Financing has been secured for the Atrium senior housing building in Bed-Stuy, New York. The building, designed by the architect Daniel Libeskind is going to be an affordable senior housing complex holding 190 units and will be built on The New York City Housing Authority’s Sumner Houses campus, with construction set to begin later this month on the $132 million project. The 11-story building will meet Passive House standards. It will feature a community garden, a year-round indoor garden, and a central atrium. This will also be the architect’s first ground-up building to be constructed in the United States. He completed the World Trade Center master plan and designed the new Swarovski Crystal Star for the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 2018.
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The Sumner Atrium will replace a lawn and tree population overlooking Marcus Garvey Boulevard in the 22-acre Sumner Houses. The development spans 22 blocks, contains 13 medium-rise buildings, and is home to approximately 2,400 public housing residents. The NextGen Neighborhoods program, which develops half-affordable units and half-market units on unused NYCHA lots, in turn, generates revenue that is reinvested in the agency, as well as in the city’s “Seniors First” program, which is building senior housing on NYCHA’s own Country. It is being developed by RiseBoro Community Partnership, Inc., Urban Builders Collaborative, LLC., and Selfhelp Realty Group: The Melamid Institute for Affordable Housing.
The 190 apartments are divided into 130 studios, 59 one-room apartments and one two-room apartment belonging to the caretaker. Of these, 57 units are reserved for homeless senior citizens and the remaining 132 units are available to households with an income of 50 percent or less of the median income in the region. NYCHA residents will prefer 33 of the apartments. Together with the New York Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC), NYCHA secured a total of 245 million Soundview districts in the Bronx.
