Carmelo Anthony has millions of dollars invested in a Brooklyn real estate redevelopment. But one local activist is begging him to reconsider his plans.
The 32-year-old NY Knickerbockers superstar is part of an investment group that plans to redevelop the old Bedford-Union Armory in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn, NY.
The Slate Property Group has plans to build expensive condos on the site which activists say will be a "terrible deal for New Yorkers".
Anthony will personally back the funding of a sports center at the site that will include a basketball court and swimming pool.
But activist Bertha Lewis is disappointed in Anthony's involvement in the plans.
“This development is not good for Crown Heights, and it’s not good for Brooklyn. Your name should not be associated with such a terrible deal for New Yorkers,” Lewis wrote in a letter to 'Melo from the Black Institute and New York Communities for Change.
Lewis points out that half the apartments designated as "affordable housing" will still be too expensive for local residents to afford.
Rents in the New York area have soared over the last decade. If it weren't for rent control and government subsidized housing, most native New Yorkers would be forced to move out of the city.
“While you may have added your name in in hopes that this will be a great asset for the local community, it will not,” Lewis wrote to Anthony, who is with the US mens basketball team at the Rio Olympics. “This public land has the potential of creating much-needed affordable housing for local residents who are rent burdened, or for the Crown Heights residents who have already been displaced due to rents that have been rising exponentially."
Lewis added that the condo redevelopment will "further exacerbate the gentrification of Crown Heights".
