Thursday, September 19, 2013

Have you seen the plans for SPURA?



In case you didn't see all the hoopla announcements yesterday about "Essex Crossing," the $1.1 billion plan for that decades-long vacant lot along Essex and Delancey (The Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, aka SPURA).

And if it all happens, the area might look like this one day ...



According to the news release from the Mayor's Office:

[T]he project ... includes a 15,000-square-foot open space, a new and expanded Essex Street Market, a dual-generation school operated by the Educational Alliance, a community center run by Grand Street Settlement, a rooftop urban farm, the Andy Warhol Museum, 250,000 square feet of office space and a diverse mix of retail space. Seward Park will also become a hub of small-business incubation, with micro-retail spaces and creative and tech co-working and incubator space.

Not to mention a bowling alley.



As for the housing, of the 1,000 apartments, half will be permanently affordable to low- and middle-income families and individuals.

There are many outlets that have been covering this. Such as!

BoweryBoogie

The Lo-Down

Curbed

Gothamist

The New York Times

And the timelines for all this? From Gothamist:

Groundbreaking on the project is expected to begin in the spring of 2015, with five buildings slated to come up by the summer of 2018, the remaining housing units finished by 2021. The entire project will be finished by 2024 — that is, unless a different mayor steps in.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just more glittering, cheaply-built crap.

Anonymous said...

cannot wait to urinate on it.

Anonymous said...

RIP, beloved brick ville...

Anonymous said...

So sour....I LOVE my city, it WAS and IS PROGRESSIVE, isn't that why we don't feel like Misfits?

Anonymous said...

They will " improve " the Essex Street Market" by relocating it into a shopping mall, and then build another monstrosity on the land where the market once stood. Is that the plan?

Giovanni said...

SPURA looks boring, and they obviously left out a few things that will make this place really attractive to all the out of towners who will call this place home:

A 24 hour/day heliport on every rooftop, with helicopters manned by specially trained Crusties

A giant ferris wheel so the tourists can look in your windows

A miniature toy railroad driven by Zoltar that continuously circles the property like the one at MJs Neverland, with free subway transfers

An exotic animal petting zoo and shark aquarium in every lobby

A 20 story waterfall to help keep the aquarium water fresh and help create waves in the waterpark

A year round ski mountain and ski jump to make it easier to get across Essex Street

A climbing wall in the shape of Bloomberg's face so we can climb inside his head to finally see what's really going on in there