Seven Vie for Huge Queens Middle-Class Housing Complex
By Matt Chaban September 23, 2010 2:49 pm
reprints
One of the largest development sites left in the city has attracted some serious interest from some serious players. The Journal is reporting that seven bids have been made for the first phase of Hunters Point South, a planned 6,000-unit housing complex in Queens that was originally to be the site of the city’s Olympic Village, had we not failed in attracting the 2012 Olympics.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which is administering the RFP, would not say who was in, but according to the Journal, AvalonBay, Douglaston Development, and a Durst Fetner/Jonathan Rose joint venture have been confirmed. (If you know of any of the other four, there’s an email at the bottom of this post for a reason.)
The bidders are vying for the first two of six parcels on the 30-acre site, with the requirement to build 1,000 units of housing and a 1,100-seat school. The project is meant to be a haven for the city’s increasingly squeezed middle class, with 60 percent of its units being set aside as affordable housing for families of four making between $63,000 and $130,000. The project was conceived in part as a paean to the loss of Stuytown–which is of course now not so lost, so maybe we don’t need this anymore?
Why, with the real estate economy so bad, is there so much interest in this project? Besides the obvious fact that it’s such a prime spot, just across the East River? Besides the fact that this thing isn’t exactly going up tomorrow? Maybe it has something to do with affordable housing being one of the few real estate sectors that can actually still get financing.
