No Land Grab

Brooklyn Downtown Star
By Phil Guie

Last week, it was announced that 227 Duffield Street, which was slated to be demolished as part of the Downtown Brooklyn Redevelopment Plan, will be spared through a settlement between the city, owner Joy Chatel, and a local not-for-profit.

Initially, city officials dismissed tunnels and architectural abnormalities beneath several homes in the area, despite the opinions of several respected historians and the fact that known abolitionists once owned the home. But through it all, Chatel never gave up fighting. "I wanted to stop but I couldn't stop," she told a crowd of more than 60 who gathered at 227 Duffield for a celebratory press conference on Monday. "Our ancestors wouldn't let me stop."

As Lewis Greenstein, the owner of 233 Duffield Street, and one of Chatel's closest partners in the fight to save her home, put it: "This project was not a slam dunk the same way Atlantic Yards is not a slam dunk. All we needed is time." But time is exactly what caused Chatel to shed tears as she recalled how her five grandchildren suffered because she spent years immersed in the struggle.

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