Remodeling a house in Marine Park, Brooklyn

What this page covers

This page is for owners of single-family and two-family houses in Marine Park planning kitchen, bathroom, basement or whole-interior work. Marine Park is a Brooklyn neighborhood, so building permits come from the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB). The figures below are for DCP's Marine Park-Mill Basin-Bergen Beach neighborhood tabulation area (NTA), which covers more than Marine Park itself. NTAs are statistical areas built from census tracts, not official boundaries. Structural alterations, additions and new construction are not planned services. Availability and service-area approval have not been established.

What the lot data shows

An area of houses

In PLUTO 26v2, 92% of the NTA's 10,805 tax lots with homes are one- or two-family houses: 61.6% one-family and 30.4% two-family. Lots with elevator buildings hold under 1% of the area's homes. Year-built values are mixed. About 48% of these lots record a year before 1940 and about a third record 1960–1979, and DCP says the field is generally accurate only to the decade. Don't guess a house's age from its block. The Brooklyn page covers lead-paint rules for older buildings.

Check the address

Two flood maps, different answers

The difference is large and uneven. In 9 of the NTA's 19 census tracts with homes, no residential lot is flagged on either map. In a few tracts, most lots are flagged on the 2015 preliminary map. A neighbor's answer does not settle yours.

A PLUTO flag means only that part of the lot touches the mapped floodplain. The house may or may not be in that part. Look up the address on FEMA's Flood Map Service Center. The city's NYC Flood Maps page says flood insurance is still based on the 2007 maps. It also says the City appealed the 2015 preliminary maps and FEMA agreed to revise them and issue new maps, so a lot's status can change. Which map a building-code question uses for your house is a question for your design professional.

What flood status can change in a basement or ground-floor plan

A 2022 DOB presentation on flood-resistant construction quotes Building Code Appendix G. It applies to buildings in flood hazard areas built before the city's first flood rules. It lists some work as increasing a building's noncompliance, which is not allowed under Appendix G:

• installing new finishes, plumbing fixtures or equipment below the design flood elevation that are not permitted there, where similar items did not exist before;
• lowering a basement floor below the design flood elevation.

The same presentation lists in-kind replacement of existing plumbing fixtures below the design flood elevation as work that does not increase noncompliance. Separately, the city's housing agency says a basement's legal use starts with the Certificate of Occupancy and lists further conditions for occupying a basement in a one- or two-family house; DOB notes that buildings built before 1938 aren't required to have one. These are summaries of a presentation and an agency page, not a determination for any house. If your lot is flagged, have a design professional confirm the design flood elevation and what it allows before you pick finishes. See basement remodeling and the basement moisture guide.

Sequencing rooms in a house you live in

If the basement question is still open, it does not have to hold up everything else. One workable order:

1. Look up the address on both FEMA maps and note the result in the brief.
2. Split the brief into an upper-floor package (kitchen, upstairs bath, floors and paint) and a basement or ground-floor package.
3. Price the upper-floor package on its own, with the rooms that must stay usable listed. See the living at home guide.
4. Hold basement finish choices until a design professional has confirmed what the flood status and Certificate of Occupancy allow.
5. If both packages go ahead, ask bidders to show which shutoffs, access routes and protection serve both, so the work is not done twice.

The whole-home planning guide helps decide what comes first. Room scope examples are on kitchen remodeling and bathroom remodeling.

Landmark status

LPC's historic-district dataset, accessed 2026-11-08, lists no historic district in this NTA, and PLUTO assigns no district name to any of its lots with homes. Individual landmarks are a separate designation, so if exterior changes are involved, search the address on LPC's Discover NYC Landmarks map.