A new complex has opened in Longwood, with 83 apartments and nearly 15,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space.
The 8-story Hewitt House Apartments complex, located at 864 Hewitt Place at the corner of Reverend James A. Polite Ave., is a product of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $8.5 billion push to house a half-a-million New Yorkers within the next three years under his Housing Marketplace Plan.
The Mayor’s plan calls for a merging of planning by city agencies with funding from banks and private developers.
The red-brick building opened in October, with a community room, and 20 parking spaces to go along with the residential units. All but a few of the building’s 83 apartments were gobbed up by eager tenants within three months of the city approving it, according to Jose Rivera Alers of Wells Fargo, one of the banks that invested in the project. He said the quick apartments were filled so quickly due to “the success of well constructed and well managed affordable housing in the neighborhood.”
State Assemblyman Eric A. Stevenson called the complex “a mixed-use, affordable housing development” that houses Bronx tenants “at a minimum cost” for taxpayers, by relying on private investment.
Nearly 4,000 of the 125,000 apartments that have been constructed or restored across the city under the Mayor’s private-public plan are in Hunts Point and Longwood.
The apartments include 11 studios, 28 one-bedroom and 43 two-bedroom units. Seventeen of the apartments have been set aside for families that have previously been homeless. Tenants earning up to 60% of the Area Median Income, which is calculated at $46,080 for a family of four, are eligible to rent in the Hewitt.