Image of proposed school from Collegiate, via DNAinfo.
By Krista Carter
A private school’s plan to pay for an affordable housing development in return for permits to build a new school is causing anger, and now confusion, among local leaders.
The Collegiate School plans to move from its current home on 77th street and West End Avenue to a new building it expects to build in the Riverside Center development between 59th and 61st street just off the Hudson River. To get the permits, the school had pledged to build affordable housing. Local leaders had expected the housing to go right next to the school, but Collegiate struck a deal with the city for the school to pay the city $50 million, which would fund an affordable housing development that the city expects to build on West 108th street.
Since that plan came out last week, politicians including Comptroller Scott Stringer and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal sent a letter to the departments of City Planning and Housing Preservation and Development demanding that the project be built in the Riverside Center development. They wrote that “the Administration has struck a deal with the school to move those promised units to a site nearly 50 blocks away, where there is no guarantee they will ever be built, and without any consultation or agreement with the local community board or area elected officials.”
“Onsite affordable housing at the Riverside South development was originally intended to provide housing options for low- and moderate-income families in the immediate community. This was designed to ensure that there was some measure of affordability and economic diversity in this area.”
But at a meeting on Wednesday, city officials told community board members that the school does not need to build the units on site — and according to one agreement, may not even have to build affordable units at all.
“There is not a legal requirement that the 55 units be provided,” said Edith Hsu-Chen, director of the Manhattan office for the Department of City Planning, according to DNAinfo. “There is a full expectation [from Collegiate], which is different.”
Nonetheless, the city says it still expects Collegiate to pay the $50 million.
Community board member Nick Prigo said: “This is a total bombshell to me. What we learned today is that in our [2010] negotiation for Riverside Center, we didn’t know what we were negotiating for.”
The city planning commission is scheduled to vote on the 108th street plan on March 30, though the community board is asking them to delay that vote. A board member also said that the 108th street site may be contaminated with lead and much of the $50 million may be needed to remediate the site.
This conversation between Collegiate and CB7 (and the City) has been disturbing.
CB7 officials and residents say that Collegiate promised a few years ago either to place the 55 units in their new building or to buy local units at market value and offer them at an affordable price. Collegiate didn’t dispute this earlier this month.
The 108th St possibility includes a nonprofit entity that wants to turn one or more of three garages into affordable units. But one CB7 member said that if there’s already interest there, then relocating the Riverside Center/South units Collegiate promised to 108th could actually be a net loss of 55 units. Plus, as the article said, there’s no guarantee the units would be built at 108th Street. CB7 members pointed out that residents originally had wanted garages there, and that they haven’t been consulted yet about these 55 moving north.
I’m glad that Collegiate, our country’s oldest school, is staying in Manhattan and on the UWS. It’s an institution that we can be proud of. But it has negotiated, at best, carelessly and at worst, deceitfully.
For the best of the neighborhood, the 55 units need to stay along that corridor.
Howard’s comment is spot on.
They should have never been allowed to relocate, unless the city (more importantly CB7), had written and legally binding assurances that they would have built the 55 units in Riverside Center.
Who led these negotiations?
This is exactly what CB7 agreed to in the summer of 2014. Collegiate originally came to us and proposed that they would negotiate with the developers of Riverside Center for 55 units of affordable housing directly across the street from their school. They also came to us with a back-up plan that said if their negotiations with the Riverside Center developers fell through that they would buy 55 units of market rate housing in Riverside South and convert those to an affordable housing program.
A few weeks ago CB7 was then told that neither of these plans worked out (though no explanation for the failure was provided) which is how we arrived at the current juncture.
It is more disturbing now because the Mayor is using “affordable” housing as his smoke screen for his destructive zoning proposals that has been rolled out with not text of the legislation that will translate his proposals into law. It shows where the Mayor’s real heart is here…it’s wit REBNY.
The first time he gets pushed on an “agreement” regarding affordable housing he caves.
This is a prime example of why “affordable” housing shouldn’t be provided this way. When you attempt to bestow on a lucky few millions of dollars of benefits and at the same time take a space’s/project’s maximum profits away you incentivize shady behavior on all sides. I’m tired, as a tax-payer, of subsidizing the developers, the luxury renters/buyers and the poor who will live in these affordable units.
Bravo Marie! When one tries to create a false fabric through mandate or incentives, it is bound to shred. I say let the market take care of itself.
Couldn’t agree more.
You called it right Marie!
Money talks and the rest walks. And Collegiate has LOTS of money – they have been and are laser focused on their capital campaign and will pay whatever it takes to get a new campus. They will steal, bribe, beg, whatever it takes.
Among the many remarkably obtuse comments, this one vies for most silly. Like all the private schools, Collegiate is NON-profit. In order to build a school in anything like the neighborhood it moved into IN 1892 (!!) it has to spend an enormous amount of money. And there are NO private prep schools or colleges that don’t have to have a capital campaign to engage in these kinds of projects. Their endowment is not much more than the $50 million dollars the city is demanding of them and that THEY ARE PAYING. 108th street is not exactly a “terrible” neighborhood. (I live in the 120’s, by the by, and would love to be able to afford the 100’s.) WHERE EXACTLY IS A SCHOOL SUPPOSED TO PUT AFFORDABLE HOUSING? IT’S A SCHOOL!!
In short, this remark, along with the idiocy emanating from the mouth of the supposed CB7 Board member, is wrongheaded and ill-informed at best, dishonest at worst.
What a shame that Steve Stringer and Linda Rosenthal are so demagogic and wrong on this issue. Nothing like pandering without thinking.
either we want to build and maintain affordable housing in NYC, or we don’t. we currently have a crisis of affordability not just in Manhattan but that is spreading throughout the boroughs. there is no abstract “free market” in housing in NYC, and “letting the market take care of itself” will mean less and less affordable housing.
the details are messy and I don’t know how this will play out. But i give props to the community board members who posted above for getting their hands dirty and trying to fight for every single affordable unit. the majority of sensible New Yorkers want to see government intervention to defend and expand affordable housing, perhaps the biggest issue facing our city.
“The majority of New Yorkers want to see government intervention to defend and expand affordable housing”
Sorry, bud. Not this New Yorker. I don’t want to see government intervention on anything more than the bare minimum
… thus the concept of “majority”…
but when people say things like that, I always wonder about how much they are currently benefiting from government intervention. For example, if you own, you are getting a huge housing subsidy from the public: the mortgage interest deduction. And i suppose you think there should be no zoning in NYC… nor public schools… nor rent regulation… well, the list goes on.
Exactly. We need to get our electeds to stand up against the NIMBYs instead of standing up for them when we have developers looking to build housing in our community.
Wow, private school seems a very successful endeavour. No wonder tuition is so high. $50 million? But De Blasio only cares about one thing, which is the numbers game. If he can add 55 units to the numbers, he doesn’t care where they are built.
Personally, I would prefer the units to be on 108th instead. The Amsterdam houses are already right there, and “diversify” the area enough over there. We do not need any more Western Beef customers littering and screaming at all hours of the night on that part of West End. Always broken beer bottles and garbage on the street over there. If you cannot afford to live in an area then move… don’t rely on us taxpayers to subsidize your lifestyle.
Amazing that Collegiate has all this money for building and yet cannot give their faculty decent pay, benefits or a retirement plan.
Where will their own faculty live if there is no subsidized housing?
This is extortion – nothing but a shakedown from Auber-liberal gov’t & forces….rather breathtaking