Well, the Gowanus Whole Foods isn’t dead, but God only knows what’s going to happen on the polluted property that could cost a fortune to remediate and develop. Yesterday, Curbed posted an email that Whole Foods sent out late last week to local officials saying that it was looking for a development partner on the property. This immediately raises the possibility of an above-ground redesign of the store, which will require zoning approval, and of the addition of commercial or residential space above the store. Here’s the text of the email that Curbed obtained from a tipster:

As you may know, Whole Foods Market has been working in recent months to re-evaluate our proposed plans for a new store on our property at 3rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. As a result of these efforts, we have now concluded that the optimal path for this project will be for Whole Foods Market to partner with a developer on the store’s construction, rather than to self-develop the store as originally planned.

We wanted to make you aware of this change of direction and to assure you that we remain wholly committed to bringing a Whole Foods Market to Brooklyn. We are currently in discussions with potential development partners, so as I am sure you can understand, we are not yet in a position to be able to share information regarding timetables, development scenarios or other specifics. However, we will be back in touch as soon as we are able to provide additional details about our plans.

This one is bound to go on for a loooong time given the current credit and development environment. Remember, “groundbreaking” on this one was two years ago.