More Market-Rate Apartments Eyed for Public Housing Site
(THE CITY) Rachel Holliday Smith, April 25, 2019
More private, market-rate apartments are coming to a tower planned within a Lower East Side public housing complex – the latest City Hall move to raise much-needed funds for the struggling New York City Housing Authority.
NYCHA officials presented some details of the revised proposal to tenants at the La Guardia Houses during a meeting Monday night, according to multiple people in attendance.
La Guardia, home to 2,700 New Yorkers, has been eyed for private development since the Bloomberg era. But last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration sought proposals for a tower with half subsidized, half market-rate apartments on a La Guardia parking lot.
Now, the city is looking to bring in a 35-to-45-story tower that could house up to three-quarters market-rate apartments, said sources who attended the meeting.
Felicia Cruickshank, president of La Guardia’s Tenant Association, worries the tower would add to an ongoing development boom that includes Extell’s One Manhattan Square and the three-skyscraper waterfront development in Two Bridges.
“It’s just going to gentrify the whole community and change what the Lower East Side has always been,” said Cruickshank, who attended Monday’s meeting.