The transformation of the Bronx’s former Spofford Juvenile Detention Center into an enormous mixed-use development with affordable housing is a go: The City Council voted today to approve the project, which will bring more than 700 apartments, all of which will be deemed affordable, to Hunts Point.
The move comes just one week after the Council’s Land Use Committee unanimously voted to approve the project, which will be dubbed The Peninsula.
As we previously reported, in 2016, the city awarded a contract to a team made up of Gilbane Development Company, Hudson Companies, and Mutual Housing Association of New York to redevelop the five-acre site, which had been shut five years prior to that.
The development team has since brought on WXY architecture + urban design and Body Lawson Associates to design the project, and hopes to complete it in three phases, the first of which will wrap in 2021. The whole thing is due to be finished by 2024.
Under the plan approved by the City Council, the new complex will include 740 affordable units, 40 percent of which will be set aside as permanently affordable (and for the remaining units, there will be a 60-year regulatory period that keeps them within the affordable bracket).
Rafael Salamanca Jr., the council member who represents the South Bronx, also noted that some of those units will have “very deep affordability,” with some renting for as little as $396/month.
Today we will vote to take down a 50 year long eyesore in what we once knew as the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center and build a new, vibrant, mixed-use campus that will create new jobs, space for arts and wellness & 100% of new affordable housing to the Hunts Point community pic.twitter.com/HtmpbcNZeE
— Rafael Salamanca, Jr (@Salamancajr80) March 22, 2018
“It’s a big day for justice in the Bronx,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “As we move to build more than 700 affordable homes, open space and small businesses in Hunts Point on the site of the old Spofford facility, we are seeing a community rising and the righting of old wrongs.”
Other elements of the enormous new development include 52,000 square feet of public open space, 50,000 square feet of light industrial space, 53,500 square feet for community facilities, and 15,000 square feet of retail space. It’s estimated that 300 permanent jobs will be created as a result of the project.