City’s affordable developers provide urban gardens

Warehouses in Brooklyn and western Queens aren’t the only New York City properties getting rooftop gardens. According to the New York Times, more affordable housing developers in the outer boroughs are including them in buildings. For example, Via Verde, the 222-unit rental and co-op building in the South Bronx, converted a fifth-floor green roof into a community garden for residents. The city chose Jonathan Rose Companies to develop the complex because of its green proposal and the conversion was made as a response to growing health concerns in impoverished neighborhoods.

“One of the reasons that low-income communities are focused on green roofs is, often, low-income communities don’t have as much accessibility to open space as other neighborhoods,” said Abby Jo Sigal, a vice president of Enterprise Community Partners, which was a partner in the development of Serviam Gardens (note: correction appended).

Serviam Gardens is an affordable senior development on East 198th Street in the Bronx that, along with Liberty Apartments on Fountain Avenue in East New York, offers more examples of affordable complexes that have followed the initiative. [NYT]