Development

Affordable Units Up for Grabs Starting at $689 a Month at Ocean Hill's Long-Awaited Prospect Plaza

Nab a newly built unit at Ocean Hill’s long-awaited Prospect Plaza affordable housing complex, where rents will start at $689 a month for a one-bedroom.

Once complete, the development will include a supermarket. Rendering via Dattner Architects

by Hannah Frishberg

04/14/2016 5 minute 0

An affordable housing lottery for apartments in Ocean Hill’s long-awaited Prospect Plaza development has just opened up.

Still under construction and designed by Dattner Architects, the mostly low-rise development replaces troubled NYCHA apartment blocks emptied out more than a decade ago. Many of the buildings are only four stories tall and designed to look like townhouses, fitting in with the surrounding area’s 19th century row houses and apartment buildings.

The available units are all located at 1740-1760 Prospect Place and at 369 Saratoga Avenue in a part of the complex now called Oceanhill II.

Up for lease are nine one-bedrooms, 69 two-bedrooms and eight three-bedrooms. Monthly rents begin at $689 for a one-bedroom and range up to $1,181 for a three-bedroom unit.

Eligible households can have annual earnings ranging from a minimum of $24,995 for one or two people to a maximum of $63,060 for three to six people.

Amenities at the units include “exquisitely finished” kitchens and bathrooms, as the notice on NYC Housing Connect put it, security cameras, a video intercom system, live-in superintendent, on-site laundry rooms, fitness rooms and, for an additional fee, parking space.

More affordable housing application details

The following groups will receive preference and have the corresponding percentage of units set aside for them: mobility-disabled applicants (5 percent), vision- or hearing-disabled applicants (2 percent), NYCHA-affiliated applicants (25 percent), residents of Brooklyn Community District 16 (50 percent) and municipal employees (5 percent).

The development is accepting applications from April 13 through May 15. For more information and details on how to apply see the development’s profile [PDF] at NYC Housing Connect and Brownstoner’s comprehensive guide to applying for affordable housing.

A little history of Prospect Plaza

The now-empty or under-construction blocks in the area were formerly the location of the 15-story Prospect Plaza housing complex. Home to 1,200 people, the complex was emptied out by the New York City Housing Authority in 2000, with promises to to rebuild by 2005. Instead, the boarded-up buildings were left standing for well over a decade and finally leveled in 2014.

The demolition was the first time in the history of NYCHA that the group demolished a public housing project. The group announced in 2010 that the price of renovation for the old buildings would have been more expensive than building new ones.

Now, however, NYCHA is making good on its promise to rebuild.

Details of the entire complex

The Prospect Plaza development will be built in three phases. Prospect Plaza South, Phase I, consists of 148 units in multiple townhouse-style four-story walkups and one five-and-a-half-story elevator building. Phase II, Prospect Plaza North, will total 111 units in townhouse-style walkups and slightly taller elevator buildings.

The final phase of the project — called the Saratoga Site — is a 141,000-square-foot building.

The five-story Saratoga structure will have 105 apartments, a parking garage, a ground-floor grocery store and a two-story community center topped with a greenhouse on the roof. The Saratoga Site is slated for completion in 2017, according to Dattner’s website.

The entire complex will be 100 percent affordable. The developers are NYCHA, NYC Housing Preservation and Development, and Blue Sea Developers, a firm that has previous experience working on affordable housing. Dattner Architects has previously worked on other affordable housing complexes in Brooklyn.