Residents of lower Manhattan say they need new affordable housing instead of more luxury developments — but demands for greater affordability in a new high-rise tower at the last vacant World Trade Center site could put the project at risk, according to development officials linked to the project.
The state’s Public Authorities Control Board is poised to decide Wednesday whether to grant final approval to 5 World Trade Center, a mixed-used project which would include 1,200 rental apartments as well as offices, stores and a community center.
But a group of community members and a number of local politicians have been pushing for the project to have even greater affordability, particularly for 9/11 survivors and first responders.
Last month, the Port Authority and Empire State Development boards green-lit measures that would designate 30% of the tower’s units as permanently affordable. Trying to push to 100% affordability, as some locals have called for, is seen as a nonstarter by those linked to the development.
“The only real options are: We create hundreds of permanently affordable homes through a project that does not demand inordinate public subsidy and can sustain itself in the long run, or we leave one of the last pieces of the Trade Center as an empty lot to be developed as another office building sometime in the future,” Hope Knight, the head of Empire State Development, wrote in an op-ed for Crain’s on Monday.
The 900-foot building is being developed by Brookfield Properties, Silverstein Properties, Omni New York and Dabar Development Partners.
A spokesman for the developers described the development as “an unprecedented opportunity to address the housing crisis facing lower Manhattan and the entire city, complete redevelopment of the WTC site, create jobs and economic growth and provide additional community and public amenity spaces.”
Mariama James, one of the founders of the Coalition for a 100% Affordable 5WTC, says she has lived in the area…
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