The southeastern Bronx neighborhood of Hunts Point is physically isolated, transit-starved, and sees very little new construction. So when a building owner there files plans to expand a single-story storefront into a four-story residential building, it’s noteworthy.
Baldor Specialty Foods is planning a 100,000 square-foot, $20 million expansion at their food-manufacturing and distribution facility at 155 Food Center Drive, in the southern part of Hunts Point. According to The Wall Street Journal, the current facility measures 193,000 square feet, and the expansion will mostly include new temperature zones for produce, as well as new loading docks.
New construction doesn’t happen often in Hunts Point, a peninsula in the southeastern corner of the Bronx that’s starved for retail and neighborhood services. But YIMBY noticed that excavation and foundation work had started at 925 Hunts Point Avenue, a 40,000-square-foot mall planned across from the Bruckner Expressway and next to the Hunts Point Avenue 6 train stop.
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 new four-story apartment buildings.