City Reveals Plan For Block-Swallowing East Harlem Development

EAST HARLEM, NY — Building plans and a developer were selected for a 655-apartment, mixed-use affordable housing building to be constructed on an entire East Harlem city block, city officials announced Tuesday.

Two city housing agencies designated a block that spans East 111th and 112th streets between Madison and Park avenues to the development team composed of Jonathan Rose Companies and including L+M Development Partners and several community partners, according to a Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) announcement.

The development will contain a 655-unit apartment complex — of which all units will be offered at below market-rate prices — a charter school, a new YMCA facility, a health-foods market and more community space including a Mount Sinai community health center. The block is currently home to four community gardens and a baseball field, according to the HPD. The gardens will be preserved and integrated into the development, according to the HPD.

City officials hailed the move as a win for affordable housing in an area desperately lacking it.

“Today we move forward with a plan for a dynamic, mixed-use development that will provide affordable homes, job opportunities, and vibrancy to the East Harlem community,” HPD Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer said in a statement.

But community activists may not be happy with the development's levels of affordability. In July members of Community Voices Heard, Picture the Homeless, El Barrio Unite and other community groups rallied on the building site and listed several demands for the building. Among those was guaranteed permanent affordability for all units and the stipulation that 40 percent of the units wold be reserved for for families of three making less than $23,300.

The project proposed by Jonathan Rose Companies and L+M Development Partners calls for 20 percent of building units to be reserved for families making less than $24,480, sixty percent reserved for families making less than $48,960 and twenty percent reserved for families making less than $106,080.

The numbers are consistent with the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan, a study pioneered by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito to prepare the neighborhood for an upcoming rezoning.

"I look forward to reviewing this project in the coming months and to working with the development team, the administration and the community to ensure that it meets the goals outlined in the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan," Mark-Viverito said in a statement.

Additionally of the building's 655 units only 163 will be declared permanently affordable under the city's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing law, according to the HPD. How long other units remain below market-rate depends on whether the developers refinance loans and subsidies with HPD which would keep the units from hitting market-rate rents.

Before development the proposal unveiled Tuesday must pass the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) which involved an advisory vote from the local Community Board and later a vote from the City Council.

Renderings courtesy of HPD