Hush Street is tracking what’s changing in Gerritsen Beach.
Thirteen years after Hurricane Sandy, this neighborhood’s development story is still mostly about water — what’s been done to keep it out, and what’s still only promised.
Gerritsen Beach is a low-lying peninsula community bounded roughly by Gerritsen Avenue, Shell Bank Creek, and Jamaica Bay, adjacent to Marine Park and Sheepshead Bay. Sandy’s 2012 storm surge flooded the entire neighborhood and severely damaged most of its homes; then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg designated it Zone A afterward and promised improved infrastructure and social services.
Some of that promise has been kept. Some of it, more than a decade later, hasn’t.
Where a claim comes from a city agency, community board, or resident rather than independent reporting, we say so.
| Project | Location | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1Gerritsen Beach Infrastructure Upgrade | 60+ blocks, neighborhood-wide | Completed |
| 2Resilient Neighborhoods: Gerritsen Beach | Neighborhood-wide rezoning study | Zoning Adopted 2021; Infra. Unfulfilled |
| 35 Noel Avenue | Noel Ave. | Filed |
| 467 Eaton Court | Eaton Ct. | Filed |
What Got Built, and What’s Still Only Promised
The city finished a genuinely major, FEMA-funded infrastructure upgrade here in 2022. The companion rezoning proposed alongside it was actually adopted in 2021 — but the infrastructure commitments that came with it largely weren’t. Both are part of the same story.
1
Gerritsen Beach Infrastructure Upgrade
A Real, Finished FEMA Project
This is genuinely completed public work, not a promise: funded by FEMA post-Sandy recovery money and New York State Senate funds, and finished under budget and ahead of schedule — a real counterexample to how slowly recovery infrastructure often moves.
The two rebuilt bulkheads where storm sewers discharge into Shell Bank Creek directly address the mechanism that let Sandy’s surge into the neighborhood’s drainage system in the first place, not just cosmetic street repaving.
Sources: NYC Department of Environmental Protection; Brooklyn Paper
2
Resilient Neighborhoods: Gerritsen Beach
One Plan, Not Two — A Correction
An earlier version of this section treated “Resilient Neighborhoods: Gerritsen Beach” as a separate, still-stalled proposal distinct from the adopted citywide zoning framework. That was wrong, and worth correcting plainly: they’re the same plan. NYC Planning’s own ZAP project tracker lists “Resilient Neighborhoods: Gerritsen Beach” as ULURP case 2018K0367 (C210130ZMK; N210131ZRK) — certified for public review October 20, 2020 and formally completed June 2, 2021, the same rezoning CityLand describes as part of the citywide Zoning for Coastal Flood Resiliency framework the City Council approved May 12, 2021. It established Gerritsen Beach’s Special Coastal Risk District — the 25-foot height cap and one-/two-family-only limit that governs what actually gets built here today. That zoning action is real, adopted law, not an open case.
What genuinely hasn’t materialized are the companion infrastructure commitments that came with it — not the zoning itself. Community Board 15 chair Theresa Scavo told Brooklyn College’s journalism program in December 2025 that residents were “promised DEP sewer shut offs as well as generators for the stores on Gerritsen Avenue and many other updates. But…nothing has been done.” Those capital/service commitments aren’t ULURP land-use actions, so they wouldn’t show up as an open case in city planning records either way — Scavo’s account is the only sourcing this Tracker has for their status.
Elevation Works, But Isn’t Affordable for Most
Homeowner Barbara Curran, who elevated her house to FEMA base-flood-elevation standards, told the same reporters she hasn’t flooded since — but Scavo noted “the cost for floodproofing is very high. Most homeowners can’t afford it,” which is part of why only a small share of the neighborhood’s houses have followed that path.
A permeable-pavement pilot, a lower-cost alternative floated as part of the same conversation, was installed elsewhere in South Brooklyn in summer 2025, with no announced Gerritsen Beach location as of this Tracker.
Sources: Brooklyn College Journalism (Dec. 2025); CityLand; Brownstoner; NYC Planning ZAP (case 2018K0367)
3
5 Noel Avenue
Small-Scale, Within the New Height Cap
At 35 feet and 3 stories, this filing sits comfortably within the Special Coastal Risk District’s 25-foot-above-flood-height ceiling — a small, ordinary mixed-use replacement rather than anything that tests the 2021 zoning limits.
Sources: Marketproof (Feb. 2025)
4
67 Eaton Court
A Genuinely Old Structure, Coming Down
The existing building here predates the neighborhood’s own 1920s development boom by two decades. The filing’s source data also listed a large commercial-space figure inconsistent with a 2-story, 21-foot residential building on this small a lot; that figure is not repeated here as an apparent data-entry artifact rather than a confirmed fact.
Sources: Marketproof (Sept. 2025)
What We’re Watching Next
The clearest open question is whether the DEP sewer-shutoff and Gerritsen Avenue generator commitments CB15’s chair says are still unfulfilled ever materialize — the rezoning itself is settled law, not an open question.
Gerritsen Beach borders Marine Park to the northwest and Sheepshead Bay to the east. Hush Street’s own Marine Park Tracker covers a separate, ongoing NYC Parks restoration of the salt marsh and forest along Gerritsen Creek itself — a different project, on different land, from the street-and-sewer infrastructure work and stalled rezoning covered here; the two share a name and a waterway, not a project.
Taken together, this Tracker describes a neighborhood where genuine post-Sandy recovery investment and years of unfulfilled promises coexist on the same few blocks — a finished $28.9 million infrastructure project standing next to a rezoning plan that hasn’t been publicly updated in half a decade.
By Hush Street Editorial Updated Built from city filings and published reporting. About Hush Street
