Phipps Houses Hopes to Add 500 Units in South Bronx

The nation’s oldest nonprofit organization dedicated to affordable housing is ready to turn the page on a largely vacant site in the South Bronx.

Phipps Houses filed a rezoning application with the Department of City Planning for a site at 893-895 East 167th Street in the borough’s Foxhurst neighborhood, Crain’s reported. New York City’s largest affordable housing nonprofit wants to build a 497-unit, 377,000-square-foot development on the site, which Phipps acquired in 2019 for $22.5 million.

All of the units would be earmarked for affordable housing. Nearly a fifth of them would also be reserved specifically for formerly homeless individuals.

The 66,000-square-foot lot is largely vacant, zoned for light manufacturing use. The site, which Phipps wants to be altered to allow for medium-density residential use, is bound by Intervale Avenue, East 169th Street and Kelly Street.

The project would be anywhere from six to 12 stories tall and include nearly 6,000 square feet of community facility space. There would also be amenities, including two laundry rooms, a fitness room, a playroom, bicycle storage and a doorman.

The nonprofit did not respond to a request for comment from the outlet.

Phipps has been involved in major residential developments in New York City before. A couple of years ago, it scored a $225 million construction loan for a 436-unit affordable housing complex on Euclid Avenue in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.

The project represented one of three the nonprofit housing developer plotted between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue.

Development is springing up all over the South Bronx. Last month, Scale Lending provided a $305 million loan to the Beitel Group for its 755-unit project at 355 Exterior Street.

Last summer, Arian Liton filed plans for a 99-unit mixed-use project at 36 Bruckner Boulevard. RXR and Brookfield are also among the significant players to get involved in the neighborhood.

— Holden Walter-Warner