NEW YORK CITY-A plan to redevelop nine city-owned sites on Manhattan’s Lower East Side won conditional approval from Community Board 3 earlier this week, marking a successful first stop on the lengthy Uniform Land Use Review Procedure route. It’s a beginning that’s been a long time coming: the impetus to develop the area known as Seward Park began 47 years and seven mayors ago.
The Seward Park Mixed-Use Development Project would bring about 1.65 million square feet of housing, retail and other commercial space to a site just south of the Williamsburg Bridge. If CB 3 has its way, though, that retail space will not include big-box stores; the board has maintained that position since voting in favor of guidelines for the project last year.
“We firmly believe that such stores will threaten existing small businesses and will generally disrupt the community’s character,” according to CB 3’s resolution Tuesday in favor of the Seward Park project. “Our guidelines passed in January 2011 said very directly: ‘With the exception of a possible supermarket, no single retail tenant should exceed 30,000 square feet in size.’ ”
The community board was also adamant that the redevelopment should include a sizable affordable housing component: at least 800 units “and preferably more than 1,000.” Moreover, the board’s resolution asks that the affordable housing component remain that way in perpetuity.
City Council Member Margaret Chin, who represents Manhattan’s Community District 3, including the Seward Park sites, says in a statement that the Bloomberg administration has agreed to commit to the permanent affordability of affordable housing on the site. Further, she says, the city agreed to create a task force—also called for in CB 3’s resolution—to ensure community involvement throughout the review and development process.
“This unprecedented move by the city will ensure that your voices continue to be heard in the RFP process and beyond,” Chin says in her statement. “In addition to providing oversight and accountability, this task force will work to ensure that affordable housing is built and that is it built first.”
It was in July 1965, during the mayoralty of Robert F. Wagner Jr., that the Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Area was created with a plan for commercial and housing development. Demolition began on the sites two years later. Although portions of the plan were implemented, five sites have remained undeveloped and are used mainly for surface parking, according to the New York City Economic Development Corp.
“There were several attempts to develop the remaining SPEURA sites over the years, but the proposals failed to move forward generally due to a lack of consensus on the best use of the sites,” according to the EDC. “The SPEURA plan expired on July 22, 2005, 40 years after its adoption.”
CB 3 began to get the project’s wheels rolling again in 2008. The board’s Land Use, Zoning, Public and Private Housing Committee embarked on a planning process for the sites, inviting the Bloomberg administration to be part of the discussion.
The revived Seward Park project, according to a presentation by the EDC, “will fill a gap in the urban fabric that has persisted for 45 years.” The project is intended “to create a thriving, financially-viable, mixed-use, mixed-income development; to provide affordable and market-rate housing units, retail and other commercial uses, and neighborhood amenities; and to knit the project sites back into the larger, vibrant Lower East Side neighborhood.”
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Paul Bubny
Paul Bubny is managing editor of Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com. He has been reporting on business since 1988 and on commercial real estate since 2007. He is based at ALM Real Estate Media Group's offices in New York City.
