This 30-story development will replace fire-ravaged Lower East Side synagogue

Developer Gotham Organization has revealed the massive mixed-use development set to rise around the remnants of a fire-gutted Lower East Side synagogue, which will bring nearly 500 new apartments to the neighborhood.

The developer, working in partnership with the Chinese American Planning Council, is nearing the start of the public review process for its plans to erect two Dattner Architect-designed buildings.

The project, which is bounded by Broome, Suffolk, Grand, and Norfolk streets, will offer 373 units at the 30-story Suffolk Street building with 25 percent set aside at 60 percent of the area median income. Meanwhile, the Norfolk Street property is planned as a 16-story Affordable Independent Residences for Seniors with 115 units. Overall, 40 percent of the units, or 208, of both buildings are earmarked as below market rate housing, according to project scoping documents.

The lion’s share of the Suffolk Street site will be devoted to residential use—more than two thirds of the building’s approximately 375,431 square feet—with space also devoted to offices and community programming for the Chinese American Planning Council. Plans also include retail on the ground floor along with space dedicated for Beth Hamedrash Hagodol on the footprint of its former synagogue, according to the building proposal.

On Norfolk Street, the property largely centers on an independent condominium for seniors run by Beth Hamedrash Hagodol. This is also where the religious group will house its Jewish cultural center equipped with a library, facilities for graduate and post-graduate students studying Jewish heritage, and a synagogue used for regular services.

But the project will require a slew of zoning changes and must go through a lengthy series of public reviews known as the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). The developers are requesting major changes to the area’s large-scale residential development district to allow the 30-story tower—the area currently caps buildings at 28 stories—and the proposal calls for the transfer of 15,000 square feet of development rights from two lots, and would reduce the required setback for the development.

The developer’s aim to complete construction by 2023 assuming the project receives city approvals in 2019 and sticks to a two and a half year construction timeline, according to building plans.

Locals have until March 8 to submit comments on the project’s scoping documents before a draft environmental impact statement is released in the coming months. That will formally kick off the review process and give Community Board 3 60 days to deliberate and pass advisory-judgement on the project before it heads to the Manhattan Borough President’s office and then to the City Planning Commission.