🏢 75 Macon Finally Listed for Sale

🌟 Author’s Note

Happy Sunday to the 126 members of the Better Block Project 💪 I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful Saturday in New York yesterday. Here is the TLDR for this week’s update:

• 75 Macon, one of the vacant properties Better Block was working to improve, has finally been listed for sale. This is a positive step to the property eventually being rehabilitated

• The MTA and DOT meeting about the Franklin and Fulton bus stop is still being scheduled, and unfortunately illicit activity has returned

• We added in NYPD arrest data into BetterBlockGPT. Now, when you ask for data about a given block, it will return both 311 requests during that time and any arrest data

🏢 75 Macon Finally Listed for Sale

9 months ago, in June 2025, we wrote about 73 and 75 Macon, two beautiful historic properties on Macon in Bed Stuy that had been vacant for multiple years. 75 Macon had been with the King’s County public administrator’s office who was planning to place the property for sale over the summer. Well, 9 months later it has officially been listed. The property is listed for $1.8M dollars and the broker notes the buyer must be all cash. We’ve heard offers might have been due for the property on Friday, but it’s unclear.

While it took significantly longer than expected for the city to clean and list the property (as we outlined here, more than 70% of estate cases have been active for 5 years), this is a positive step. Once the property is sold, it can be transferred to a new buyer and occupied, ensuring it is better taken care of in the future.

🚌 Next Steps with Franklin and Fulton Bus Stop

Unfortunately, as the weather has warmed up, illicit activity has returned to the Franklin and Fulton bus stop. We are still working with the State Assembly member’s office to set up the meeting between MTA and DOT to address our asks in our letter back in the Fall including adding lighting, removing the seating and adding temporary security until the bus stop is safe.

As of this week, Isaiah from Phara Souffrant Forrest’s office has shared that they have dates secured with DOT, but the MTA is still reviewing the request. Note, we haven’t heard back from City Council for multiple weeks, so it’s less clear if they are still involved with the request. We pushed again to have residents included in this next meeting, to ensure the agencies hear directly from those living on the block to highlight the urgency of the situation.

We will continue to follow up until the meeting is scheduled to push the city and state to improve the situation.

👮 Arrest Data Now Available in BetterBlockGPT

In order to make BetterBlockGPT’s block search tool more robust, we added in NYPD arrest data so you can now pull data on 311 complaints and recent NYPD arrest data for a given block or address. The NYPD Arrest Data also comes from NYC Open Data and includes data for all of 2025. When you ask a question about a block or a given address, you’ll now receive recent 311 complaints and any recent arrests in the same block area.

The NYPD data is based on latitude and longitude, so the app looks up the latitude and longitude of the streets you enter, and then pulls in any arrest data in a 1 block area. Now, with both 311 data and NYPD arrest data, it’s easier to get a full picture of what’s happening on our blocks. You can also ask more general questions, like show me all arrests in the 79th precinct in Brooklyn. You can use this to get clearer data on NYPD activity in the neighborhood.

That’s all for this week’s update! As usual, if you like what we’re doing at the Better Block Project, forward this to someone you know that is looking to get more engaged in the neighborhood.

See you next week,

David