HPD COMMISSIONER CESTERO ANNOUNCES FIRST PHASE OF LARGEST AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT IN NYC SINCE THE 1970s

Plans Include 600 Affordable Units, New School, Commercial Space, and Parking

Announcement Marks Beginning Stages for Development of Hunter’s Point South In Long Island City

Long Island City, NY – NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Commissioner Rafael E. Cestero announced today the release of a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the first phase of the Hunter’s Point South site located in Long Island City, Queens. Bounded by 50^th Ave to the north, 2^nd St to the east, Borden Ave to the south, and Center Blvd to the west, the site which consists of parcels A and B will be developed to create approximately 1,000 new housing units, of which a minimum of 60 percent will be mixed-income permanently affordable housing. The site will also include new commercial space, parking, and a new school. Hunter’s Point South is the largest affordable housing development in the Bloomberg Administration’s New Housing Marketplace Plan (NHMP), and the largest in New York City in more than three and a half decades. Launched in 2003 by Mayor Bloomberg to build or preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2014, the NHMP is the most productive and comprehensive municipal housing plan in the nation, financing more than 100,000 affordable units to date.

“Today we are taking the next critical step in creating thousands of new affordable homes, a new school, park and retail space, and vital infrastructure that will transform this long underutilized swath of land into a vital and thriving community,” said HPD Commissioner Cestero. “It has been decades since New York has seen a project of this scale with the aim of creating a haven of affordability for our hardworking families – the teachers, health care workers, veterans, municipal employees, and first-responders who are the irreplaceable backbone of our City. At Hunter’s Point South we are not just brining life to the Queens waterfront, we are building a stronger, sustainable, and more affordable New York for the people who make this the greatest city in the world.” 

In keeping with the objectives of the NHMP, plans for sites A and B along with the remaining sites to be developed within the Hunter’s Point South area will transform this currently underutilized land into a thriving, sustainable neighborhood that residents, local businesses and community groups can call home. Consisting of a total of approximately 56,800 square feet, development of these first two parcels will create approximately 1,000 units of housing, of which at least 60% or 600 units will be permanently affordable. Twenty percent of the units will be available to families earning up to 80% Area Median Income (AMI), twenty percent to families earning up to 130% AMI, and twenty percent to families earning up to 165% AMI, or what amounts to an income range of about $63,000 to $130,000 per year for a family of four. In addition to the residential component, plans for the site call for approximately 22,000 gross square feet of new commercial space, 144 parking spaces, and a new 1,100 seat intermediate school/high school. The RFP submission period runs from June 7 through September 1, 2010. For more information and to obtain a copy of the RFP, please visit http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/developers/rfp.shtml

Hunter’s Point South sites A and B are the beginning of what will become the largest affordable housing development in New York City since the early 1970s when Co-op City and Starrett City were completed. Last summer the City acquired the entire 30 acre Hunter’s Point South site from the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey at the cost of $100 million dollars. When complete, the development will accommodate approximately 5,000 new units of housing, 60 percent or 3,000 units of which will be reserved as affordable for moderate- and middle-income families. 

The entire project will also include more than 11 acres of landscaped waterfront parkland, new retail shops, community facility space and the new school. It is anticipated that Hunter’s Point South will catalyze more than $2 billion in private investment and create more than 4,600 jobs. The street network will create pedestrian-scaled streets that tie into the existing street grid and neighborhood, and also tap into nearby transit connections. The Plan completed the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure in November 2008. Work to demolish the existing structures on site has been ongoing since last fall, and extensive infrastructure work will begin in early 2011 for sites A and B to include sewer, water, power, and roads, along with the first phase of the waterfront park.

In the late 1980s, the Hunter's Point South site was slated to become the third and fourth phase of New York State's Queens West Development which called for 2,200 apartments and more than two million square feet of office space. Later the site was envisioned as the location for the Olympic Village in the City's 2012 Olympic bid. On the heels of the sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in 2006, Mayor Bloomberg announced the City's intention to acquire the site from ESDC and the Port Authority to create the City's first large-scale moderate and middle income housing in decades. Since then, multiple City agencies have worked with the community to develop the Hunter's Point South Plan.

#  #  #

About Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan:

New York City’s affordable housing program to build or preserve 165,000 units of housing — enough to house half a million New Yorkers — is the most ambitious and productive in the nation—creating housing as well as jobs for New Yorkers. In April, 2010 the City reached the critical benchmark of 100,000 units financed—representing an investment of $4.5 billion to date by the City, not including roughly $5 billion in bonds issued by HDC.

Led by HPD Commissioner Rafael E. Cestero, the Plan has been recast to maintain momentum while confronting head on the economic challenges facing the City, the State, the housing industry, the financial sector and individual New Yorkers and their families. In order to fulfill the NHMP goal of 165,000 units, HPD and HDC are responding to market realities and focusing on three primary goals: strengthening neighborhoods, expanding the supply of affordable and sustainable housing and stabilizing families by keeping them in their homes. To read more about the NHMP, please visit http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/about/plan.shtml 

About the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD):

HPD is the nation’s largest municipal housing preservation and development agency. Its mission is to promote quality housing and viable neighborhoods for New Yorkers through education, outreach, loan and development programs and enforcement of housing quality standards. It is responsible for implementing Mayor Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan to finance the construction or preservation or 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2014. Since the plan’s inception, more than 100,000 affordable homes have been created or preserved. For more information, visit www.nyc.gov/hpd