Green Communities

The Jonathan Rose Companies' Smart Growth Investment Fund - the first real estate fund in the country to focus exclusively on acquiring and greening existing buildings - announced yesterday that it has made its first such acquisition here in New York City. The Fund has purchased 198 affordable housing units, along with 4500 square feet of ground floor retail space, at 107-145 West 135th Street in Harlem for $26.5 million. Dattner Architects will work with the Fund to execute a green capital improvement program across the acquisition's ten six-story buildings. The program will follow the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria, as well as participate in NYSERDA's Multifamily Building Performance Program.

Interestingly, the properties' Section 8 contracts with HUD were set to expire at the end of 2008, but the Fund worked with HUD to negotiate both an interim renewal and a fresh 20-year contract that will keep the properties affordable. The New York City Acquisition Fund provided an acquisition loan to the Fund; NYCAF provides both acquisition and predevelopment loans to affordable housing developers.

Designed by Manhattan-based Magnusson Architecture and Planning , Melrose Commons is one of only six projects in the state of New York that is participating in USGBC’s LEED for Neighborhood Development ("LEED-ND") Pilot Program. The 2000-unit, mixed-use and income development will set aside 50 percent of available units for households at or below 60 percent of HUD income limits. The city is currently soliciting developers for three individual parcels on East 162nd and East 163rd Streets between Courtlandt and Melrose Avenues in the South Bronx, and individual buildings will be required to comply with both NYSERDA’s Multifamily Performance Program and the Enterprise Green Communities rating criteria.

Serviam Gardens will be a 240-unit housing development for low- to middle-income senior citizens when it opens in the last quarter of 2009. Developed by Bronx-based affordable housing developer Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, the $66 million project is set to break ground tomorrow and will rise in a vacant lot behind Mount Saint Ursula's convent and girls' high school in Bedford Park in the Bronx. OCV Architects designed the two-tower project, which will incorporate a number of unspecified green design features pursuant to Enterprise Green Communities Criteria; Enterprise provided low-income tax credit financing for the project. You may recall the same Fordham Bedford/OCV team from Jacob's Place, the 63-unit affordable rental building that opened earlier this year in the Fordham section of the Bronx.

Jacob's Place is a sixty-three unit, eight-story rental building in the Fordham section of the Bronx that was dedicated earlier this month. Developed by Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, a Bronx-based affordable housing developer, the project broke ground in August of 2005 and is named for Astin Jacobo, a resident of the Crotona neighborhood of the Bronx who was a long-standing advocate of affordable housing, recreational facilities, and community preservation. Jacob’s Place is completely set aside for residents who make no more than sixty percent of the local median income, and occupancy will be determined by a lottery system.

The project was constructed according to the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria and features a combination green/solar roof. The $90,000 roof installation was funded in cooperation by NYSERDA and BP's Solar Neighbors Program, whereby BP donates a solar system to a low-income/affordable housing project every time a celebrity purchases a similar system. The sixty-four panel, 11 kW system at Jacob’s Place came from Owen Wilson, and will power elevators, ventilation, and common areas; it’s Solar Neighbors’ first such installation outside of California (where the program is based) and its first in a multi-unit residential building. Other green features at Jacob's Place include bamboo apartment flooring, low-VOC paints and materials, energy-efficient elevators, and a graywater system.