Residential and Office Space Thrive in the Bronx

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

Two five-story buildings located on Bryant Avenue in the Bronx have been granted a $600,000 pre-development loan for urgent building repairs. Crain’s New York Business reports that the buildings, totaling 99 units, had 1,631 housing code violations before Exact Capital Corp. purchased the notes for $3.5 million from Sovereign Bank in 2010.

The loan from Housing Partnership Development Corp., a New York-based nonprofit specializing in providing financing and technical assistance for renovation and construction of affordable housing, was secured by the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund from the U.S. Treasury Department.

According to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, as quoted by Crain’s, Exact Capital is expected to close on $20 million in construction funds by the end of June. The company is set to fully renovate at least one of the two severely dilapidated buildings. The repairs will include installing new roofs and windows, replacing the wiring and installation of new mechanical systems and renovating kitchen and bathrooms that would allow the building to comply with the city’s housing codes.

In other real estate news, New Rochelle-based Simone Development Cos. will break ground on a new nine-story office tower in the northern Bronx, on a 42-acre property that already includes a 460,000-square-foot Class A office building housing the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the Bronx campus of Mercy College, medical offices and a number of governmental agencies.

According to the New York Times, the development is being designed by Mitchell D. Newman, president of Newman Design; it will include a high-end hotel and a conference center above the office space. The first phase of the project was to partly demolish, reshape and expand a former residential treatment center designed by architect Richard Meier and built in 1977.

The Bronx News Network reports that almost 90 percent of the building is already leased by medical groups and law firms and that Simone Development will begin construction of a similar tower this summer. Once the construction is complete in approximately five years, the complex will have 2 million square feet of office space, or 25 percent of the total office space in Bronx.