Civil Rights Museum Replaced With Affordable Homes In New One45 Plan

HARLEM, NY — An abandoned Museum of Civil Rights project — once the centerpiece tenant of the hotly contested development project One45 — would be replaced with affordable housing in developers' latest bid to get the plan passed by the city.

The space previously designated for the museum — dropped when Rev. Al Sharpton walked away from the project last week — would be repurposed as standalone housing in the newest proposal, slated to be debated in a City Council hearing Tuesday morning.

The One45 proposal faces serious opponents in Harlem Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, and Community Board 10, whom have raised concerns over affordability and gentrification.

But developer Bruce Teitelbaum told Patch he believes the new proposal is one the city cannot turn down.

"I remain convinced we will prevail because the amount of truly affordable housing & other enormous community benefits," Teitelbaum said in an email to Patch. "It is unimaginable that any reasonable, objective person would say no thanks."

The latest proposal replaces the Museum of Civil Rights with about 50,000 square feet of affordable housing with rents set between 30 percent and 50 percent of AMI, Teitelbaum told Patch.

New One45 plans also increases affordable apartments in the two towers — proposed for the corner of West 145th Street and Lenox Avenue — from 215 to 376, Teitelbaum said.

This new number represents about 41 percent of the development's 915 total units.

These adjustments come less than a month after One45's rezoning was approved by the City Planning Commission during which opponents raised repeated concerns about the number of affordable units.

While supporters argued replacing a low-rise block with a larger development would create much-needed housing, opponents contended One45 didn't provide enough units that locals could afford.

"We shouldn't accept any crumbs, and to me, this is a crumb," Leah Goodridge, one of the two City Planning commissioners who voted against the rezoningm said in April. "We're not even talking about 50 percent affordable housing."

And previous no-votes by the borough president and community board largely centered on the dearth of affordable units, which only made up about 25 percent of the initial proposal.

"I'm concerned about the over 600 market-rate units and what that does to property values in the surrounding area," Richardson Jordon said of the project in January.

"People are going to make the argument that Harlem is prime real estate, but it's hard for me to see these arguments as anything other than greed."

Whether or not the new plan adds enough affordable housing to appease opponents will become clear in the following weeks.

City Council will consider both sides of the One45 debate at a hybrid hearing in its City Hall chambers Tuesday morning and, under the city's public review process for rezonings, have until mid-June to hold a final vote.

Patch editor Nick Garber contributed to this report.