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94-Unit Affordable Housing Project on Bedford Avenue to Rise in 2018

By Rachel Holliday Smith | August 18, 2017 2:33pm | Updated on August 21, 2017 8:46am
 A nine-story, 94-unit building of affordable housing will replace this parking lot on Bedford Avenue and Pacific Street if plans are approved by the city to rezone the lot.
A nine-story, 94-unit building of affordable housing will replace this parking lot on Bedford Avenue and Pacific Street if plans are approved by the city to rezone the lot.
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DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith

CROWN HEIGHTS — A new nine-story affordable housing project with nearly 100 units is set to get underway soon on Bedford Avenue, according to the developer and building permits filed with the city Thursday.

Developers plan to replace a parking lot at the corner of Pacific Street in Crown Heights with a 94-unit building where all apartments will be set aside for households making less than 130 percent of the federally designated area median income, or AMI.

Construction will begin in the first quarter of 2018, according to a representative of developers Bedford Arms LLC, a subsidiary of Essex Plaza Management of Newark, New Jersey. The 148,000-square-foot building is designed by Long Island-based architect John Schimenti, according to the Aug. 17 permit filed by the group.

The development is being built under the de Blasio administration’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program, according to a zoning application made to the local community board earlier this year by the developers.

Forty-eight of the building’s units would be reserved for tenants making 80 percent or less of the AMI, or $72,500 for a family of four, according to current calculations set by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The remaining 46 units would go to households making 130 percent of the AMI or less, or approximately $117,780 per year for a family of four.

► INTERACTIVE: What is AMI?

Under MIH, the city allowed the developers to build the structure with more density and height in exchange for creating the affordable housing units.

Citywide zoning changes under MIH were created to spur construction of affordable housing, part of the mayor’s goal of creating 80,000 new affordable units and preserving an additional 120,000 by 2024.

Last month, the mayor said his administration is ahead of schedule in its housing initiative, with more than 24,000 new units of affordable housing financed in this fiscal year — the largest number since 1989, he said.