The first phase of the massive Hunter’s Point South project on the Long Island City waterfront will be comprised of 950 units, and Crain’s reported that all of them will be affordable.
The city, which signed on Related Companies in February to partner with Phipps houses and Monadnock Construction to build the 5,000-unit complex, had initially intended just 75 percent of the first phase apartments to be set-aside for middle- and lower-income families. Ground will break sometime next year. [more]
From the November issue: In 1998, L+M Development Partners started its first affordable housing project on West 148th Street, between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass boulevards. At the time, the vacant block was inhabited solely by boarded-up, graffiti-scrawled buildings, abandoned by their owners in the ’60s and ’70s. In the middle of the block sat P.S. 90, a Collegiate Gothic-style structure built in 1907 by architect Charles Snyder. Unused by schoolchildren for 30 years, the building’s windowpanes were broken or missing, and its stone gargoyles tarnished. Trees sprouted amid overturned desks.
This spring, a buyer paid $1.13 million for a three-bedroom combination apartment in the P.S. 90 building — restored and converted to condos by L+M. [more]
A three-building mixed-income co-op known as Red Hook Homes officially opened today with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.
The project was developed by the not-for-profit Fifth Avenue Committee and contains 60 units across the four-story towers, 40 of which are affordable apartments with the remaining 20 reserved for middle-income New Yorkers.
Forty-two families have moved into the development, 40 of which where selected by lottery from 4,500 applicants vying for the affordable units. All of the affordable units have been sold. – Adam Fusfeld [more]
A Hell’s Kitchen development site that’s been stalled for more than 30 years has finally closed on financing and begun construction, the Wall Street Journal reported, for 1,258 apartments, more than half of which are affordable, a new school and stores.
The $520 million four-building complex, called Gotham West, sits along 45th Street near 11th Avenue, and is being developed by the Gotham Organization. It will have a 31-story market-rate apartment building with 556 units, 682 affordable units across the other buildings, 20 condominium units, a 670-seat school, stores and private gardens. [more]
A 365-unit Roosevelt Island co-op has an innovative plan to keep its apartments affordable even as it leaves the Mitchell-Lama program, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 38-year-old Rivercross co-op, at 531 Main Street, will exit the program, which limits the prices landlords can charge for units for 20 years in exchange for tax breaks, but will cap the sale price of 80 percent of the units at $500-per-square-foot. Of that price, $150 will subsidize the remaining 20 percent of the units to keep them near Mitchell-Lama prices. Comments
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development is looking for a developer to build up to 225 affordable housing units and 68,000 square feet of retail space along a vacant strip on Livonia Avenue, between Pennsylvania and Williams avenues in the East New York area of Brooklyn, Crain’s reported, issuing a request for proposals today.
The request is the first phase in what the department has dubbed the Livonia Avenue Initiative, a plan to revamp the strip.
“This retail corridor has been defunct for a long time,” said RuthAnne Visnauskas, deputy commissioner for HPD. The site’s proximity to the elevated L train line meant there was a lot of noise, which discouraged developers in the past, but building materials can keep out noise, she said. [more]
Over the summer, New York City crossed the three-quarters mark on the way to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s goal of churning out 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2014. In his announcement of the milestone, the mayor boasted that the number of New Yorkers ultimately benefiting from the plan will exceed the total population of Miami.
Of course, Bloomberg has never been short of lofty ambitions. But he picked a challenging time to wager a piece of his legacy on real estate development.
In the midst of the financial turmoil over the past few years, few construction projects have made it off the ground. Bloomberg’s proposal, dubbed the New Housing Marketplace Plan, was launched in 2003 to spur the development and preservation of subsidized housing for low- to middle-income New Yorkers through a variety of funding programs and tax incentives. But it has already been altered to remain viable in today’s climate. [more]
A $50.9 million green retrofit project at the West 135th Street
Apartments has been completed, according to a statement released today
by Jonathan Rose Companies, local and federal housing agencies and
Enterprise, a Maryland-based provider of developer capital and expertise for affordable housing.
Jonathan Rose Companies had acquired the 202,500-square-foot property with 198 units
at 107-145 West 135th Street through its Rose Smart Growth
Investment Fund, an investment fund focusing on the strategic green
repositioning of existing buildings in December 2008 in order to
preserve affordable Section 8 housing, while creating an
energy-efficient apartment community. – Miranda Neubauer [more]
HPD Commissioner Wambua
New York University’s Furman Center of Real Estate and Urban Policy has compiled the first known comprehensive database of the city’s affordable housing stock that links the units to the agencies that subsidize them. The Wall Street Journal reported that it is available on the Furman website beginning today.
By highlighting the origin of affordable housing subsidies, across the city, state and federal agencies that contributed data, the database provides a clearer picture of when the funding expires and the units can be converted to market rate. [more]
Related Companies will preserve three affordable complexes for lower-income tenants for another 35 years, the Wall Street Journal reported, a victory for the city, which has been trying to prevent affordable units from turning market-rate.
The three complexes include the Terrific Tenements on West 47th and 48th streets and North Park at 20 West 102nd Street, both purchased by Related in the 1980s, and New Horizons at 200 West 111th Street, bought last year. The buildings account for 158 units in total. Related’s contract with the city to keep the units affordable was expiring around this time, the Journal said. “This was the juncture point, where Related or any private developer could make a decision to take them market,” said Marc Jahr, president of the Housing Development Corporation. “They could get a ton of money in rent if they go market with these projects.”
[more]
