Image courtesy Bell Urban LLC
A 13-story, mixed-use residential high-rise with a twist is slated to go up near the mouth of the Kingsbridge Armory, the Norwood News has learned.
Alan Bell of Bell Urban LLC and B&B Supportive LLC, is expected to build the site at 2700 Jerome Ave. for an estimated $59 million. Until recently the site was a defunct car wash and nightclub, which were now bulldozed. In all, 137 units for low to mid-income will be built, along with a mandated indoor garage at the barren block.
Bell’s project is a rare one. With 15 percent of the units set aside for middle income earners, Bell plans to have another 55 percent of the units going to low-income earners below the Area Median Income threshold of 60 percent, and 30 percent of the units allocated to formerly homeless families, bringing three socioeconomic classes under one roof. Bell has developed 5,000 units of affordable housing across the city for more than 25 years, according to a biography of him by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The project lies just outside the Kingsbridge Armory, slated to become the Kingsbridge National Ice Center (KNIC). Bell told the Norwood News that the project, slated to become the world’s largest ice rink, had little to do with his decision to build there.
“There’s a lot of plusses even without the Kingsbridge Armory,” said Bell. “You can’t beat the public transportation there, it’s fantastic. And our site is literally at the bottom of the stairs to the 4 train.”
Other amenities around the building include a commercial strip, schools and St. James Park, all within walking distance.
Bell told the Norwood News he will proceed with his “as of right” status to build a high-rise even as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s controversial Housing New York proposal, which aims to change the landscape of most New York City neighborhoods, churns through the public review process. Communities around the city have expressed frustration over the plan.
But Bell, a developer with several projects around the city, is a proponent of the plan, seeing how it can free him up in developing parking near a train station.
“If I have to comply with current zoning, then I have to put a 27-space parking lot on the ground floor, and I’m going to have just 1200 feet of retail,” said Bell. “If the zoning change passed, I will have a beautiful backyard, I would have 5,600-square-feet of retail space. That could be a daycare center or pre-K, because this neighborhood is officially underserved for pre-K or early childhood.”
The news comes two weeks after the Social Security Administration office at 2720 Jerome Ave. closed its one-story office, relocating to nearby Grand Concourse. More broadly, the project adds to a growing list of developments changing the borough’s landscape.
Bell is expected to meet with Community Board 7 in the near future.
admin
Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.
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That area is disgusting. No one in their right mind would want to live on top of an elevated subway. Many of the streets in the area are drug infested. My husband used to live on Webb Avenue and there were numerous shootings. Unless the area is cleaned up, stop question and frisk is brought back and people stop living off the damn govt., this will just be another ghetto infested dump.
Although better here than where I live now.
I agree 100% with meme’s comments. No decent and respectable person wants to have low class ghetto neighbors. To suggest that the majority of the building be made up of low to upper low income people is total stupidity. These people will scare away any respectable decent person who wants a higher quality of life. The building might as well be filled with low income ghetto trash because ultimately that’s what it’s going to attract.
15% middle, 85% poverty?
Are they trying to give The Bronx a bad name?
Seriously. We need more in the middle around the whole city. This sounds like a bad way to build up a neighborhood. And in general, there seems to be some kind of rush to cram a lot of new downscale projects in the area, while every other borough is getting 80% “market rate” (unaffordable) housing towers.
Something is way out of whack here.
The City desperately needs 60% middle-class in every part of town. 30% poor/homeless. That leaves a healthy 10% for the 1%!
I smell scam.
Low and middle income group family requires a face-lift. This project is most welcome here. As a real estate professional I can understand the importance of the location and locality. Hope to see this up soon. Bronx requires such initiative more from developers and investors.
You say “As a real estate professional I can understand the importance of the location and locality.”
My point exactly! These concentrations of super-downscale projects – in Kingsbridge Heights, the Webster corridor, near Gun Hill Rd, etc, are what the Bronx is getting. Why not middle class affordable housing here.
I concur with the other commenter – what ‘middle class’ family wants to move into overwhelmingly ‘poverty’, ‘homeless’, and ‘halfway-house-type housing.
1) I recognize certainly that the poor, homeless, and special-needs population needs housing, too.
2) These folks should be spread around the ENTIRE city and integrated into housing for middle and upper class residents FOR THE GOOD OF ALL these groups, up, down & middle!!!
3) Concentrating downscale & ‘special needs’ residents is BAD for THEM AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
This concentration of 85% ‘homelss’ and ‘needs’ housing is ONLY for the benefit of some realtor who is probably abusing some subsidy. We NEED to FIX such policies!
This is backwards. It should be %15 low income the rest to middle and upper class. I wouldn’t live in that building and I make 40k a year.
So much casual racism in the comments
there are far too man incorrigible recalcitrant subhuman zombies in wonderful BRONX.
purge and clean bronx of this festering parasitic vermin once and for all.
abolish RAP noise now !
liberty or infamy.