Housing Starts: The Housing Jackpot | South Street Seaport Fight | Bronx Waterfront Development

A rendering of the proposed South Street seaport tower (Photo Credit: SHoP Architects/Capital New York)

1. For 124 Families, This Lottery’s Jackpot Was an Affordable New Home in Manhattan About 50 percent of New York City’s low-income households spent at least half their income on rent in 2013, and about 90,000 are living in severely crowded conditions, according to research by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University. In Washington Heights, the neighborhood just north of Sugar Hill, about 10 percent of the neighborhood’s rental units were cited for serious housing code violations like heat and hot water failures last year; citywide, the figure was about 4 percent. [New York Times – 11/20/14]
2. Chicagoland’s Vanishing Middle-Class Neighborhoods Over at New York University’s Furman Center, Stanford’s Sean F. Reardon and Cornell’s Kendra Bischoff, two sociologists who have been collaborating in recent years on income segregation, have a piece on how neighborhoods are changing as the middle class has been squeezed since 1970. The impact of recent economic trends are pretty well known, but it’s interesting to see how it plays out on a geographic level—on the streets instead of on a spreadsheet. [Chicago Magazine – 11/20/14]
3. Affordable and Reliable, Queens Real Estate Ascends In already burgeoning Long Island City, more than 10,000 apartments are planned over the next three years, ranging from amenity-laden rentals to family-size condos, according to aptsandlofts.com, a New York brokerage that specializes in the marketing of developments. Hundreds of new apartments are expected in downtown Flushing over the next several years. Aging apartment buildings in neighborhoods like Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Rego Park and Elmhurst are being reinvented with updated lobbies, redesigned apartments and amenities from green roofs to children’s play areas. [New York Times – 11/21/14]
4. Gowanus Rezoning Plan Envisions High-Rise Development Imagine a cleaned-up Gowanus Canal flanked by parks, high-rise affordable housing, a thriving manufacturing zone and an active arts scene. That’s the ambitious vision that City Councilman Brad Lander will unveil to the public Monday when he announces the results of his Bridging Gowanus initiative, a 15-month effort to craft a proposal for how Gowanus should develop. [DNAinfo New York – 11/21/14]
5. New York’s Next Big Land-Use Fight The project would morph the South Street Seaport, one of the city’s earliest hotbeds of economic activity, from a faded industrial center to a booming attraction for tourists and a home to affluent and working-class New Yorkers alike. It would come with affordable housing, a public middle school, an extension of the East River Esplanade, a new marina capable of berthing tall ships and a full restoration of the Tin Building, a remarkable relic of the city’s past. The Seaport Museum would get a new home. There would be a market. Aging and decrepit piers would be replaced. Lights would be strung below the F.D.R. Drive. [Capital New York – 11/21/14]
6. Developer’s New Plan Stacks Up, Literally A Manhattan-based developer who is looking to get into the modular construction game has partnered with a firm that repurposes shipping containers. Together they hope to stack multifamily and mixed-use projects as high as nine stories all across the metro area, the duo announced Wednesday. The prefab method has long been hailed as the future of residential construction for many years, but has largely failed to catch on. [Crain’s New York Business – 11/19/14]
7. Bronx Waterfront Development Could Soon Become Reality It’s been a long time coming, but the South Bronx waterfront redevelopment project may soon be moving forward, with non-profit SoBRO releasing another study assessing the feasibility of the massive project. The plan almost doubles the number of units from 2,100 in the initial March report to 4,000, spread across 2.8 million square feet. [Curbed NY – 11/22/14]
8. Brooklyn Bridge Park to Tower Critics: No More Study The administrators of Brooklyn Bridge Park have looked into complaints that the development of two towers on the greensward’s edge requires more environmental study, and found them without merit. On Friday, the city-controlled Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation will release a study it commissioned from AKRF, an environmental engineering firm, which finds that although the two new towers will be built several years after an original study was completed, the development’s additional environmental impact will be insignificant. [Capital New York – 11/21/14]
9. Rebirth for Harlem Renaissance Site A plan to tear down the Renaissance Casino and Ballroom and turn it into a luxury apartment building could help complete the transformation of a pocket of northern Harlem that has lagged behind the rapid redevelopment of the surrounding area. But the decision to raze a building where former Mayor David Dinkins was married and the New York Rens basketball team once played has prompted a debate in the community about whether this is a lost opportunity to save a vestige of the neighborhood’s cultural heyday. [Wall Street Journal – 11/23/14]
10. Are Our Buildings Prepared for Natural Disasters Bigger than Hurricane Sandy? When hurricane Sandy came to town, it blew through a slew of cracks in New York’s building infrastructure. Millions of people sat in the dark for days, many unable to wash their hands or flush their toilets. Backup generators, which sat in flooding basements, broke before they had a chance to help. Sewer systems overflowed. In the months that followed, in an effort to protect its residents from future bouts of city-wide paralysis, the city of New York asked for help safeguarding their buildings from future storms. [The Guardian – 11/19/14]