Holmes Towers Residents Angered by Plan to Develop Playground Into Apartments

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A plan to construct a 300-unit, mixed-income housing development on the site of a playground adjacent to the Upper East Side's Holmes Towers is drawing ire from development residents.

The Holmes Towers Stakeholder Committee — comprised of Holmes Towers residents, community leaders and elected officials — sent a letter to the New York City Housing Authority earlier this month to criticize the planned development, the Daily News Reported.

“The tenants don’t know what they’re getting for this,” Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said in the letter, as reported by the Daily News. “On many levels, it’s not real engagement here.”

Upper East Side Councilman Ben Kallos has also echoed this sentiment, saying that NYCHA needs to create a new plan with greater community participation, the Daily News reported. Kallos also wants NYCHA to complete a land use and review process, mandatory for private developments.

The proposed development is part of NYCHA's NextGeneration Neighborhoods program. The program seeks to develop "underutilized" public land in order to raise money that can be invested into improvements for existing NYCHA developments.

"The NextGen Neighborhoods program enables us to not only create much-needed housing for low-income New Yorkers, but to generate revenue to address NYCHA’s critical repair needs,” NYCHA Chair and CEO Shola Olatoye said in a June press release.

In June, NYCHA opened a request for proposals from developers to construct a 300-unit building on the site of the Holmes Towers playground, one of the few places Holmes Towers families can bring their children for outdoor recreation. The new development would include a 50-50 split of both market-rate and affordable housing units, according to the press release. The request also includes a suggestion for developers to include a minimum of 5,000 square feet of community facility space.

Photo: Google Maps street view circa January 2013