The Brooklyn neighborhood has a developer.

Mecklenburg County commissioners Wednesday approved BK Partners’ vision for the 17-acres Brooklyn Village project, which was once part of an African American neighborhood razed in the 1960s.

Brooklyn Village is in Second Ward, which is primarily a collection of government buildings, including the former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools headquarters and Bob Walton Plaza as well as Marshall Park. Commissioners chose BK Partners among three Charlotte-based developers for the mixed-use project, which will include office space, hotels, housing and retail.

The site includes a pair of dominant parcels: One borders East Stonewall, South McDowell, and South Alexander streets and I-277. The other borders South McDowell, and East Third streets, East Martin Luther King Boulevard and First Baptist Church.

The competing developer groups were:

• CitiSculpt, which would build as many as 1,378 residential units as well as offices, retail space and hotels.

• Crescent Communities proposed 650 market-rate apartments, 160 affordable housing units and 65 mixed-income townhomes along Third Street, MLK Boulevard and South McDowell. It would’ve built 200,000 square feet in office space.

• BK Partners, led by Conformity Corp., was the most ambitious plan. Its proposal calls for 1,243 residential units, including 107 affordable housing apartments. Two hotels with 280 rooms combined would also be built along with 252,100 square feet in retail space and 680,700 square feet for offices. It proposed paying the county $50 million for the site.

I think one key to all of this …is that Peebles is going to pay us over $50 million and still provide everything we want,” commissioner Bill James said in an email last month. “CitiSculpt will only pay us $18 to $23 million and give us basically the exact same thing.”

Conformity, which is partnering with New York-based Peebles Corp., the nation’s largest black-owned development firm at $5 billion in projects in cities like Miami, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., pledged 35 percent of construction contracts will go to minority, women and small business enterprises.

“I think our team offers the broadest benefit to the county, the city and the community as a whole,” Don Peebles, Peebles Corp.’s founder and CEO, said last month. “Unlike our two competitors, we’re not seeking any public subsidy or public funds. Both of them are looking for around $20 million from the county.”

Conformity is ready to start immediately, Peebles said.

Brooklyn was a pillar of African American community for much of the 20th century. The United House of Prayer For All People and its massive parades led by founder Charles “Sweet Daddy” Grace were based there. The neighborhood was home to Second Ward High School, built in 1923 and located where the Mecklenburg County Aquatic Center now sits on Second Street.

When the federal government made billions of dollars available to eradicate substandard housing in the 1960s, the entire neighborhood was razed by 1969, removing about 10,000 residents in the process.

“It’s important that we acknowledge the history of Second Ward and reflect it in building a vibrant community,” Commissioner Trevor Fuller said last month in an interview. “We’re excited about its potential and it’s important that we get this right.”

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