Reply With QuoteA second crane (it's up now, but it was too late for a pic)!? Seems excessive....
Talk about sleeping in on this one! Cranes! Foundations! YOWZERS!
A second crane (it's up now, but it was too late for a pic)!? Seems excessive....
I would love to see those housing projects on the west side of Amsterdam come down. They look like crap.
Never going to happen.
I know.
It will probably happen in the near term. Not exactly like you're imagining, but it will happen.Originally Posted by BrooklynLove
NYCHA is developing plans all over the city for new infill projects on parking lots and vacant land. They're also weighing wheather to renovate or redevelop a number of complexes. They also have serious cost pressures, thus forcing it to enter public-private partnerships.
The Amsterdam Houses are extremely valuable. One could sell the land outright for a couple billion. That probably won't happen, though.
What they will probably do is enter a public-private partnership, demolish the buildings one-by-one, and rebuild mixed-use towers, with the former residents given full right of return, so there is no net loss of affordable housing, but also development of new income-producing market rate housing.
If they do that, then they should also restore the street grid to these super blocks.
It's interesting to walk around this area. The trees grow straight up, like they do in a forest.
I would love to see this happen, getting rid of the street grid and creating these massive superblocks was almost as bad as building these ugly structures here in the first place.
To the previous point, the public private partnership with creating mixed use buildings in place of the projects can easily be accomplished and would spur a lot of economic activity in the city right now. The entire super block that Amsterdam houses lies on consists of 3 city blocks and roughly ~1000 units in buildings that average about 7/8 stories high. I'm sure that these buildings are deteriorating and need millions in repair.
Solution - Increase zoning and density and build 3 taller buildings that can accommodate the residents of Amsterdam houses. This can easily fit on one city block and then the city can sell the other 2 blocks to private developers, all while re-creating the street grid. This would obviously need to be done in stages and take 10-15 years at the very least with the way things are done here.
I highly doubt most good developers would be willing to construct mixed income buildings here so i would imagine they would keep the lower income housing on the west side of the super block and the higher end rentals/condos facing Lincoln Center.
I bet they'll be gone in 25 to 50 years from now, somewhere within that time frame. Right now they're just placeholders for very distant development. Look at the swaths of commieblocks they're demolishing in Moscow nowadays, replaced with rows of modern highrises.
As much as we can hope for new blocks in the UWS, NYCHA has serious problems with a lack of Manhattan housing developments as compared to other boroughs. If this area is to be expanded it will most likely be after the other west side projects are completed. There is plenty to look forward to in hudson yards and columbia's expansion.
Over the years NYC has maintained its public housing surprisingly well.
What? There are more NYCHA developments in Manhattan than in any other borough.
The biggest concentration of NYCHA developments, by far, is in Manhattan.
And it's irrelevent anyways, because NYCHA does not destroy housing. If a project were to be redeveloped, they would require the existing housing be replaced in the new housing.
And I'm not sure what you're implying by referring to a "lack of developments" leading to "serious problems". Are you referring to the NYCHA wait lists? There are hundreds of thousands of people on the NYCHA wait lists, and this probem could never be solved, because you are offering a good (housing) for far less than the real cost.
Even in half-abandoned cities like Detroit, there are massive public housing waiting lists, because you are still offering a good for far less than it actually costs. So obviously in a growing, high-cost, high-demand city like NYC you will never solve the affordable housing "problem".
Manhattan has the most NYCHA developments technically (and only by 2), but Brooklyn has many thousands more actual residents in NYCHA housing. Most NYCHA residents want to live in Manhattan because it is generally considered safer and with better subway access etc.
Toronto's Regent Park looks/looked like a lowrise version of NYC's housing projects: ugly brown buildings set back from the street behind useless open space with very little retail and superblocks breaking up the street grid. It was built in the mid-20th century. The entire neighbourhood is being gradually torn down and replaced with thru-streets where superblocks stood, and buildings that hug the sidewalk with ground-floor retail on the main streets and townhomes on the side streets. It is also going from low-income to mixed-income. This is a massive project being done over many years. Already there are several towers completed with a 24-hour supermarket and other businesses on the ground floor. The density is increasing too. I believe there will be about twice as many residences after than there were before.
This is what NYC should do with some of it's projects. Restore the street grid, tear down the balcony-less towers-in-the-park buildings and replace them with modern, attractive, mixed-use buildings that hug the sidewalk and have retail at grade.
Before:
After:
Phase 2:
http://www.torontohousing.ca/news/20...park_phase_two
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