Ariella Cohen has the story in today’s Brooklyn Papers on the Whole Foods planned for the Park Slope/Gowanus area. You can get your copy of the Brooklyn Papers at Key Food, Connmuffco, Ozzies, and other PS locations. More here.

Plans for Brooklyn first Whole Foods supermarket are getting bigger — and the gridlock won’t just be in the grocery aisles.

The epicurean grocer is adding a massive, three-story, 430-car
parking garage to its plans for a rooftop lot and a surface lot at its
planned mega-store at the intersection of Third Avenue and Third Street
on the Gowanus end of Park Slope.

Whole Foods’ glassy 68,000-square-foot complex could attract more
than a thousand new vehicles an hour to Park Slope and Gowanus, a
traffic expert said.

“If you have a vehicle turnover every 40 minutes, then you have … as
many as 1,800 new cars an hour,” said traffic engineer Brian Ketcham.

A similarly sized shopping destination in the suburbs would
typically be required to include spaces for 272 cars, he said. But with
all its lots, Whole Foods will provide almost three times that amount
in an area with fewer drivers.

“They are obviously planning to be a regional destination,” said
Ketcham, “and preparing for lots of auto traffic in an area that should
be catering to pedestrians and public transit.”