[EVG file photo via www.anitam.com]
Last we heard, developers had plans for a 9-story mixed-use building at the site of the former Mobil station on East Houston and Avenue C. Plans called for 45 residential units and 4,550 square feet of commercial space at the all-new 11 Avenue C.
However, the Commercial Observer got the scoop on the latest rendering, which features floor-to-ceiling corner windows and a few balconies.
Paperwork that the Commercial Observer obtained shows that Lloyd Goldman's BLDG Management are applying to build a 10-floor building.
And what else?
BLDG must petition the city for the variance in order to install the retail component and build out the oddly-shaped lot to full capacity, according to its application. BLDG officials hope to use an inclusionary housing bonus by paying for affordable units elsewhere rather than including them in the new project, the application says.
Uh, so where is "elsewhere" for these affordable units?
The 14-month-long construction project is expected to start in January if the one- and two-bedroom rental project gains approval from Board of Standards and Appeals.
Previously on EV Grieve:
You have a little longer to get gas on Avenue C
Plans filed for new 9-story building at site of Mobil station on East Houston and Avenue C
RUMOR: Gas station going, boutique hotel coming on Second Avenue? (31 comments)
BP station on 2nd Avenue closes this month
State seizes Mobil station on Avenue C and Houston for nonpayment of taxes
Conveniently located next to nothing.
ReplyDelete"Affordable housing" means taxpayer-subsidized.
ReplyDeleteA free market in housing, like a free market in anything else, leads to higher supply, lower prices, and more innovation. Get rid of taxes, controls, zoning laws, and other impediments to the market, and everybody would be better off, especially lower income people, who are the biggest losers under big mcgovernment.
Stop with the welfare state mentality already.
Bill the libertarian anarchist and enemy of Havana/Moscow-on-the-Hudson, and the criminal little socialist bureau crooks at City Hall and the commie Comrade de/De
Blasio
Free market in housing leads to exactly the shit we have now. Amazingly, other countries and cities, like for instance Berlin, that have strong tenant laws and rent control in place, have a much better mixed infrastructure and low income people are not the biggest losers. Hm. Something to ponder.
ReplyDelete"Uh, so where is "elsewhere" for these affordable units?"
ReplyDeleteI know, in the shittest far reaches of the city away from Manhattan as is possible but still technically part of NYC.
As for the Republican land developer's comments above.... May I suggest Orange county CA or some nice gated community filled with laws on what color your potted plants must be. We already have an UES we don't need another.
Another boring piece of bland pre-fab crap to maximize profit and minimize the look of the landscape.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is they're thinking Skokie when it comes to "elsewhere". Can't give up any of those $7500 a month shoe boxes to an undeserving non-trust-fund brat, can we, now?
Does anyone know if there is a way to leave public comment for or get a petition going for the Board of Standards and Appeals to NOT approve this without onsite affordable units? I am in the Mitchell Lama building on Avenue C and 10 St. and would not have been able to stay in the East Village if I hadn't gotten this after 12 years on waiting list. This is outrageous. How can we fight this? Thanks
ReplyDeletePlease Bill the libertarian anarchist, give it a rest. There is no NYC housing "free market." The mom and pop landlord days are over as Wall Street and big developers have taken over and captured the City Council and Albany in the process.
ReplyDeleteYour idea that giving free rein to corporate America so that they can create some kind of utopia for us wage slaves so airy fairy-ily defies what is already plainly in front of our faces that I'm not sure you're pulling our collective leg. Then again, maybe you're the son of Irving Kristol.
First I'm not sure what "affordable housing" exactly means. Affordable for who? The working poor? Nurses, teachers, cops and the kind of middle class families that used to pile into Stuyvesant Town?
ReplyDeleteEither way, I'm not a fan of turning them into second class citizens by setting aside a couple of units in a luxury building for them. It's an un-serious response to the middle class housing problem in NYC.
To Anon 10:24 (and everyone else): Anyone can testify at a BSA public hearing. See here for schedule: http://www.nyc.gov/html/bsa/html/hearing/hearing.shtml
ReplyDeleteOn E.V. issues, Councilmember Rosie Mendez, GVSHP and EVCC usually testify.
When rent stabilization laws go away, rents go up very quickly as NYC found out the hard way in the early 1970s. If landlords really thought rents would go down in a free market without any rent stabilization then they would be the ones trying to protect it instead of the ones always trying to get rid of it.
ReplyDeletevia the Met Council On Housing:
When New York Tried Vacancy Decontrol
In the spring of 1971, the New York State Legislature enacted full vacancy decontrol, applicable to all apartments that became vacant on or after June 30, 1971. This law resulted in an immediate, massive crisis in the downstate housing market. In only 2 1⁄2 years, 300,000 rent-controlled units and 88,000 rent-stabilized units were deregulated. In its 1974 report, the Temporary State Commission on Living Costs and the Economy appointed by Governor Rockefeller found that vacancy decontrol had resulted in average rent increases of 52 percent, while operating costs for landlords increased by only 7.9 percent. The Commission also found that deregulation led to disinvestment in the housing stock: there was a 30 percent drop in renovation expenditures, since the supply of affordable housing was so small that landlords were able to impose massive vacancy rent increases without making improvements.
Giovanni, if the libertarians had their way - the real libs if you will - we'd all be carrying our sewage in buckets to a privy.
ReplyDeleteUse eminent domain to take possession of every luxury rental building in the city and make them available to everyone, by lottery.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous the communist and friend of Havana/Moscow-on-the-Hudson, and the commie Comrade DeBlasio!
Hate to break it to you Ken from Kens kitchen but this isn't about the middle class housing crisis. This is about the shelter residents, the homeless and the destitute. The questions is can you build MORE housing for these folks if you just get money from developers and find the CHEAPEST land and build as many units as possible? Do you spend 100 million to build on the UES to make a point or do you house 5x as many by building way out in the outer boroughs where land is cheaper? I know its unfair that this housing isn't in Manhattan right? well the city is in a shelter/homeless/destitute person crisis. The response that makes sense is to get money from these developers and build where it is cheapest and easiest and quickest. And yes technically it is still in NYC. If you have a better solution that is REALISTIC I'm sure the city would love to know about it.
ReplyDelete1:35 PM - OK I get it. So you're not being serious. But then it's hard to tell with libertarians, anarchist or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteWhy am I not surprised??
ReplyDeleteHate to break it to you 2:11 PM, but at a City Council hearing I attended in 2006, the NYC housing stock figures bantered around were: approx 50% luxury housing, 42% low income housing, and 8% middle income housing. A labor lawyer for the MTA testified that there were city transit workers who were commuting daily to the city from as far away as Buck's County, PA because of a lack of middle income housing in NYC.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what the current figures are but would assume that any increases most likely occurred in the luxury sector at the expense of middle and low, but there was already not much middle left.
Has anyone noticed all the new market rate buildings that have been created along Houston as it has been redesigned and repaved? Makes you wonder who they have been making those improvements for!!
ReplyDeleteIf the current zoning (gas station + auto repair) could NOT be changed, this property would have not been attractive to the investment group that purchased it. Obviously, they EXPECTED to get the variances to enable them to erect yet another mini yuppie ghetto that is out-of-scale with adjacent buildings. (Where the FUCK do they get off putting up a TEN story building there?)
The problem is that the city facilitates this shit: If not for the city's rubber-stamping of zoning changes and variances when requested by developers, we would not have rampant hyper-gentrification and displacement of small businesses and affordable apartments.
Ken- my point was that the city is going to build more for the shelter/project/destitute than the middle class. I understand the figures you mentioned. Frankly I have no sympathy for transit workers who CHOOSE to live in PA and commute. So unionized city workers who make 90k plus free health care and pensions and perks now somehow need subsidized housing? That makes the tale of two cities the city workers versus everyone else. Bill D will build for the shelter folks- it fits in with the progressive he is supposed to be. Do we the cops who beat up the homeless to get their housing too? That sounds wonderful. Lets raise the fares AGAIN so mta 'workers' who want houses can live closer to NYC. screw them.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile back to the subject of the post...Lloyd Goldman is a greedy horrible landlord and should not get this approved without violations in his other buildings being corrected.
ReplyDeleteTo Anony 2.38 PM. Your disdain for union employees is obvious. Again, have some balls and include the cops and firemen in your hate as well. BTW, I cleaned “Masters of the Universe” office buildings as a 32B-J union member. It paid for my college tuition. Also drove a cab. Have you done this type of dirty work? What’s your point? Are you blaming the insanity of the unbridled capitalism of the corporate real estate insanity here (there is NO free market in Manhattan housing) on union members? And Havana on the Hudson? That’s fucking rich. It’s Dubai on the Hudson, thank you, twelve years of Bloomberg/Burden. Oh yes, the so called “free market” has worked so well in the commercial real estate world. See “Save Café Edison” or any of the hundreds of horror stories posted at Jeremiah Moss’s Vanishing NY blog. And yes, those corporate welfare slugs, they are the “job creators”, so we must give them a pass. See Hudson Yards. Or any of those 57th Street foreign bankrolled 1200+ foot high slab monstrosities.
ReplyDeleteStep one. Repeal vacancy decontrol, RS apartments will then go back into the market place as a natural ebb and flow, no need to bunker down. Step two, NYC controls RS law, not NYS. Why the fuck is some upstate NY Senate Republican, who owes his job to the fact that the population of NYS prisons (vast majority being NYC residents) is factored in to him having his NYS Senate seat, determine my RS rent issues? Step three, major commercial rent protections (tax breaks, whatever) for small businesses, currently bottled up in the NYC Council. And in addition to the usual real estate landlord scumbag suspects, a major fuck you to John Sexton. Vent over, back on my meds.
anon 3:48- I love your comment.
ReplyDelete