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655 new units of affordable housing coming to East Harlem

Sendero Verde

655 new units of affordable housing coming to East Harlem

655 new units of affordable housing coming to East Harlem. (Courtesy Handel Architects)

In East Harlem, a cluster community gardens will soon make way for a large affordable housing complex.

Developer Jonathan Rose Companies is set to build 655 apartments ensconced in an amenity-loaded project along East 111th and 112th streets, between Park and Madison avenues. The 751,000-square-foot complex, dubbed Sendero Verde (green pathway), is meant to be a “self-sustaining” community, with a Mount Sinai–run health care center, grocery store, restaurant, job training, charter school, a YMCA, and facilities for Union Settlement, a venerable community organization, on-site. Rose is partnering with L+M to develop the project, which is designed by New York–based Handel Architects.

“Our goal is to create a complete community… not only housing but services for all the residents,” Rose told Politico. “We hope this block will be a real model of transformation, not only for the new residents who live there but for the whole neighborhood.” On a green note, the development will follow passive house standards for improved energy efficiency, while the four community gardens will be planted anew inside the project.

Sendero Verde foreshadows changes for a neighborhood that is preparing for a 57-square-block rezoning that will permit buildings up to 30 stories tall in some areas. Although the city will regulate the buildings’ rents, making this a “100 percent affordable” development in HPD-speak, the highest rent thresholds exceed those of market-rate buildings nearby.

While East Harlem’s overall supply of affordable housing could shrink due to development pressure, the neighborhood is slated for more brand-new affordable buildings, like L+M’s Lexington Gardens II, designed by New York’s Curtis + Ginsberg, which sits a couple blocks away from Sendero Verde.


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