Plans Filed For Second Sendero Verde Building In East Harlem

EAST HARLEM, NY — Developers have filed a second set of building plans for a city-backed development that will take up an entire East Harlem block, according to public records.

L+M Development submitted plans with the city Department of Buildings at the beginning of the month for a 15-story structure on East 112th Street between Madison and Park avenues that will rise 219-feet-tall. The building is part of a three-building development known as Sendero Verde.

The East 112th Street building will contain 698,902 square feet of buildable space, most of which is zoned for residential uses. With a planned 315 apartment units and 545,566 square feet of residential zoning space, the average unit will be about 1,731 square feet.

The building will also feature 27,750 square feet of commercial space and 95,585 square feet of community facility space. Plans for another building in the development, 1681 Madison Ave., were filed in June 2018.

New York's City Council approved applications for zoning and land use variances to construct the Sendero Verde when it passed a sweeping rezoning of East Harlem in November. The plan as a whole is expected to spur the construction of 1,288 affordable housing units on the neighborhood's private development sites, but opponents believe an increase of market-rate housing will lead to gentrification and displacement of the neighborhood's long-term tenants.

The Sendero Verde development will contain 655 apartments — of which all units will be offered at below market-rate prices — a charter school, a YMCA facility, a health-foods market and community spaces including nonprofit offices and a Mount Sinai community health center. Four community gardens and a baseball field occupied the site before development, according to the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Gardens on the current site will be preserved and integrated into the development, according to the HPD.

The winning development bid, 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, 60 percent reserved for families making less than $48,960 and 20 percent reserved for families making less than $106,080.

Of the development's 655 units only 163 will be permanently offered at below-market rates 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.

Renderings courtesy Department of Housing Preservation and Development