Heritage Homes construction starts last phase in New Rochelle

Opening the second phase of Heritage Homes were, from left, New Rochelle City Manager Charles Strome; MacQuesten Development Managing Director Joseph Apicella; Jane Silverman, executive director of community development banking for Chase; New Rochelle Councilman Jared Rice; Greg Watson, assistant regional commissioner of NYS Homes & Community Renewal; New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson; MacQuesten Development President Rella Fogliano; State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins; New Rochelle Municipal Housing Authority Executive Director Steven Horton; Dominick Buffa, managing director of First Sterling Financial; New Rochelle Councilman Barry Fertel; New Rochelle Commissioner of Development Luiz Aragon; Jay Wegimont and Tyrae Woodson-Samuels, representing U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, and MacQuesten Development Project Manager Kurt Purves.

MacQuesten Development LLC and its public partners in affordable housing construction in New Rochelle recently celebrated the opening of the second phase of the $75 million Heritage Homes development and the start of the final construction phase for the 228-unit apartment and townhouse complex where the city”™s Hartley Houses housing project once stood.

Rella Fogliano, president of MacQuesten Development, and Joseph Apicella, the Pelham company”™s managing director, were joined by project partners at the New Rochelle Municipal Housing Authority and New York State Homes and Community Renewal and other state, city and county officials at a ribbon-cutting for the second, $20 million phase, which added 56 housing units to the 131 that opened in 2013 on the site at Brook Street and Winthrop Avenue. The new residences were built in five townhouse-style clusters of two- and three-bedroom units.

Officials at the April 21 ceremony also broke ground on the $18 million final phase of Heritage Homes, which will add 41 two- and three-bedroom units.

The Heritage Homes development replaces the Hartley Houses, a five-building, densely populated housing complex built in the 1940s and managed by the New Rochelle Municipal Housing Authority. To date 161 Hartley Houses residents have been relocated into the new units.

Fogliano in a statement at the milestones ceremony said she is “passionate about building quality affordable housing and being a catalyst for downtown economic development.”

Steven Horton, executive director of the New Rochelle Municipal Housing Authority, said Heritage Homes “represents a successful collaboration between the public and private sectors. In an era of strained public resources, these partnerships are essential if housing authorities are going to fulfill their mission to develop and preserve affordable housing.”