Lenox Terrace Developer Modifies Expansion Plan: Report

HARLEM, NY — Developers applying to rezone Harlem's Lenox Terrace development may modify their plans to expand the sprawling apartment complex after failing to gain the support of local community boards and Manhattan's borough president, according to reports.

City planners advising the Olnick Organization, which has owned Lenox Terrace since the development's construction, sent amended expansion plans to the city Department of Housing and Preservation, Curbed first reported. The plans do not reduce the scale of the expansion, but instead increase the percentage of below-market-rate housing to be built, according to the report.

The Olnick Organization initially applied to expand Lenox Terrace by upzoning the development's multi-block site — bound by Lenox Avenue, Fifth Avenue, West 132nd Street and West 135th Street — and construct five new 28-story, mixed-use towers. The plan would roughly double the size of the 1,700-apartment development.

New plans for the complex would dedicate one of the five new towers to entirely below-market-rate housing, Curbed reported. The plan also guarantees that the existing apartments, about 80 percent of which are rent stabilized, would remain affordable for current tenants, according to the report.

A spokesman for the Olnick Organization did not immediately return Patch's request for comment.

Olnick's plan is currently going through the city's Uniform Land Use and Review Procedure for land use applications. The proposal was shot down by both Community Board 10 and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.

Community Board 10 voted in November to reject Olnick's requested upzoning as out of scale for Lenox Terrace, and said the board would not support any expansion of Lenox Terrace that asked for the developer's desired zoning rules. Brewer, who released her recommendation this week, agreed that the scale of the rezoning proposal was too large.

Opponents of the plan have also voiced concerns that the project would threaten the African-American plurality of Harlem. For decades, Lenox Terrace has been home to a majority of African-American residents, but new market-rate units could bring a shift in demographics, Community Board 10 argued in its resolution to oppose the rezoning application.

Residents of Lenox Terrace voiced concerns with the project claiming that it will tarnish the development's "cultural and historical significance as a center of African-American culture." That group, the Lenox Terrace Association of Concerned Tenants, celebrated Brewer's recent "no" vote on the project

Read the full Curbed article here.