By Kit Dillon 10/12/12 12:38pm

In the Rezone

Goodbye desolation, hello development. (Flickr)

The SPURA Has Landed: City Council Approves 47-Year-Old Urban Renewal Project

Yesterday, in a unanimous vote 47 years in the making, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area has finally been approved by the City Council. SPURA, that massive parcel of barren (or in City Council speak, “under-developed”) city-owned land in Lower Manhattan, will now become a 1.65 million square foot mixed-use development. It’s a change that, according to the project’s backers, will create 1,000 housing units, 1,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 construction jobs. Read More

By Jonah Wolf 9/27/12 3:08pm

In the Rezone

SPURA springs eternal. (NYC EDC)

Hip Hip SPURA! Land-Use Committee Approves LES Development After 40-Year Slog

It took 40 years, but the transformation of the Seward Park urban Renewal Area, better known as SPURA, may finally be here. While everyone seemed excited at the prospect of this finally happening, the opinions were far from unanimous about what the city came up with for its plan for the seven undeveloped acres south of Delancy Street on four forlorn parking lots.

But there was unanimity today, when the City Council’s land-use committee approved the 1.65 million-square-foot plan for SPURA by a vote of 16-0. Attendees of last week’s public hearing on the development south of the Williamsburg Bridge will be relieved to hear that 50 additional affordable housing units (offset by another 50 at market rate prices) have been added to the project, for a total of 1,000 units, half of which will be affordable, half not. The administration also agreed to that now de rigueur piece of rezoning negotiations, a new public school.

Read More

By Kit Dillon 9/20/12 5:36pm

In the Rezone

After 40 years, is this for real?

SPURA Spat Sweeps Council: After 40 Years, Disbelief Abounds

Yesterday, at a City Council hearing on the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, more commonly known as SPURA, the proper pronunciation of acronym—s-pure-rah? spur-ae? spewer?— wasn’t the only point in contention. The other question, the one the public, very many of them, had come out to answer was: Could New York finally take real steps, after nearly 40 years of waiting, to develop a long-neglected series of parking lots on the Lower East Side while still maintaining the famed spirit and character of that neighborhood. Or, as some would have it, would SPURA become just another in a long chain of missed opportunities.

The hearing, chaired by council members Steve Levin of Brooklyn, chair of the zoning subcommittee, and Margaret Chin, the local rep, was a packed affair with the honorable Mr. Levin often reminding people to show their appreciation by, “doing the Occupy Wall Street thing,” as he wiggled his fingers in the air. “Jazz hands” is the technical term, we believe. It was a gesture that would be seldom actually seen during the next three and a half hours, with many of the speakers, both for and against the project, receiving their own rounds of loud supportive applause. The truth was this crowd came to be heard and many of them had been waiting for a very long time.   Read More

By Kit Dillon 9/19/12 2:52pm

In the Rezone

The city's plan. (NYC EDC)

The Wong Plan: Wok & Roll Founder Wants to Make SPURA 100 Percent Affordable, Build Giant Bus Depot

For more than four decades, Lower East Siders have been fighting to redevelop the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, more commonly known by the (fittingly) ominous acronym SPURA. Just this year a breakthrough came, but another fight has ensued over the specifics of the plan. A grassroots citizen coalition wants the project devoted entirely to affordable housing, contrary to the city’s more market-driven mixed-income approach.

Could their salvation come in the form of the founder of the ubiquitous Chinese fast food chain Wok & Roll, an institution more at home in the food courts and airports of middle America than the streets of downtown? Read More

By Matt Chaban 10:25pm

Best Laid Plans

6 Photos

SPURA On

Spurring on SPURA: Lower East Side Mega-Development, Decades in the Making, Will Be Affordable Forever

Exciting news for residents and denizens of the Lower East Side tonight. After, oh, seven decades, the city has finally reached a deal to redevelop the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, those swathes of parking lots just south of the Williamsburg Bridge affectionately known as SPURA.

According to two people present at the meeting (The Observer had other commitments, tonight, in addition to closing the paper—more on that tomorrow), the plan presented by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, with 900 apartments and nearly a million square feet of commercial space, was unanimously approved by Community Board 3. The linchpin, announced by Councilwoman Margaret Chin, was that the city had agreed to make half of those units permanently affordable, rather than a possible sunset 60 years out. Read More

By Drew Grant 9/26/11 12:07pm

Low Line

7 Photos

Who lives under the Williamsburg Bridge?

What's Really Living in the 'Low Line' (Slideshow)

Last week, New York magazine revealed James Ramsey and Dan Barasch‘s plans to create a subterranean green space in the abandoned Williamsburg Trolley Station under Delancey Street. The pictures that Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Barsch (a former NASA engineer and a PopTech executive with a background in non-profit social design and government work, respectively) produced for the article were futuristic wonderlands, like Japanese illustrations inspired by Ray Bradbury.

But the reality is not so fanciful: The proposed “Low Line” project would transform the approximate 600 x 100 square feet area that lay across from the Brooklyn-bound JMZ-line into an organic public space that would be three quarters the size of Gramercy Park. It will cost millions of dollars in private funding, and will need the support of a community that has spent forty years fighting with another environmental group over approximately the same space above ground. Read More