What spent years serving Crown Heights as a neighborhood supermarket on Nostrand Avenue has officially been reborn as The Arcadian, a 328-unit mixed-use complex with 99 designated affordable apartments and ground-floor retail. The development at 975 Nostrand Ave opened in November 2025 and restores the long-promised supermarket to the block.
“We wanted to build a project that respects the deep and historical background of this beautiful neighborhood,” Berke Kalemoglu, development director at Hudson Companies, told News 12 Brooklyn. Kalemoglu said Hudson negotiated to bring the previous grocery owner back into a new space in the building and added that the team hopes the project will bring jobs, coffee shops and restaurants to the corridor. A tenant interviewed by the station said the shared rooms already feel like “a community space.”
What’s inside The Arcadian
The building is organized as two nine-story wings sitting on a shared podium, creating roughly 350,000 square feet of space and what are described as “significant ground-floor retail spaces,” including a full-service NYC FRESH supermarket, according to EP Engineering. Leasing materials list a gym, maker and game rooms, a landscaped courtyard and rooftop terraces among the amenities, and note that each unit includes an in-unit washer and dryer. EP Engineering also reports that the mechanical and ventilation systems were sized specifically to handle the demands of a high-traffic supermarket tenant.
Grocery comeback and site history
The parcel at 975 Nostrand was home to an Associated supermarket for decades, and a 2021 eviction scare set off protests and a wave of local coverage. As reported by Bklyner, Hudson purchased the property in 2021 and agreed to preserve supermarket space. Hudson’s own project page describes a “brand new, modern space” for the store and lists 2025 as the completion year. Together, those accounts explain why keeping a grocery operator on Nostrand has been central both to the developer’s messaging and to neighborhood organizing.
Affordable units and the housing lottery
The Arcadian reserved 99 units for an affordable housing lottery pegged at 130 percent of the area median income, New York YIMBY reported when the lottery launched in July 2025. According to YIMBY’s overview, the affordable set included studios through three-bedrooms, with listed rents for the largest units at the 130 percent AMI level topping out at roughly $4,900. The lottery structure and lease terms show the affordable component was built into the project during development rather than added after the fact.
Neighbors’ views and next steps
Residents and neighbors say the building’s shared spaces are already earning their keep as informal gathering spots. “It’s a community space… I really love it,” tenant Felix Brody told News 12 Brooklyn. At the same time, advocates who fought to preserve the original supermarket point out that new retail anchors can change pricing and shopping patterns, a trend that local reporting has tracked closely.
For Crown Heights, The Arcadian is both another large rental complex and a test of whether big projects can actually deliver on promises of grocery access and affordable units. How the retail spaces fill up and how the supermarket operator prices its goods will likely be the clearest measures of whether this new development truly protects neighborhood access to affordable food.
