Phipps Houses Files Plans for 497-Unit Housing Development in South Bronx

Phipps Houses, one of New York City’s largest nonprofit housing developers, wants to build a new residential development in the South Bronx.

Sarah Ellmore, the director of planning at Phipps Houses, submitted a rezoning application last week to build a 376,853-square-foot, 497-unit affordable housing development at 893-895 East 167th Street in Foxhurst, according to a filing with New York City’s Department of City Planning.

The current one-story industrial building on the property between Kelly and Tiffany streets was home to Monti Moving & Storage, but the project site is “currently vacant,” the filing said.

If approved, Phipps Houses’ new housing development at the property would include one residential building of approximately 424,215 square feet, including 5,946 square feet of community facility space on the ground floor along Kelly Street, according to the filing.

The project would feature 497 housing units — 75 of which would be reserved for formerly homeless tenants — as well as two laundry rooms, a fitness room, a playroom and a bike room, the filing said.

“In addition to providing much-needed affordable housing, the proposed project would improve underutilized land and would activate the streetscape,” Ellmore wrote in the filing.

A spokesperson for Phipps Houses, which bought the South Bronx property in 2019 for $22.5 million, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Phipps Houses, helmed by CEO Adam Weinstein, is one of the country’s oldest not-for-profit companies committed to developing affordable housing. It has developed or preserved more than 10,500 affordable apartments in New York City as of January 2021, according to its website.

Phipps is also working on Lambert Houses, a redevelopment project in the Bronx’s West Farms neighborhood. The developer secured $188 million in construction financing for the second phase of that project in January 2022, the Bronx Times reported.

And in Brooklyn, Phipps Houses is working on Atlantic Chestnut, a three-phase development with 1,200 total affordable units in East New York, according to New York YIMBY.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.