Manhattan health facility called Rivington House, lifting such restrictions requires extensive public review .

‘It’s Been a Blight’

The building came into the city’s possession in 1986 for nonpayment of taxes. Then in 1997, the state’s Office of Children and Family Services purchased the property from the city for $330,000 to make it into a community space. Officials nixed that idea after discovering serious structural issues.

All further attempts to repurpose the building have failed.

In 2011, the Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation attempted to buy the building from the state for $9 million, but failed to secure federal funding needed to overhaul the property.

When he intervened in the state’s renewed attempt to sell the property in 2014, Mosley defended his effort to sell the building to NEBHDCo, designated via a special state law , for “nominal consideration,” even as the group’s financial records show it was operating in the red.

Mosley insisted that was the best use of the property to protect it from falling into the hands of a private developer seeking to convert it into market rate apartments.

“Do you really think that a developer on the open market would build affordable housing?” Mosley said. “You’ve seen what has happened to this neighborhood.

But the proposed deal with the Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corp. fell apart, THE CITY reported in June 2019. By then, NEBHDCo was in bankruptcy proceedings .

Mosley blamed Northeast Brooklyn’s leader, Jeffrey Dunston, for “going rogue” — by attempting to bring in a for-profit developer to cash in on the deal. Dunston at the time vehemently denied the allegation and said he reached out  to Ollie , a co-living startup, to get information on how to run a similar project.

Most recently, Mosley pushed to give TCH, an obscure Philadelphia firm that was also Northeast Brooklyn’s initial partner, and the Fort Greene Senior Citizens Council, a shot at coming up with a plan.

Mosley envisioned the team would build out space for the nonprofit’s senior center, along with a community center and ground-floor retail stores. That plan would not include any housing, affordable or otherwise.

The then-Assembly member told THE CITYat the time that he believed the project would break ground by summer 2020.

But TCH failed to file the required paperwork with the state detailing its plan in the required time — and the building has remained empty.

Now, residents and community leaders hope some of the newly budgeted state housing money may be used to finally develop 1024 Fulton St.

“I live in the neighborhood and it’s been a blight,” said Phillip Kellogg, the executive director of the Fulton Area Business Alliance from 2009 to 2020.

Kellogg has contacted state lawmakers in the area every year asking for an update.

“When I first started the FAB I was optimistic in 2009,” he recalled. “I thought there was momentum. Electeds were talking about it.”

“But a property owner in the neighborhood just laughed at me,” he added. “Clearly I was naive. And he was right.”

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