Illustration of Seward Park proposal looking south from Delancey Street
The Lower East Side’s Community Board 3 gave its expected seal of approval to development plans for the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area last night, Crain’s reported, but with one condition. The board demanded the affordable housing slated for the site, composed of five city-owned lots southeast of the corner of Delancey and Essex streets, be permanent. [more]
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. [more]
Bruce Ratner, chairman of Forest City Ratner
Bruce Ratner, head of Forest City Ratner, developer of arguably Brooklyn’s most controversial development ever, sat down with the Times and told them, among other things, that the Atlantic Yards will be completed on time, that pre-fab construction is a great way to make housing construction more affordable and that after 2015, he’d like the Islanders to come to the sports arena.
“There is no winning,” Ratner said, in reference to the debate about whether the Atlantic Yards project will offer enough affordable housing. “And that’s ok.” [more]
From left: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, state Sen. Adriano Espaillat and the corner of Dyckman Street and Nagle Avenue in Washington Heights
For the past decade, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has touted his commitment to building and preserving affordable housing in New York City. But according to the New York Daily News, he’s overlooking Washington Heights.
While the area’s uptown neighbors in central Harlem and East Harlem have added 2,770 and 2,133 new units of affordable housing, respectively, and the entire borough has seen 11,627 new units, just 139 units have been added in Washington Heights. [more]
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]
