January 28, 2025
– New York City Mayor Eric Adams, New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Commissioner Adolfo Carrion Jr., and New York Public Library (NYPL) President and CEO Anthony W. Marx today announced their search for a development partner to create a brand-new state-of-the-art library with 100 percent affordable housing at the Grand Concourse Library in the Bronx. HPD and NYPL’s competitive Request for Proposals (RFP) marks a significant milestone in the project, as the Adams administration continues to work to explore any and all space to build critically needed affordable housing across the five boroughs. First announced in Mayor Adams’ fourth State of the City address earlier this month, today’s news builds on the Adams administration’s “City of Yes for Families” proposal to make New York City the best, most affordable place to raise a family.
“To make New York City the best place to raise a family, we have to build affordable housing that surrounds families with everything they need to thrive in our city — and the Grand Concourse Library is that exact kind of project,” said Mayor Adams. “The Grand Concourse Library will provide 100-percent affordable housing and a newly-renovated, state-of-the-art facility that’s just blocks away from a public park and health care facility — a model for the kind of thoughtful, holistic housing project our city is capable of building. We aren’t stopping there. Our administration will continue to build even more affordable housing and ensure that we are a ‘City of Yes for Families.’”
“NYPL and HPD’s call for a Grand Concourse ‘living library’ illustrates just what it means to bring a community-centered approach for planning for the future,” said New York City Executive Director for Housing Leila Bozorg. “I thank everyone who came out to lend their ideas during the extensive community visioning process for this competition, and I’m excited to see how respondents propose to turn those visions into a new beacon of education, safety, and community in the Bronx.”
“We can solve the housing crisis and we can enrich neighborhoods — it just takes creativity, unwavering dedication to our communities, and more efforts like the Grand Concourse Library project,” said HPD Commissioner Carrion Jr. “Together, with the New York Public Library and the Bronx community, we’re transforming a 65-year-old library branch into a modern, vibrant library alongside new affordable apartments. We’re not just here to stem a crisis, we’re here to create homes and make life better for all New Yorkers.”
“The new Grand Concourse branch will provide patrons with a state-of-the-art library and the Bronx with more housing options amid a city-wide housing shortage,” said NYPL President and CEO Marx. “This corner of the Bronx is full of dedicated library patrons and the new branch will offer greater access to books, technology, and programs that help this neighborhood thrive. We are happy to continue our productive partnership with the city to improve branches and add to the city’s housing supply.”
Within the City of Yes for Families proposal is the “Living Libraries” initiative. Living Libraries focuses on jointly developing new libraries and housing, such as the Grand Concourse Library project, to support families in New York City. The library is across the street from the Claremont BronxCare campus and near Claremont Park, a perfect location and set of amenities for New Yorkers trying to raise a family. The brand-new library will be located on the first and second floors of the new building with affordable housing built above. The RFP instructs development teams to assume a rezoning of the library site to maximize the number of affordable homes that can be built above the new library.
The community engagement phase of the RFP was announced in 2024 as part of Mayor Adams’ 2024 State of the City “24 in 24” plan to advance 24 development projects on public sites to create or preserve over 12,000 units of housing, which the city ultimately ended up surpassing.
When preparing their submissions, development teams are strongly encouraged to consult the Grand Concourse Community Visioning Report, which summarizes the engagement takeaways for both the library and affordable housing components of the project. Since the project was announced in April 2024, HPD’s Office of Neighborhood Strategies and NYPL have engaged the community to identify top priorities for the library and affordable housing portions of the new development, culminating in a report-back presentation delivered to Bronx Community Board 4. Engagement efforts included:
- A project website and questionnaire which received 270 responses.
- Bilingual promotional materials.
- Several tabling events at the library and throughout the neighborhood in partnership with local schools and community-based organizations.
- A community visioning workshop held at the Grand Concourse Library in June 2024.
- Multiple meetings with Community Board 4 and local elected officials.
- Email blasts to the HPD project email list of over 200 subscribers and the NYPL Grand Concourse Library patron list of over 5,900 subscribers.
This RFP is open to all interested developers, from January 29th until May 2nd For specific details on requirements, evaluation criteria, and how to participate, candidates should refer to the Grand Concourse Library and Affordable Housing RFP. RFP submissions will be evaluated based on the quality and feasibility of the proposals in addition to how well they respond to the community’s vision. The existing branch will remain open to serve the public until construction begins.
The Grand Concourse Library project is the latest in a series of state-of-the-art library redevelopments with affordable housing in collaboration with the city’s library system. This follows the recently opened Inwood Library, which is part of a development with 174 affordable homes, and the new Sunset Park Library in a development with 49 affordable homes. Co-located libraries are an essential initiative within the Adams administration’s “Women Forward NYC: An Action Plan for Gender Equity” — a more than $43 million investment aimed at making New York City a national leader on gender equity — to support the needs of families. For more information on the Grand Concourse Library project, visit the project website.
Mayor Adams had made historic investments toward creating affordable housing and ensuring more New Yorkers have a place to call home over the last three years. In June 2024, City Hall and the City Council agreed on an on-time, balanced, and fiscally-responsible $112.4 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Adopted Budget that invests $2 billion in capital funds across FY25 and FY26 to HPD and the New York City Housing Authority’s capital budgets. In total, the Adams administration has committed a record $26 billion in housing capital in the current 10-year plan as the city faces a generational housing crisis. In July 2024, Mayor Adams announced back-to-back record breaking years in both creating and connecting New Yorkers to affordable housing. This past spring, the city celebrated the largest 100 percent affordable housing project in 40 years with the Willets Point transformation.
Further, the Adams administration is using every tool available to address the city’s housing crisis. Mayor Adams announced multiple new tools, including a $4 million state grant, to help New York City homeowners create accessory dwelling units that will not only help them to afford to remain in the communities they call home, but also to build generational wealth for their families. In August 2023, Mayor Adams announced the issuance of Executive Order 43, requiring city agencies to review their city owned and controlled land for potential housing development sites.
Mayor Adams and members of his administration also successfully advocated for new tools in the 2024 New York state budget that will spur the creation of urgently-needed housing. These tools include a new tax incentive for multifamily rental construction, a tax incentive program to encourage office conversions to create more affordable units, lifting the arbitrary “floor-to-area ratio” cap that held back affordable housing production in certain high-demand areas of the city, and the ability to create a pilot program to legalize and make safe basement apartments.
Additionally, under Mayor Adams’ leadership, the city is fulfilling its 2024 State of the City commitment to build more affordable housing, including by creating the Tenant Protection Cabinet to coordinate across agencies to better serve tenants. The city has also taken several steps to cut red tape and speed up the delivery of much-needed housing, including through the “Green Fast Track for Housing,” a streamlined environmental review process for qualifying small- and medium-sized housing projects; the “Office Conversion Accelerator,” an interagency effort to guide buildings that wish to convert through city bureaucracy; and other initiatives of the Building and Land Use Approval Streamlining Taskforce.
January 28, 2025 New York City Hall
Sources: NYC.gov . Midtown Tribune
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