The Mott Haven area of the South Bronx is bracing for rapid change, with the Chetrit Group and Somerset Partners leading the march to turn the waterfront industrial area into a residential haven.
Joseph Chetrit’s company and Keith Rubenstein’s Somerset recently spent a combined $58 million on two South Bronx sites, 2401 Third Avenue and 101 Lincoln Avenue, as TRD reported. The developers are planning up to six 25-story residential towers with ground-floor retail.
Smaller deals are will also help to change the face of the neighborhood — like Savanna and Hornig Capital Partners’ project at 2415 Third Avenue, an eight-story loft building that they plan to spend $12 million to refurbish, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“What we think we can do for the waterfront is set the tone for the next wave of developers,” Rubenstein told the newspaper. “This [place] had character and already had a scene, so you are taking something good and adding to it.”
Douglas Harmon of Eastdil Secured also said that developers turning their attention to the Bronx makes sense, since development is becoming too expensive for many in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
The first phase of an analysis by the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp., released in November, found that the area could accommodate as much as 2.8 million square feet of affordable and market-rate apartments, 2.3 million square feet of office, retail and light manufacturing space and 1 million square feet of public space. [WSJ] — Tess Hofmann