THE CITY Housing Authority’s plan to lease public land for luxury housing gives new meaning to the phrase “looking down on the poor.”
Without fanfare, NYCHA quietly released drawings for the first time Tuesday revealing the size and scope of the huge “market rate” towers the agency wants built on leased space at eight Manhattan developments.
The planned towers rise as high as 50 stories, looming over their public housing neighbors, blocking out sun and eating up parking lots, basketball courts and community centers.
The tallest would be a 700,000-square-foot behemoth at Smith Houses right next to the Brooklyn Bridge — a building that clocks in at an amazing 500 feet tall.
That’s 50 stories.
Trump Tower on Fifth Ave. is just eight stories taller.
NYCHA noted that because the new Smith buildings would be located “at the foreground of the Manhattan Skyline,” their design “must achieve a high standard of architecture and design.”
By comparison, tenants in the Smith Houses live in buildings built in 1953 that rise no higher than 17 stories.
Conditions are so bad a judge last week ordered NYCHA to fix thousands of backlogged repairs for 320 tenants.
“It’s appalling,” said Aixa Torres, Smith Houses tenant president. “We won’t have any sun. They’re going to literally squeeze my residents like they’re roaches and then they’re going to build this huge beautiful complex. You want to talk about the ‘Tale of Two Cities’ “?
The 50-story giant at Smith would be built on what’s now a parking lot next to two NYCHA buildings that were severely damaged during Hurricane Sandy.
Another 35-story building would be packed in on the same lot, while a third 35-story tower would take root on what’s now a baseball diamond.
Across Manhattan, the agency wants to lease out 18 plots of land at eight developments to developers to build housing that would be 80% market rate, 20% affordable. The agency hopes to raise $50 million a year this way to fund repairs.
The authority originally planned to seek developers in mid-April, but tenants began complaining that the agency wasn’t providing details on how the plan would affect their neighborhoods.
On Tuesday, NYCHA spokeswoman Sheila Stainback claimed the authority has been “closely engaged” with tenants at the affected sites about the plans, but tenant leaders at some of the developments told the Daily News that residents had yet to see the drawings of the new towers.
At the Washington Houses in East Harlem, NYCHA is proposing a 500,000-square-foot, 41-story mega tower that would dominate the entire neighborhood.
It would rise above the 14-story buildings in NYCHA’s development, and displace a community center on E. 99th St.
NYCHA says the developer must replace the center at Washington Houses “or another NYCHA location.”
At a City Hall press conference Tuesday, several elected officials called for an “immediate halt” to the plan, noting that tenant leaders at seven of the eight affected developments have officially rejected it.
That included Jane Wisdom, tenant president at Douglass Houses on the upper West Side, where NYCHA envisions three towers ranging from 20 to 30 stories tall. Douglass buildings top out at 20 stories.
“My thing is don’t take our sun away, because that’s what the hell you’re doing,” Wisdom said.
gsmith@nydailynews.com
