State and Yonkers city officials joined with a national nonprofit developer recently to break ground on a $62.9 million apartment development in the city”™s Ashburton Avenue corridor.
Schoolhouse Terrace at Croton Heights, a project of The Community Builders Inc., will rise on the site of the razed Yonkers Public School 6 at 33 Ashburton Ave. The development will add 121 apartments for tenants with a range of incomes to the city”™s stock of affordable housing.
It will include a 70-unit building for families earning less than 30 percent to less than 60 percent of the area median income and a 50-unit apartment building for seniors earning less than 50 percent of AMI. The residential complex will sit atop two underground parking garages with 134 spaces.
Abandoned for more than 30 years, Public School 6 fell into a state of disrepair that ruled out preservation of the building by the developer. The school”™s historic entry arch, though, will be incorporated into the housing construction.
Officials said the development will meet standards of both the U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program and the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority”™s Multifamily Performance Program.
The project is slated for completion in April 2015. It is expected to create more than 350 construction jobs and five permanent jobs.
The Community Builders, a 59-year-old nonprofit developer headquartered in Chicago, in 2011 was awarded $29.6 million in project financing from the New York State Homes and Community Renewal in the first round of funding through Gov. Andrew Cuomo”™s regional economic development initiative and newly implemented consolidated funding application system. It was the largest award in the seven-county Mid-Hudson region.
Project partners include the city of Yonkers and its Municipal Housing Authority, RBC Capital Markets, M&T Bank, The Bank of New York Mellon, Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Bart Mitchell, president and CEO of The Community Builders, said the development “will be a platform for opportunity for residents and a terrific addition to the neighborhood” in a busy and largely blighted traffic corridor where the city”™s plans for commercial revitalization through public-private partnerships stalled in the recession,
Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano at the groundbreaking ceremony said the city and its partners “are transforming what stood for years as a symbol of neglect and deterioration into a symbol of hope and new opportunity, providing quality, environmentally sustainable, affordable housing for Yonkers families, seniors and newcomers to our city.”
