PORT MORRIS — Developers are ready to start construction on a massive residential and retail complex in the South Bronx that will feature amenities including a pet care room, a pool and a cafe.
The market-rate project, spearheaded by The Chetrit Group and Keith Rubenstein's Somerset Partners, will consist of two buildings along the South Bronx waterfront at 2401 Third Ave. and 101 Lincoln Ave., right by the Third Avenue Bridge.
The Third Avenue site will consist of two 25-story towers and one 16-story tower, and it will include 430 apartments: 164 studios, 96 one-bedrooms, 134 two-bedrooms and 36 three-bedrooms. The building will also feature a garage for 175 cars.
The 101 Lincoln Ave. site will consist of three 24-story towers and one 22-story tower, and it will feature 849 apartments, 20,500 square feet of retail space and 1,100 square feet of space for a community facility.
Both developments will feature amenities including pet care rooms and gyms, while the Lincoln Avenue site will also include a screening room and a ground floor cafe.
Details of the project were first reported by YIMBY.
The development will also feature a waterfront trail that will be accessible to the public from Lincoln Avenue, and there will be a joint courtyard between the two sites with access to a 423 car parking garage.
Both sites are still years away from completion, with developers hoping to finish the Third Avenue site by June 2019 and the Lincoln Avenue site by December 2019, but Rubenstein has already been making his mark in the neighborhood.
He has helped support the opening of multiple businesses within walking distance of the buildings, including the cafe Filtered Coffee, the Italian restaurant La Grata and the art gallery/fashion boutique 9J. He also plans to open a food hall in the neighborhood.
Plans for the project at Third Avenue and Lincoln Avenue stirred up controversy in the fall of 2015, when Rubenstein put up a billboard announcing that the "Piano District" was on its way to the neighborhood, which many locals saw as a sign of pending gentrification. He later took the billboard down and stressed that it was not meant to be offensive or rebrand the community.