The Java Street Collaborative is planning a community garden on a vacant city-owned property on Java between West and Franklin. The catch is that this is HPD-owned property, which is already planned for a small affordable housing development: “We just want to see what we could do with it until that time,” said Stella Goodall of the Collaborative.
You can read more about the Collaborative here.
Rafael Cestero, who headed HPD for two years, will take over the helm at Community Preservation Corporation/CPC Resources (the latter is the developer of the Domino project). Michael Lappin, who was CEO of CPC/CPCR for 30 years, announced his retirement in November.
The Wall Street Journal (via Brownstoner) reports that Douglaston Development, the developer of the Edge condos, has bought a vacant tower site next door at Toll Brother’s Northside Piers development. Douglaston plans to erect a 40-story luxury rental on the site.
Both Douglaston and Toll have sites for third towers on their properties – Douglaston has used its site to host the Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg, while the Toll site has sat vacant. The deal – which has been rumored for some months now – means that Northside Piers will be completed, albeit with rentals instead of condos and Douglaston instead of Toll as the developer (FXFowle, which designed the other Northside towers, will remain as the architect for the rental tower).
What is not clear is what this means in terms of affordable (inclusionary) housing. L&M Development Partners, which built the existing affordable housing at the Palmers Dock portion of Northside Piers, is listed as a partner with Douglaston in the new development. I don’t know if Toll has already built the required 20% affordable housing for the new tower, or if L&M will be developing it for Douglaston. L&M is building a new ground-up affordable project on Broadway and Kent, so conceivably that could represent an offsite component of the required inclusionary housing.
As Brownstoner notes, this is something of a bombshell. It is a bullish move on Douglaston’s part, and an indication of the relative strength of the Williamsburg rental market (particularly on the waterfront), but at the same time, the fact that neither Toll nor Douglaston is interested in condos has to be a bearish indicator.
More on the HPD kickback scandal and its local impact.
A couple of local angles to the arrest of an HPD assistant commissioner for allegedly taking bribes for affordable housing project. First, the whole scandal seems have come to light because of a probe involving extortion of Polish construction workers in Greenpoint. And second, Sergio Benitez, one of the developers indicted, is at the center of a separate investigation into an apartment in an affordable development that he allegedly gave to Councilman Erik Dilan.
Michael Kimmelman’s first architectural review in the Times:
The rebirth of the South Bronx isn’t news. But Via Verde is. And it makes as good an argument as any new building in the city for the cultural and civic value of architecture. The profession, or in any case much talk about it, has been fixated for too long on brand-name luxury objects and buildings as sculptures instead of attending to the richer, broader, more urgent vein of public policy and community engagement, in which aesthetics play a part.
From Curbed, 11 Broadway gets a new (tan) facade. The building is about halfway up, and Curbed reports that it is slated to open (possibly with a grocery store) towards the end of 2012.
Interesting item on CB1’s crowded liquor license agenda this month – an application for a bar at 60 South 2nd Street, to be called Crown Victoria. A bar, on a list of 34 bars and restaurants (it was a quiet month), is not that interesting.
But the location is – this is a site that was just rezoned for residential use. The garage at 60 South 2nd, soon to be converted to an eating and drinking establishment, sits on the portion of the property that is slated for affordable housing as part of a larger development. According to the owners of Crown Vic, they have a 10-year lease.
