It’s been a year since YIMBY revealed plans to develop two affordable rental buildings next to Thessalonia Baptist Church in Morrisania, in the South Bronx. Now, new building applications have been filed for the first piece of the project at 960 Prospect Avenue.
Kiumarz Geula, doing business as an anonymous LLC, originally filed applications for a six-story, 46,954-square-foot school building at 3458 Third Avenue, in Morrisania, back in December of 2012. Now, the same plans are being revived under William Leung’s Financial District-based Array Architecture Studio, which replaced Westchester County-based SWL Architect. The new building’s ground floor will host a lobby and administrative offices. There will be classrooms located on the second through fifth floors, a cafeteria on the second, and a gymnasium on the sixth. There aren’t any details concerning who would be attending the school, although the city’s School Construction Authority appears not to be involved, which means it could be private.
Back in October of 2014, the Kingsbridge National Ice Center, led by Kevin Parker and Mark Messier, signed a 99-year lease with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) to convert the vacant Kingsbridge Armory, at 29 West Kingsbridge Road in Kingsbridge Heights, into an ice sports facility. As planned, the 750,000-square-foot building, an individual landmark, will be converted to accommodate nine ice rinks, one of which will be a 5,000-seat arena, and 50,000 square feet of community facility space. Politico New York now reports the NYCEDC has extended the deadline by a month for the developer to obtain $158 million in construction financing, at which point it would turn over the lease to the developer to begin construction.
Somerset Partners is renovating the single-story commercial building at 2430 Third Avenue, on the corner of East 134th Street in Mott Haven, into a coffee shop. According to DNAinfo (h/t Curbed NY), the NYC-based coffee chain Filtered Coffee, co-owned by Karen Paul and Aaron Baird, will operate the new café. Both the interior and exteriors of the structure are being renovated and repurposed. New entrances are being added in addition to a skylight, per the latest filing with the Department of Buildings. Vladimir Constant’s NoMad-based The Hudson Group is the applicant of record, although Barcelona-based Alonso Balaguer is designing the project. The shop’s grand opening is scheduled for April 2.
Property owner Eleen Nihan has filed applications for a four-story, seven-unit mixed-use building at 2414 Hughes Avenue, in Belmont, located four blocks south of Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus. The structure will encompass 5,837 square feet and will include a 312-square-foot doctors office on the ground floor. The residential units should average 643 square feet apiece, which means rental apartments are in the works. Mohammad Badaly’s Mount Vernon, N.Y.-based Badaly Architects is the architect of record. The site’s existing two-story wood-framed house must first be demolished.
