Community wants to see promises fulfilled in new Navy Yard Clubhouse
People living in Downtown Brooklyn’s Farragut Houses have been burned before. They say they’re not so eager to trust any supposed good news coming from outside their housing complex.
And recent reports that Taj Gibson, the 6-foot-9, 15-year NBA veteran, wants to play a part in the reconstruction of the neighboring Navy Yard Boys & Girls Clubhouse, where so many generations of their kids have for decades attended afterschool programs, don’t move them.
“They want to put up more housing, but parents really just need a place for their children.”
“We’ve got so many new buildings down here already!”
“Why?!? We got so many new buildings around here; why would we need another one?”
“It’s going to be so expensive in there forever. Forever!”
“We can’t get in it; it’s just going to be sold to white people.”
“We never knew anything was going on with the Boys & Girls club until all this happened.”
The Navy Yard Boys & Girls Clubhouse, located at 240 Nassau Street, was purchased for $15 million by Alloy Development, a real estate development firm, in November 2023. The Clubhouse had serviced families who live directly across the street––at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Farragut Houses––and other kids in the Downtown Brooklyn, Navy Yard, Fort Greene, and DUMBO neighborhoods, for decades before it was abruptly shuttered in June of 2023.
It was one of six Madison Square Boys & Girls Club Foundation clubhouses to offer daily enrichment programming for 6- through 18-year-olds across the city. The Clubhouse was forced to file for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 because it faced hundreds of child sexual abuse lawsuits filed under the New York State Child Victims Act (CVA) against a former Foundation volunteer.
Claims were that the volunteer abused children beginning in the year 1948 and that he continued doing so up until 1984. The Foundation filed for Chapter 11 restructuring in June of 2022 to save itself and said it found it could get the most money to pay claims against it by selling its Navy Yard Clubhouse.
Once Alloy purchased the property, they heard about the anger and distrust so many neighboring
NYCHA families felt towards anyone taking over the building. Alloy re-opened the Clubhouse and brought the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club Foundation back to manage it for the next few years. Alloy also began making efforts to meet with Farragut and nearby Ingersoll Houses tenants: it has held meetings with community representatives and contacted local Council Member Crystal Hudson, it even held an open house on June 1 to introduce itself to the community.
Now, Alloy is also bringing on Taj Gibson and his recently formed community-driven development firm GFB Development (GFB) to serve as co-developers of the Clubhouse. Gibson, who earlier this month signed a 1-year, $3.3 million contract with the Charlotte Hornets, is known to be serious about giving back to the community he came from. Raised in Ingersoll Houses, Gibson recalls playing basketball with his friends at the Navy Yard Clubhouse.
Back in 2020, the millionaire athlete used his non-profit Taj Gibson Foundation to partner with Scotch Painter’s Tape and Project Backboard for the refurbishing of deteriorating blacktops at the Ingersoll Houses’ playground. Now he has created GFB as a vehicle so that he and his childhood friends, Tameek Floyd and Malik Brown, can have an impact on development projects like the transformation of the Navy Yard Clubhouse.
“GFB and Alloy have committed to providing a permanent community space, continuing the longstanding tradition of neighborhood programming on site,” a press release about the new partnership announced. “That space will be run by a to-be-determined operator based on local resident feedback and include tailored programming for neighborhood children, seniors, and families.”
Plans are for Alloy and GFB to begin holding a series of meetings with tenants from the nearby NYCHA communities of Farragut, Ingersoll, and Walt Whitman. The developers say they want to listen to what locals think about rezoning the site, upgrading the community center, and building more affordable housing.
Farragut residents who spoke to the AmNews outside of the building at 202 Sands Street already had a lot to say about the prospects for the redeveloped Clubhouse and any added affordable housing units. Five women and one man—a few of whom gave their names as Tracy, James, and Priscilla––spoke adamantly against the encroachment of luxury housing developments near their long-term, low-income apartment homes.
“This development is so that white people can come in here and take over. Or so the Chinese can come in here.”
“When they said affordable, it starts at $70,000 a year, so it’s not affordable. What’s affordable? Affordable is not $100G’s because we don’t have that, Mr. Taj. Affordable is not even 20G’s because we’re on welfare Mr. Taj.”
“All the affordable buildings out here, we can’t go in there. We can’t even afford them. And when they do allow you in, you got a low income––a different entrance than regular paying motherf–ers. All them buildings they’re doing downtown and they let low income in there? Low income coming through the back. Oh no, you don’t know? That’s a whole other world.”
“We don’t need no new apartments down here. We need community-based programs out here that’s what we need; we need something for the youth.”
“They ain’t had sh– in there for the kids to do back in the day: y’all don’t have no swimming pools, y’all don’t have no activities in that building for the kids. Y’all just want them to come after school and they don’t even get homework help. It’s like they’re in daycare.”
“We don’t want them here. We don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t want them here. No. And they’re here. You’re not bringing up programs here for us. How many apartments are going to be for Section 8 and people with regular incomes?”
“There’s a lot of things we need down here that they’re not investing in. But then they’re building all these high-rise buildings and it’s hard for us to get in those. You can’t even live down here no more. People want to relocate down south, which, that’s probably their plan to make it hard for us to live here because this is like a prime area, and they didn’t start building these coops and condos for nothing.”
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