An underused New York Police Department parking lot in Manhattan's East Village is set to become a mixed-use development with about 131 permanently affordable apartments, housing for formerly homeless New Yorkers, a senior center, community space and replacement parking.
The project, called The Aurea, will rise at 324 E. Fifth St., where city officials designated the site to a development team that includes Spatial Equity, Housing Works, the Cooper Square Committee and This Land Is Ours Community Land Trust.
The designation marks the first city-owned land awarded for development under Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration and the first to include a community land trust as a development partner, giving the nonprofit a long-term role in overseeing affordability and community stewardship.
"We're turning an NYPD parking lot into approximately 131 affordable homes, a senior center and community space because public land should serve the public," Mamdani said.
The development will reserve 30 percent of its apartments for formerly homeless New Yorkers.
Housing Works will provide on-site supportive services for residents. Plans also include landscaped terraces, green roofs and all-electric building systems designed to meet Passive House standards.
The Aurea will include:
The apartments will serve low-income New Yorkers, with 30 percent reserved for formerly homeless residents.
Housing Works will provide on-site supportive services, while the community land trust will help preserve the property's long-term affordability.
City officials said the proposal grew out of years of neighborhood planning and public meetings connected to the SoHo/NoHo Neighborhood Plan.
Residents also provided feedback through multilingual outreach and a public workshop before the city issued a request for proposals.
The project advances the city's Block by Block housing plan, which calls for building 200,000 affordable homes and preserving another 200,000 over the next decade.
The city also plans to invest nearly $5 billion in capital funding for new affordable housing development over the next two fiscal years while adding 41 staff positions to speed housing production.
The East Village project also follows Executive Order 4, signed on Mamdani's first day in office, which created the Land Inventory Fast Track Task Force to identify city-owned properties that could become housing.
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