Hush Street is tracking what’s changing in Gravesend.
This neighborhood doesn’t follow Bensonhurst, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Homecrest, or Midwood’s development patterns, and it shouldn’t be read through any of them.
Founded in 1645 by Lady Deborah Moody — one of the few American colonial towns founded by a woman — Gravesend was laid out as a fortified grid, one of the earliest planned communities in the country.
Three subway lines reach it today, which makes what’s actually happening here notable: not scattered infill, but one waterfront megaproject large enough to reshape an entire underused peninsula, plus two separate rezonings testing land-use limits that have held for decades.
A wave of Sephardic Jewish settlement in the 1970s reshaped much of the neighborhood’s residential character; none of that history required rezoning the way today’s projects do.
Where a claim comes from a developer, agency press office, or community source rather than independent reporting, we say so.
| Project | Location | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1Westshore Views Waterfront Megaproject | 4302 Westshore Ave. | Filed, Under Review |
| 258-62 Nixon Court Rezoning | Nixon Court, near Ocean Pkwy. | Rezoning Approved |
| 32080 McDonald Avenue Rezoning | 2080 McDonald Ave. | Filed, Permits Sought |
| 4Small-Scale Infill | 97 28th Ave. & scattered sites | Filed |
| 52074 McDonald Avenue | 2074 McDonald Ave. | Filed, Permits Sought |
A Waterfront Megaproject, Bookended by Two Zoning Tests
One 1,481-unit proposal would remake an entire waterfront peninsula. Around it, two separate rezonings are testing land-use limits — one on a protected 1978 boulevard district, one on a light-manufacturing corridor — that have mostly held until now.
1
Westshore Views Waterfront Megaproject
A Peninsula Currently Used for Parking Cars
The site sits on a peninsula between Shore Parkway and Gravesend Bay, zoned C3 and R4 — designations built around auto-oriented, low-density use, not housing at this scale.
Today it’s car storage. Westshore Views LLC’s application, known as the Westshore Large-Scale General Development, would need zoning map and text amendments, street demappings — including closing part of Bay 44th Street and renaming Westshore Avenue as a continuation of Bay 43rd Street — and special permits to build anything close to what’s proposed. (One small wrinkle: NYC Planning’s own ZAP tracker lists the applicant as “Watershore Views LLC,” not “Westshore Views LLC” as every press account — including this Tracker’s own sources — has it. Same project, same address, same principal; just an unreconciled spelling difference between the official filing and the reporting on it.)
At up to 450 feet, the taller of the two towers would be dramatically out of scale with anything else nearby, in a neighborhood with no supertall precedent of its own.
A School Contingent on Someone Else Saying Yes
The most unusual detail: a proposed 528-seat, 75,000-square-foot school is written into the plan, but only if the School Construction Authority actually wants it. If SCA declines, that same space converts to a private school or more residential units — a real contingency, not a guaranteed public benefit.
The plan also includes a 48-slip marina and a 74,930-square-foot waterfront public open space, positioned near Calvert Vaux Park and the Verrazano Sports Complex.
No community board hearing, CEQR determination, or political statement had surfaced in the sources reviewed for this Tracker as of publication — worth flagging plainly, since a project this size will eventually draw real public attention once formal review begins.
Sources: Commercial Observer (June 2025); Crain’s New York Business; BLDUP
2
58-62 Nixon Court Rezoning
Testing a Boulevard Protected Since 1978
Ocean Parkway is a designated NYC scenic landmark, part of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s 1868 parkway system. Since 1978, the Special Ocean Parkway District has regulated what can be built along it — required landscaped front yards, enclosed parking, and bulk limits meant to preserve the boulevard’s original character.
This rezoning would shift the site out of R5 and the Special Ocean Parkway District entirely, into R7A/C2-4 and a modified R7A (OP) designation — taller and denser than the district was designed to allow.
It’s a small project by unit count, but a real test of whether a near-50-year-old protective overlay bends for individual sites the way older contextual districts elsewhere in Brooklyn increasingly have — and, per NYC Planning’s own ZAP tracker, it already has: the City Planning Commission approved this rezoning November 12, 2025, with the case formally closed out November 28, 2025.
Two Addresses, One Project
The rezoning application is filed under 58 Nixon Court; the building permits for the same effort were filed under 62 Nixon Court — a common split between the address used for a zoning application and the one used for the actual construction filing on an assembled or adjacent site.
Six of the 19 units would be permanently affordable under MIH, a standard inclusionary requirement rather than a negotiated community benefit specific to this site.
Sources: New York YIMBY (Aug. 2026, permits); BLDUP; NYC Planning ZAP (case 2023K0359)
3
2080 McDonald Avenue Rezoning
A Rezoning That Took Years to Reach a Permit
City records tie this site’s rezoning effort back to an application first associated with the address years earlier, long before this year’s demolition and construction filings — one more example, alongside Borough Park’s Brooklyn Yards, of how long a Brooklyn rezoning can sit before anything visible happens on the ground.
Emerald Developers is converting the site from M1-1, a light-manufacturing designation, and R5B, low-density residential, to C4-4L, a commercial district that allows far denser mixed-use construction.
Landau separately paid roughly $9 million for industrial property in Gravesend, according to PincusCo — consistent with this site’s former manufacturing zoning.
A Real Discrepancy on Unit Count
One PincusCo report from August 2026 describes this same address as a 55-unit filing; New York YIMBY’s reporting, drawn from the actual Department of Buildings permit filing, puts the figure at 99 units based on 1,166 square feet of residential space per unit.
We’re treating the DOB-permit-derived figure as the more reliable one here, since it’s tied directly to filed floor-area numbers rather than a secondary report — but the gap between 55 and 99 units is real and unresolved in the sources reviewed for this Tracker.
Sources: New York YIMBY (Aug. 2026); PincusCo (Aug. 2026)
4
Small-Scale Infill
Ordinary Construction Beneath the Bigger Stories
At just eight units, 97 28th Avenue is the kind of as-of-right vertical expansion happening quietly across many Brooklyn neighborhoods — unremarkable next to a 1,481-unit waterfront proposal, but real activity nonetheless.
No other small-scale filings rose to individual note in the sources reviewed for this pass.
Sources: New York YIMBY (Apr. 2026)
5
2074 McDonald Avenue
A Second Building, Not a Duplicate Report
Joel Landau’s Emerald Developers is already converting the adjacent site one lot away — 2080 McDonald Avenue, also addressed as 101 Lake Street — into a 10-story, 99-unit building. The company filed separately for 2074 McDonald Avenue the same month, a second new-construction site immediately next door.
The two filings share an architect (Kao Hwa Lee Architects) and an identical total floor area, 134,477 square feet, which is what first raised the question of whether they were the same project reported twice. They aren’t: 2074 is seven stories with 19 parking spaces, while 2080/101 Lake Street is ten stories with 27 — distinct buildings on adjacent lots, not one project under two names.
Closing a Loose End From September
This also resolves a question this Tracker left open after a September 2026 pass: whether 101 Lake Street was a genuine second filing by the same team, or simply 2080 McDonald Avenue reported again under its alternate through-lot address. It’s the latter — New York YIMBY’s own August 2026 report on 2080 McDonald Avenue explicitly names 101 Lake Street as that lot’s second address, and the September article under the 101 Lake Street name describes the identical building.
The real second filing by Landau’s team is 2074 McDonald Avenue, not 101 Lake Street.
Sources: New York YIMBY (Sept. 2026)
What We’re Watching Next
The clearest open question is whether Westshore Views’ megaproject ever reaches a certified ULURP stage — a project this large, reshaping an entire waterfront peninsula, will draw genuine community board and City Council attention once formal review actually starts, and none has surfaced yet.
Now that the Nixon Court rezoning is formally approved, it’s worth watching whether it becomes a precedent for further requests to build outside the Special Ocean Parkway District’s nearly 50-year-old limits, and whether 2080/101 Lake Street’s unit count settles at 55 or 99 as more filings become public. With 2074 McDonald Avenue now filed next door, it’s also worth watching whether Emerald Developers assembles further sites along this stretch of McDonald Avenue near Kings Highway, or whether two adjacent buildings is where this particular push stops.
Just over Gravesend’s northwestern edge, Hush Street’s Bensonhurst Tracker already covers 166 Kings Highway, a rezoning on a block some sources place in Gravesend and others in Bensonhurst — we’re not duplicating that project here, since Brooklyn Community Board 11 (not Gravesend’s own CB13) reviewed it, but it’s worth reading alongside this Tracker for the full picture of that boundary.
Gravesend borders Bensonhurst to the northwest, Bath Beach to the west, Coney Island and Brighton Beach to the south and southeast, and Homecrest and Midwood to the east and northeast. Unlike Bensonhurst’s single contested spot-rezoning, Gravesend’s current story is genuinely larger in scale — a waterfront megaproject with citywide-scale ambitions, sitting alongside two more ordinary rezonings testing land-use limits that have held for decades.
Capital & Transactions
Money Moving in Gravesend
A curated look at recent property sales and financing that help explain who’s buying, building, and lending in Gravesend right now. Drawn from New York City’s public ACRIS property records, not a complete log of every filing — we include only transactions that say something real about the neighborhood’s direction, and leave out routine paperwork, internal transfers, and deals we can’t explain responsibly.
Magen David Yeshivah High School (143 Lake St.)Jul. 2026
A $30 million construction loan for a new 81,000 sq ft, 1,600-student Sephardic high school rising three stories on Lake Street and seven on McDonald Avenue — a major project not currently in this Tracker.
2074-2080 McDonald AvenueJul. 2026
This Tracker already covers 2074 and 2080 McDonald Avenue’s permit and rezoning filings (above) but has no acquisition or financing detail. This ACRIS record supplies the first confirmed capital behind the project.
Source: New York City’s public ACRIS property records. This module is reviewed and curated by Hush Street editors, not an automated feed, and will be updated as new, meaningful filings are confirmed.
Taken together, these four anchors describe a neighborhood on the edge of a real change in scale: one proposal alone would add more housing than most Brooklyn neighborhoods see in a decade, while smaller rezonings test whether Gravesend’s zoning limits — some just years old, one nearly fifty — still hold.
By Hush Street Editorial Updated Built from city filings and published reporting. About Hush Street
