The struggling central Bronx neighborhoods of Mount Hope, Tremont, and West Farms are ripe for new construction, and the borough’s small developers are finally starting to take notice. One developer hopes to build a little four-story residential building at 1779 Weeks Avenue, just north of the Cross Bronx Expressway in Mount Hope.
The Bronx’s sleepiest neighborhoods have become a hotbed for small, market-rate developments. Friday’s filings brought one of these projects at 508 Van Nest Avenue, in the northeastern Bronx neighborhood of Van Nest.
The Third Avenue Elevated once ran through East Tremont, linking it with Manhattan all the way down to Chatham Square, in what is now Chinatown. The decaying wooden house at 772 East 182nd Street was likely built around the same time as the elevated, in the first few years of the 20th century. After the city suspended the elevated service in the 1950s and ’60s, the area began to slide into abandonment and poverty. But the neighborhood is slowly rebounding with the arrival of small, market-rate construction projects. Yesterday, new building applications were filed for a seven-story, 18-unit development that would replace the old house at 772 East 182nd Street, just west of the Bronx Zoo.
Property owner Yair Bohadana, based in Morrisania, has filed applications for a four-story, eight-unit residential building at 2110 Hughes Avenue in Belmont, a few blocks away from the Bronx Zoo. The building will measure 5,520 square feet in total, and units will average a rental-sized 690 square feet each. The two fourth-floor units will also share an upper-level mezzanine, bringing the building’s roof to 51 feet. Queens-based Gerald Caliendo is the architect of record, and the site’s four-story predecessor was demolished by the HPD in 2001.
L+M Development and Hornig Capital Partners have filed applications for a 12-story, 133-unit mixed-use building at 4439 Third Avenue in Belmont, between East 181st and 182nd Streets. All of the residential units will rent at below-market rates, and average a relatively spacious 955 square feet apiece. Another 11,425 square feet of communal facility space will operate on the ground floor, and Dattner Architects is designing.
