New Affordable Housing Initiatives for New York

The AFL-CIO and New York City outline separate initiatives to add affordable housing. Also, the city advances plans to redevelop Willets Point in Queens.

Labor and City Plan Housing

A pair of new development initiatives may expand the availability of affordable housing in New York.

The AFL-CIO, the national labor federation based in Washington, D.C., unveiled plans earlier this year to invest $500 million in affordable housing and mixed-use commercial projects in New York City.

The effort is the second phase of the federation's New York City Community Investment Initiative and follows the year-early spend-down of an earlier $750 million program. The group launched the initiative to serve as an economic spark for New York in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

The funds will flow through the AFL-CIO's Housing Investment Trust and its Building Investment Trust to finance new or renovation projects, which the union expects to result in an estimated $1 billion of total development over the next five years. In addition, the housing trust is launching a home mortgage program expected to finance $1 billion in mortgages for union workers and municipal employees.

All construction projects using money from either trust are required to employ union labor only.

Meanwhile, another major affordable housing effort appears on track in New York City. In a speech outlining the city's budget earlier this year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he still hopes to execute a $7.5 billion plan to build or renovate 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2013 through various programs, including city-funded projects, partnerships with private developers, and incentives for private projects.

Another 15,000 units of affordable housing are already slated for completion this year through similar efforts.

The mayor said there will also be groundbreakings this year on mid- and high-rise co-op and condominium buildings in the South Bronx and on the next phase of a townhouse development in the Spring Creek section of Brooklyn.

Developers Seek Larger Plot in N.J.

A developer already approved for a large-scale commercial redevelopment at a former industrial site in Rutherford, N.J., is seeking an additional parcel to add a mixed-use component that the developer said will provide $6.6 million in tax revenue to the borough.

A joint venture between Tarragon Corp., a New York-based residential developer, and Lincoln Equities Group, a real estate developer and operator based in Rutherford, has already won approval to develop the Highland Cross Redevelopment Area into a commercial development with 1 million sq. ft. of new office space, a 216-room hotel, and 4,000 parking spaces in surface lots and garages. It has already remediated the 26-acre brownfield site.

Now, the developer is seeking an additional 26 acres in a plan that is currently under review by the borough's Visioning Committee. The new plan calls for a mixed-use development comprised of 3,000 condominiums, 404 additional affordable housing units, 350,000 sq. ft. of retail space, and an approximately 7-acre public park, to be built in phases over ten years.

New York-based Beyer Blinder Belle Architects is planner and architect for the project.

Willets Point Proposals Due

Eight developers are proposing redevelopment plans for a large site in the Willets Point section of Queens, which is near Shea Stadium.

The New York City Economic Development Corp. is building on a Request for Expression of Interest it issued in 2004 for proposals to redevelop the area. The agency chose a mix of proposals that includes a hotel, exhibition space, retail, entertainment, and cultural and community facilities, and will choose one or more of them for the final development.

The economic development agency is seeking final proposals this month from the developer candidates it selected. There is no timeline yet for selecting the winners, said Janel Patterson, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The selected developers are:

• TDC Development & Construction of Queens
• Muss Development of Queens
• Forest City Ratner Cos. of Brooklyn
• Related Cos. of Manhattan
• Vornado Realty Trust of Manhattan
• a joint venture of Macerich Co. of Santa Monica, Calif., and AvalonBay Corp. of Alexandria, Va.
• Westfield Corp. of Sydney, Australia
• and a joint venture between Chicago-based General Growth Properties, Rosenshein Associates of Mamaroneck, N.Y., LCOR of Berwyn, Pa., and Sage Hotel Corp. of Cambridge, Mass.

The agency has been working with community and business groups and the Queens Borough President's office to evaluate the 75-acre site, as well as conduct engineering and soil studies. While the district is zoned for heavy industrial use, the agency will consider proposals requiring rezoning.

It also is selecting a consultant to prepare a federal Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the site, which will kick off the formal public review process.

N.Y.C. Construction Fatalities Up

Deaths from construction accidents were slightly up for New York City but down in the greater metropolitan area overall for 2004, the last year for which the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics has full data.

For New York City alone, the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries compiled by the bureau tallied a rise in the construction sector - including most heavy and specialty construction trades - from 24 fatal accidents for all of 2003 to 28 fatalities in 2004. The highest fatality level in 2004 took place in the foundation, structure, and building exterior contractors sector, which had 12 deaths, up from 8 in 2003.

In the greater region, however, construction sector deaths dropped from 54 to 52 in the same timeframe. Specialty trade contractors accounted for 40, and that share of 77 percent of construction industry deaths far outpaces the 40 percent average for the rest of the country.

The larger regional data set includes:

• New York City's five boroughs and Nassau, Putnam, Rockland, Suffolk, and Westchester counties in New York
• Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, and Union counties in New Jersey
• and Pike County in Pennsylvania.

The bureau reported that for the region overall - not just for the construction sector - work-related fatalities in New York and Northern New Jersey increased 19 percent, well above the 2 percent increase nationally. The region had 236 fatal work injuries in 2004. "Falls to a lower level" and homicide were the two most common causes.

In addition, the report concluded that the New York and New Jersey region had the highest percentage of workers killed by moving vehicles among the nation's 12 largest metropolitan areas.