An effort to preserve the history of Carroll Gardens is being criticized for actually hastening the neighborhood’s gentrification, said opponents of a controversial city initiative to widen the area’s historic district.

“They just want to re-gentrify and force out whatever elements from the past are left,” said lifelong area resident and businessman John Esposito, who helped form Citizens Against Landmarks to thwart the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s nascent effort to extend historic protections to a larger segment of the brownstone neighborhood.

Esposito and others don’t feel protected — they feel threatened.