Hunts Point was once the byword for disinvestment and abandonment, but the peninsula along the South Bronx waterfront is finally beginning to see some new growth. One of the neighborhood’s empty lots, at 629 Faile Street, may soon sprout two four-story apartment buildings that appear to be market-rate.
New building applications were filed yesterday for the two projects at 627 and 629 Faile Street, between Spofford and Randall Avenues. They’ll both contain eight units, but their square footages and heights differ slightly. No. 627 will reach 42 feet into the air and house 5,705 square feet of residential space, for an average apartment of 713 square feet. It will have two apartments per floor on all four levels.
But the eight apartments at no. 629 will be spread across 5,270 square feet, which works out to an average unit size of just 658 square feet. There will be three apartments each on the first three floors, topped by a single-floor unit and a duplex on the fourth floor.
The owner is Andreas Balalis, who lists a business address on Frost Street in Williamsburg. He acquired the lot from the city in 1990, but it has sold in several tax lien sales since then. The property appears to have been vacant and abandoned for decades, and the new development will fill a hole between two older two-story brick apartment buildings. Panagiotis Vikatos applied for the permits.
Hunts Point is still zoned mostly for manufacturing, but a small core of roughly 30 blocks near the neighborhood’s northern edge is residential, with some commercial uses allowed on Hunts Point and Lafayette Avenues. The small area has seen relatively little development in recent years, except for a crop of low-rise brick walkups on Bryant Avenue constructed in 2000.
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