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Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA)

Past Project last updated April 6, 2009

A New Destiny for an Old Urban Renewal Site

Four decades ago, an urban renewal project near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge on Manhattan's Lower East Side displaced thousands of low-income tenants. While the city built affordable housing on some of the cleared parcels in the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA), several large blocks went undeveloped. Today, parking lots occupy the undeveloped zone of SPURA along Delancey Street, even while the Lower East Side, where the typical household earns $37,000 a year, urgently needs more affordable housing.

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Neighborhood Retail

Project last updated April 7, 2009

Policies and Planning in Support of Local Businesses

The Pratt Center is working with community partners on new neighborhood-based and citywide strategies to strengthen neighborhood retail as a strategy for community economic development in a worsening economy. 

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Create Opportunity through Development of the East River Waterfront Esplanade and Piers Project

Testimony last updated April 12, 2007

Testimony to Manhattan Community Board 3

Mercedes Narciso, R.A.
Senior Planner, Pratt Center for Community Development
April 12, 2007

Good evening to everybody. Thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony today. My name is Mercedes Narciso and I am a Senior Planner with the Pratt Center for Community Development, a university- based organization that works for a more just, equitable, and sustainable city for all New Yorkers by helping communities to plan for and realize their future. One of those communities is the Lower East Side, and in partnership with the Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), we are currently working on a community assessment and planning initiative in the area.

I am here today to express our support for East River Waterfront Esplanade and Piers Project proposed by the Department of City Planning, a project full of vision and creativity, which would provide the diverse nearby community and the city at large the opportunity to access and enjoy the waterfront.

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Community Voices and the Future of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area

Report last updated September 15, 2009

Community Voices and the Future of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area Report

SPURA Matters is a yearlong initiative facilitated by nonprofit community organizations that wished to renew a community conversation about the redevelopment of the long-vacant Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA) site on the Lower East Side. Over several months in late 2008 and early 2009, the initiative consulted with local stakeholders to engage them in a dialogue about community needs and potential uses for the site.

SPURA_CommunityVoices_Sept17,09.pdf

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A Luxury Housing Subsidy New Yorkers Can't Afford

Issue Brief last updated June 6, 2011

The legislature is poised to renew a tax break to New York's real estate industry that shortchanges affordable housing

The tax abatement on new multifamily residential real estate development known as 421-a cost New York City nearly $755 million last year in foregone taxes, or two-and-a-half times the level of property taxes forgiven under the program just five years earlier. The abatement, prized by the Real Estate Board of New York, expired last December. Now, the state legislature is poised to revive the tax break in exchange for the renewal of rent regulation, which expires June 15. As Albany trades 421-a renewal for the rent laws that protect the access to affordable housing of more than 1 million tenants in New York City alone, it is critical to understand the actual value of the tax abatement to developers and the ways in which the program as currently constructed gives out its benefits indiscriminately, in most cases without leveraging anything in exchange.

This issue brief from the Pratt Center details the cost of the 421-a abatement to New York City and recommends measures to better target the benefit to generate affordable housing and transit-oriented development.

prattcenter421a.pdf

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