The New York City Economic Development Corp. is releasing a new request for proposals from developers to build a mixed-use housing development on a vacant city-owned lot in Harlem, Bisnow can first report.
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The RFP, obtained by Bisnow, reveals new details about plans announced by the EDC in April for the half-block parking lot in East Harlem at 2453 Second Ave., referred to as the “B-East” site.
Developers must use the 485-x tax abatement to create a 140-unit housing development with ground-floor retail space at the site, meaning that a quarter of the housing units must be set aside as permanently affordable. Half of those units should have two or more bedrooms, according to the RFP.
Additionally, proposals should contain plans for 10K SF of ground-floor retail that should go to a local business such as childcare providers, artist studio or rehearsal space, or small-business incubators.
Proposals should be submitted by Oct. 20 and should confirm that they don't require a rezoning. The NYCEDC Real Estate Committee and its board of directors will approve the final winner.
Using the 485-x tax break will also require developers to comply with the abatement’s wage requirements of $42 an hour for construction workers. At least 30% of the winning bid’s team should comprise a minority- or woman-owned business.
Because developers are receiving the land for free, the city expects the winner to foot the bill for the affordable units themselves under a cross-subsidy model first reported by Bisnow.
The cross-subsidy model is expected to speed up construction timelines. With free land as the subsidy — rather than funds from city agencies, which can take up to 10 years to approve — developers can source private financing and break ground more quickly.
The site is one of three still-undeveloped plots of city-owned land that were part of a 2008 rezoning championed by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg to create housing and stimulate economic development in the neighborhood.
The impetus to develop the remaining parcels comes as the Mamdani administration makes a concerted push to build housing, including on city-owned land that the mayor has said can yield 25,000 new units over the next decade.
But progress on the site has been slow. Developers broke ground on what was supposed to become a $700M complex called the East Harlem Media, Entertainment and Cultural Center in 2010 and delivered an all-affordable housing development known as Metro125 two years later.
A 121K SF medical center specializing in cancer treatment came online in 2019. Then, in 2022, 271 affordable apartments at a 19-story, 404-unit luxury building hit the housing lottery. Plans for the hotel, cultural center or office space originally pitched on the site, as well as for the two remaining empty sites at 2321 Third Ave. and 2461 Second Ave., have yet to be realized.
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