City Council member Margaret Chin is pushing for a parking garage to be included again in plans for the Lower East Side affordable housing redevelopment project.
The land-use division of City Council said the garage site on Ludlow Street near Rivington Street could be developed into a 90-unit apartment building. The city planned to develop nine neighborhood sites into 1,000 housing units, including about 500 units of affordable housing and 250,000 square feet of commercial space in a zone known as the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area. The garage was omitted from the plans early on because of the city’s earlier struggle in negotiation parking options, which is a contentious issue. About 500 parking spots are already expected to be lost as a result of the project.
The local community board has yet to weigh in on Chin’s proposal, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“I know Margaret is looking for sites and I hope we find some but that’s probably not the best site since you’d have to develop the perfectly good parking garage,” Linda Jones, chair of the land use committee, told the Journal. [WSJ] — Mark Maurer
