Another vacant, city-owned lot in the South Bronx is about to sprout affordable housing. The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development filed plans to build a 12-story rental building at 443 East 162nd Street in Melrose, where activists have spent decades fighting for city services and housing that locals could afford.
The city is about to rezone 11 industrial blocks along the heavily polluted Flushing Creek in western Flushing. But one developer has already filed new building applications for an eight-story, mixed-use project at 134-16 36th Road, on the corner of Prince Street and in the middle of the soon-to-be-upzoned piece of eastern Queens.
In June of 2015, YIMBY revealed renderings of the winning proposal that would bring two mixed-use towers to Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, located in southern Brooklyn Heights. The project consists of a 29-story, 192-unit market-rate condominium building with 3,870 square feet of retail and a shorter, 14-story counterpart with 117 affordable and 30 market-rate rental apartments, a preschool, 930 square feet of retail, and a 1,500 square-foot community facility. Curbed NY now reports the project is on hold following relentless community opposition. The Empire State Development Corporation is not approving the project until the city can come to an agreement with the community on it. The city selected RAL Development and Oliver Realty to develop the two vacant sites, with ODA New York as the design architect. Construction was scheduled to begin this spring.
In November, the 28-story, mixed-use building under development at 215 Chrystie Street, on the Lower East Side, was at the 16th floor, and now Bowery Boogie reports the tower has topped out. The 245,264-square-foot structure stands 314 feet above the street level and will include hotel and residential portions. The building’s lower portion will sport a 370-key Public Hotel, with retail and restaurant space located on the ground floor. The upper portion will feature 11 condominium units, each averaging a spacious 3,035 square feet. Ian Schrager and Witkoff are the developers with Herzog & de Meuron as the design architect and Handel Architects is the architect of record. Completion is expected later this year.
Property owner Mark Berishaj, based in Yonkers, N.Y., has filed applications for a three-story, eight-unit residential building at 839 East 226th Street, in southern area of the North Bronx neighborhood of Wakefield, located two blocks from the 225th Street stop on the 2 and 5 trains. The new building will encompass 8,710 square feet and its residential units will average 817 square feet apiece, which means market-rate rentals are probably in the works. There will be two apartments on the ground floor and three units each on the two upper floors. Seven automobile parking spaces are planned, probably at a surface lot behind the building. Pelham, N.Y.-based Fred Geremia Architects & Planning is the architect of record. Demolition permits were filed last December to knock down the site’s existing two-story house.
