Photo © Julienne Schaer
The first two rentals at the five-building South Bronx complex La Central officially opened on Wednesday. The mixed-use towers, located at 556 and 600 Bergen Street in the borough’s Melrose neighborhood, contain 500 units of housing, a new YMCA, studio space for BronxNet, and a rooftop farm operated by GrowNYC.
Rendering of La Central A and B, credit: MHG Architects and FXCollaborative
A housing lottery launched on Monday for 494 affordable apartments at a sprawling development in the South Bronx. Two buildings of the five-building complex La Central are now accepting applications for the units, which range from $395/month studios to $2,689/month four-bedrooms. The rentals, located at 556 and 600 Bergen Avenue, contain a 50,000-square-foot YMCA, GrowNYC-operated rooftop gardens, and ground-floor retail. New Yorkers earning 30, 40, 50, 60, and 130 percent of the area median income can apply for the apartments.
Rendering of 626 Bergen via FXCollaborative
A new housing development in the Bronx launched a lottery this week for 63 studio apartments. Located in the South Bronx, the La Central complex will include five buildings with 992 units of mixed-income housing, a new 50,000-square-foot YMCA, a television studio, landscaped courtyard, and a skate park. Qualifying New Yorkers earning 60 percent of the area median income (AMI) can apply for the $650/month studios.
As 6sqft previously reported, after getting the green light for La Central, a new development that would bring nearly 1,000 units of affordable housing to the site of the Bronx Zoo-bordering Lambert Houses, construction on phase 1 of the project is well underway. Welcome2TheBronx reports that a 160-unit building D at Bergen Avenue and 152nd Street, a supportive housing building for formerly homeless individuals, is almost topped out and is scheduled to be finished by the summer of 2019. Two more buildings in the 992 unit, 1.1-million-square-foot Hudson Companies, Inc, development have broken ground.
On Wednesday the New York City Council voted to approve the La Central development project in the Melrose section of the Bronx, the Daily News reports. The project, which will be designed by FXFOWLE architects, is slated to bring 992 apartments to the borough, all of them designated as affordable housing under Mayor de Blasio’s mandatory inclusionary housing (MIH) legislation. It is the biggest project to be approved to date under the MIH rules, which require some income restricted apartments in projects that need the city’s approval.
The New York City Planning Commission has voted to approve a boutique condominium project on Manhattan’s west side without the mayor’s new Mandatory Inclusionary Housing plan in place, the New York Times reports; a much larger development in the Bronx also got the green light, and will be among the first to be included in the new affordable housing program.
6sqft reported previously on the controversy over whether a 17-story condominium slated to replace a parking lot and two low rise buildings at 6th Avenue at West 18th should be among the first recipients of the mayor’s new mandatory inclusionary housing (M.I.H.) program. Both the city and the project’s developers, Acuity Capital Partners, made the argument that the proposed project is “more of a rejiggering of the zoning than an enlargement,” and therefore does not fall under the M.I.H. rules.
Image: View Grand Concourse via photopin (license)
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.” The infamous phrase, uttered in a 1977 broadcast of a Bronx fire, has stuck in the mind of many New Yorkers even today. Indeed, the Bronx saw a sharp decline in population and quality of life in the late 1960s and 1970s, which culminated in a wave of arson. By the early 1980s, the South Bronx was considered one of the most blighted neighborhoods in the country, with a 60 percent decline in population and 40 percent decline of housing units.
Although revitalization picked up by the ’90s, the Bronx never quite took off like its outer-borough counterparts Brooklyn and Queens. While media hype, quickly rising prices and a rush of development has come to characterize those two boroughs, the Bronx has flourished more quietly. The borough, nevertheless, has become home to growth and development distinct from the rest of New York City. Innovative affordable housing, adaptive reuse projects, green development and strong community involvement are redefining the area. As Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said during this Municipal Arts Society discussion in 2014, this is “The New Bronx.”
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