All Articles Tagged "real estate development"
New Orleans' Treme Primed for Makeover
(AP) — Federal and city officials said Thursday the redevelopment of a public housing project at the heart of New Orleans — long considered a drag on revitalizing the city’s downtown business district — would help spur a massive makeover of the back side of the French Quarter, the area known as Treme and considered America’s oldest black neighborhood. ”It’s a huge do-over,” said Sandra B. Henriquez, the assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “This is more than a public housing revitalization … It is a neighborhood revitalization in the best sense of the word, which is why it brings in educational opportunity, healthcare, job creation.” HUD officials said the $30 million revitalization project was expected to draw in $662 million in public and private investment in schools, health care, new housing, job training and other programs to transform the Iberville housing project and Treme.
Riot Corridor Becoming Condo Canyon
(Washington Examiner) — Bill Troy opened his Ruff & Ready shop in Adams Morgan back in the 1980s. I was one of the many Washingtonians who browsed and bought the solid, used furniture — desks and bureaus and lamps and art — that spilled out onto 18th Street. The neighborhood changed, lost its funky feel, got whitewashed by bars and restaurants — so Troy moved to 14th below U Street in the summer of 1991. ”We were going to have our 20th anniversary sale on Aug. 21,” Troy told me last Saturday. “Now we’re having a closing and moving sale.” After two decades, Troy is pulling up stakes again, because another neighborhood has changed. This will be his last weekend; he closes Aug. 31.
City Warned on Cabrini Housing
(Chicago Sun Times) — A federal judge this week put the city on notice that it has to speed up efforts to acquire the former Near North high school site for redevelopment into replacement housing for former Cabrini-Green residents — or stand in violation of a 2000 consent decree. Under the agreement reached with tenants a decade ago as the Chicago Housing Authority began its historic Plan for Transformation — tearing down high-rise public housing throughout Chicago — the city was to acquire the site owned by the Chicago Public Schools at Clybourn and Larrabee for new housing.
H Street Corridor: A Work in Progress
(Washington Post) — It’s past last call at Sticky Rice DC in Northeast, but no one is going home. The crowd is downing shots of Smirnoff vodka, and the music is blasting. An obscure song by Sir Mix-A-Lot comes on. “This is my jam,” a girl in ripped black tights says. Outside the bar, the music escapes with a heavy thump, thump into the new heart of the H Street corridor. This is not what the city imagined. When the music finally fades, most of the partyers climb into cabs back to Northwest. They zip past blocks of buildings that tumble out of the darkness like discordant notes: a burned-out storefront; a bistro that serves craft beers; a Popeyes; a coming- soon sign for a New Orleans restaurant. The people disappear over the H Street Bridge, a physical barrier that has kept this neighborhood separate from the rest of the city for years.
African American Enclave Says Fairfax Ignoring Its Hospital Expansion Concerns
(Washington Post) — Community leaders in Fairfax County’s Gum Springs neighborhood say county officials appear once again to be neglecting the concerns of the historic African American enclave by green-lighting Inova Mount Vernon Hospital’s expansion plans without taking adequate steps to manage the expected traffic. “The hospital, Inova, has taken this whole thing and tried to ram it down the throats of everybody,” Queenie Cox, president of the New Gum Springs Civic Association, said Thursday, a day after the hospital’s expansion plans were cleared by the Planning Commission with certain conditions.
Atlantic Yards Arena Takes Shape, but Protests Carry On
(New York Times) — Steel beams arc high into the Brooklyn sky, flanked by five cranes that rise from a deep, divisive hole in the ground. Sections of prefabricated concrete seat platforms and concourses — the guts of every sports arena since Roman times — are now in place. Trucks rumble through the hot, dusty corner of the 22-acre site known as Atlantic Yards. There, shoehorned into one of the busiest intersections in Brooklyn, the arena for the New Jersey Nets is finally taking shape. After eight years of delays — involving eminent domain lawsuits, neighborhood protests, financial setbacks, the removal of its world-renowned architect to cut costs and the enlisting of a Russian oligarch to cover them — the arena, the site’s first building out of 17, is on track to open in September 2012.
Virginia Revitalization Could Crowd out Affordable House, Report Says
(Washington Post) — Plans to revitalize Northern Virginia’s aging suburbs will eliminate thousands of affordable rental units and price out low- and moderate-income families, according to a report released Tuesday by a housing advocacy group. Local governments are replanning the adjacent communities of Columbia Pike in Arlington County, Baileys Crossroads in Falls Church and the Beauregard corridor in Alexandria. Officials envision older strip malls and parking lots being converted into urban town centers served by mass transit. Of the 25,000 rentals in the revitalization areas, more than 11,500 are low-cost units that are at risk, according to the report by the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance.
New Condo Sales Reviving in Brooklyn, Queens
(Crain’s) — Sales of new condo developments in Brooklyn and Queens made a comeback in the second quarter of this year, according to market reports released Thursday. In Brooklyn nearly one in four sales—24.6% to be precise—were new developments according to Prudential Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel Inc. This marked the highest level of sales activity for new developments recorded since the firms started tracking the statistic in the first quarter of 2008, before the collapse of Lehman Brothers that autumn. During the second quarter of 2010, new developments represented just 14% of total Brooklyn sales. Even in Queens, where there aren’t as many new developments, 8.9% of sales were new condos—also an all time high.
Harlem Growth Plans Face Hurdles
(Wall Street Journal) — The owner of Harlem’s Lenox Terrace, home to some of New York’s political elite, is trying again to drum up tenant support for a plan that would significantly expand the size and update the storied complex. The Olnick Organization, which owns the 1,700-unit apartment complex in six buildings, is pitching plans to build six new apartment towers, revamp the now lackluster retail space and turn a series of asphalt parking lots into grassy fields, according to tenants who attended a “focus group” where the plan was presented. Olnick first developed the plan in 2003, but it languished amid a slow economy and tenant opposition. Now, as the New York housing market improves, Olnick is renewing efforts to sell the plan to tenants. But the owner still faces financial and political hurdles.
Up Close: Patrise Perkins-Hooker
(AJC) — In her professional life, Patrise Perkins-Hooker is helping shape the future of Atlanta Beltline Inc. by leading real estate purchases to enable the group’s vision of a 22-mile ring of parks, trails and transit in the city. But outside the office, the Beltline’s vice president and general counsel has a passion for cooking, dancing, public speaking and helping those who are less fortunate. The mixture of interests is part of the balance Perkins-Hooker has honed over the years as her career has evolved from representing businesses as an attorney to acting as an advocate for sexually exploited teen girls to acquiring real estate for the Beltline. If she’s not on the road for work, her family — which includes a husband, two children, seven grandchildren and various siblings and in-laws — knows that Sunday is dinner at “Patrise’s house.”
