Meredith Marshall and Geoff Flournoy
Co-Founders and Managing Partners at BRP Companies
Last year's rank: 66
Interest rates may be on the rise, but Meredith Marshall and Geoff Flournoy’s BRP Companies has been chugging along on several affordable and mixed-income residential projects in and around New York City.
In Jamaica, Queens, BRP has finished one 669-unit project, the Crossing at Jamaica Station, and has two more underway. The 24-story Monarch, formerly Archer Towers 1, will have 605 apartments, 30 percent of which will be affordable housing. Construction began a year and a half ago, and is set to wrap by the end of the year. Another tower, dubbed 90Ninety for its address at 166-20 90th Avenue, will include 620 units and 30 percent affordable housing.
The developer is also working on the new National Urban League headquarters on 125th Street in Harlem, which will include offices for the nonprofit and 171 affordable apartments rented to families earning less than 80 percent of the city’s area median income. It will be complete in July.
It’s also working on a Rental Assistance Demonstration project for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). BRP is renovating several smaller NYCHA properties across central and eastern Brooklyn, including East New York, Brownsville and Prospect Lefferts-Gardens.
BRP, too, is working on a few projects outside the city. On Long Island, in the Suffolk County town of Brookhaven, it’s building a 296-unit complex called the Arboretum, with 53 single-family homes and low-rise buildings with one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. It will also have a clubhouse with a pool and tennis courts. Construction is expected to wrap on the first phase in two years.
In New Rochelle, N.Y., BRP recently completed a 172-unit building called The Motif at 10 Commerce Street. And it’s working on a much larger, 477-unit tower at 500 Main Street, where 25 percent of apartments will be affordable.
Marshall said the firm has had to put the remainder of its Jamaica projects on ice since New York state’s 421a development tax break lapsed last summer: “I would have closed the second half of Archer [Towers], but without 421a I can’t do that. It would have been 400 units, 30 percent affordable housing. With 421a being in limbo, that project’s on hold. If not 421a, they need to bring back a similar as-of-right tax abatement program.”
In the meantime, BRP is also working on developments in Jersey City and in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
