Developers secure funding for Harlem school conversion

Former P.S. 186 to yield affordable housing, Boys & Girls Club facility

521 West 125th Street
521 West 125th Street

Plans to bring a dilapidated old school building at 521 West 145th Street in Harlem back to life as an affordable housing project are now in motion.

A team composed of Monadnock Development, Alembic Community Development and the Boys & Girls Club of Harlem announced Tuesday that it has closed on all financing for the $48.7 million restoration project. The former P.S. 186, located between Broadway and Amsterdam avenues, will be converted into a mix of 63 apartments for low-income families, seven for middle-income and eight market-rate units, plus an additional apartment for the building’s superintendent. A 10,000-square-foot facility for the Boys & Girls Club is also included in the plans.

Construction on the project is slated to begin in the fall.

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“The closing represents a critically important step in the long-awaited renewal of this wonderful but neglected building,” Benjamin Warnke, a principal with Alembic, told Crain’s.

Developers have been working with the nonprofit to combine a new home for the Boys & Girls Club of Harlem with residential housing for a number of years, according to past reports. Initially, those efforts stalled over community disagreements about whether to tear down the existing five-story, 97,895-square-foot structure, which was constructed in 1902. [Crain’s]Julie Strickland