A vacant lot in Mott Haven that DOE staff now use for parking is set to become 351 Powers Avenue, an eight-story, 84-unit, 100 percent affordable building, and the developers told the subcommittee it is the first ELERP project in the city where the action the council is being asked to approve is the disposition of a city-owned site. Adam Beckerman, a senior borough planner on HPD's Bronx team, framed it as a test case for moving fast without cutting corners. Community visioning started back in 2021 with questionnaires, tabling, and remote workshops, the site is zoned R6, and the team made clear they are not seeking a rezoning, only the Article 11 tax exemption and the disposition.
The numbers are the story. Anivelka Cordova of Lemle and Wolf, the co-developer, general contractor, and property manager, laid out a deeply affordable unit mix: 71 percent of the apartments target households earning under 50 percent of area median income, with rents spanning roughly 30 to 80 percent AMI, and a 40 percent AMI two-bedroom penciling out around 1,300 dollars. Half the units are two and three bedrooms, a direct answer to a neighborhood that asked for room to raise families. Thirty apartments are reserved for formerly homeless residents, with Help USA providing on-site case management seven days a week alongside 24-hour security.
The building leans hard into climate. It is part of the Climate Resilient Design Guidelines pilot, certified passive house, all-electric with a geothermal heating and cooling system, solar panels, green roofs, and stormwater planters. Architect Susanna Therian of Stat Architecture, an MWBE firm, said the light-colored facade and sun-angled balconies are built to fight heat in a neighborhood with some of the city's highest heat gain, and the team is working with the Parsons Healthy Materials Lab on non-toxic specs because this is, as the council members repeatedly called it, Asthma Alley. Community benefits include a 100-plus-seat theater run by a South Bronx immigrant arts group and a roughly 3,000-square-foot ID Studio workforce training space operated by the HOPE program.
Councilmember Christopher Marte chaired, and Councilmember Incarnacion praised the larger family units and credited former Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala's work on the project. After questions on rents, parking, green space, and bike storage, the public hearing on LU 64 and 65 closed with no public testimony recorded, and the items were laid over. Marte said he hopes it becomes the standard for every ELERP that follows.