Lower East Side Essex Crossing Wins Development Award

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — Essex Crossing's first phase won a top award for mixed-used development Thursday.

The Urban Land Institute New York honored the Lower East Side development team for excellence in mixed-use development at a gala Thursday evening.

Delancey Street Associates, a partnership of developers, was awarded alongside nine other development teams, including Larry Silverstein of Silverstein Properties with a first-ever visionary leadership in land use award, the Silverstein Properties of 3 World Trade Center in the Financial District, citizenM for the New York Bowery Hotel, and Rose Associates and DTH Capital for re-purposing the tower at 70 Pine Street for apartments.

"Essex Crossing is a testament to how holistic planning with community partners can yield transformative mixed-use projects, and we are honored for this recognition," Don Capoccia, partner at Delancey Street Associates and Principal at BFC Partners, said in a statement. "It's been incredibly rewarding to deliver much needed housing, community and cultural space, the city’s largest market, a new park and the first class A office space in the neighborhood to the Lower East Side. These are the sort of public-private collaborations we need to see more of across the city and we look forward to completing the next phase of Essex Crossing."

The Essex Crossing sites sat vacant since the late 1960s after walk-up tenement buildings were demolished, displacing more than 1,800 families, the New York Times reported in 2017. Decades of debate left the lots empty or filled with parking spaces.

Now, the entire complex will include 1,079 units, more than half set aside for below-market-rate apartments, developed by Delancey Street Associates — a partnership between L+M Development Partners, Taconic Investment Partners, BFC Partners, the Prusick Group and Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group. Some 350,000 square feet of office space is expected too.

The first phase of Essex Crossing, which won the development award Thursday, includes various apartment buildings and retail space. One is a14-story condo building at 242 Broome St. that is expected to include a bowling alley and International Center of Photography museum and school. The Rollins, at 145 Clinton St. just south of Broome St., is a 15-story 211-unit mixed-income building with a Target and Trader Joe's on the ground floor.

At 125 Delancey, a 26-story building dubbed The Essex — the development's tallest — has nearly 200 mixed-income apartments and will be home to the new Essex Market, which will take over the ground flood and below ground beneath the base of three Essex Crossing buildings. The first portion of the market is expected to open this spring.

Another building with below market rate senior housing at 175 Delancey St. — where GrandLo Cafe and an NYU Langone ambulatory care center are located — is also a part of the development's first phase.

Twenty finalists were nominated in December for developments including public, private, and nonprofit projects from across the state. Development and land use professionals selected the winners.

"In order to encourage even more investment in sustainable development, it’s critical that we recognize the efforts of those who are leading the way," the institute's chairman, Steven Kohn of Cushman & Wakefield, said in a statement.

For a full list of the winners, see here.