NYC's Moonshot Housing Program Gets Started in The Bronx

NYC Mayor Eric Adams is wasting no time getting started on the ambitious “Moonshot” plan he announced last week to build 500K new housing units over the next 10 years.

This week, the Department of City Planning announced it will immediately begin public hearings of a 46-block rezoning of portions of two East Bronx neighborhoods in proximity to future Metro-North stations—instantly fulfilling Adams’ pledge to speed up NYC’s land use review process.

The rezoning of industrial and manufacturing areas to residential—expected to be accompanied by an increase in residential density in other parts of the Bronx—is aimed at neighborhoods surrounding two rail stations, both servicing Metro-North, that are projected to open in 2027: the Parkchester/Van Nest and Morris Park Metro-North stations.

The Bronx rezoning plan would add an estimated 6,000 new homes, with at least a quarter of them designated as income restricted. The parcel along the railroad tracks is in proximity to the large campuses of Jacobi, Calvary and Montefiore Hospitals, which provide thousands of jobs for the estimated 23,000 workers in the area.

The plan converts to commercial and medium-density residential use low-rise manufacturing zones along East Tremont Avenue in Parkchester. Manufacturing zones around the medical campuses would be changed to commercial, with higher-density residential buildings allowed south of Montefiore Medical Center, according to a report in CityLimits.

“The establishment of new transit service in previously auto-oriented areas demands a thoughtful reorientation of permitted uses and densities to capitalize on the state’s significant investment in regional rail,” a Draft Scope of Work for the rezoning proposal states.

The impacted area includes a 28-block area bound by Baker Avenue and Van Nest Avenue to the north, Silver Street to the east, East Tremont Avenue to the south and St. Lawrence Avenue to the west. Another 18-block area is bordered by Pelham Parkway, Marconi Street, Williamsbridge Road and Tenbroaeck Road.

Adams also is throwing his support behind a proposed rezoning of a portion of Atlantic Avenue currently zoned for light manufacturing in the Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

Adams said the rezoning would create 10,000 new jobs in a “transit-oriented” development that has the support of NY Gov. Kathy Hochul.

City officials emphasized that the proposed rezoning in the Bronx is broken into several parcels, keeping the mayor’s pledge not to engage in neighborhood-wide rezoning like the Gowanus rezoning enacted by his predecessor.

Last week, Adams announced the Moonshot housing program in a report entitled “Get Stuff Done” listing more than 100 ways NYC’s “administration of development is broken.”

The mayor offered a bevy of solutions, most of which involve cutting red tape, including speeding up the precertification process of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure that clears the way for zoning changes, and exempting housing projects with fewer than 200 units from environmental reviews.

NYC’s Department of Buildings also will streamline its computerized permit application and tracking process, Adams said.

“We need more housing and we need it as fast as we can build it,” Adams said in a speech at City Hall. “That means affordable housing for working families, it means apartments for young people and places for people to grow older.”