Lots of Love for the Schermerhorn House
The Schermerhorn is not your average affordable housing project, as The Times makes abundantly clear in its profile this weekend. (As we put it a couple of weeks ago, “This place is about as sexy as supportive housing gets.”) Stand-out amenities include a gym with floor-to-ceiling windows and a ground-floor performance space. (The Brooklyn Ballet…
The Schermerhorn is not your average affordable housing project, as The Times makes abundantly clear in its profile this weekend. (As we put it a couple of weeks ago, “This place is about as sexy as supportive housing gets.”) Stand-out amenities include a gym with floor-to-ceiling windows and a ground-floor performance space. (The Brooklyn Ballet will be the anchor tenant.) Designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, the 217-unit building will end up being split fairly evenly between arts-related professionals who don’t make a lot of dough and those who qualify for supportive housing, typically the formerly homeless and others in need of help. The interior photo in The Times story is pretty darn slick for this type of thing, seeming to confirm our suspicions that lack of creativity and resourcefulness is usually more to blame than small budgets when ugly new buildings are put up.
New Homes for a Varied Cast [NY Times]
Schermerhorn House 1/3-Rented [Brownstoner]
Development Watch: Schermerhorn House Nears Completion [Brownstoner]
Development Watch: Schermerhorn House Gets Its Skin [Brownstoner] GMAP
Development Watch: 160 Schermerhorn Tops Out [Brownstoner] P*Shark
Development Watch: Schermerhorn House Rising [Brownstoner] DOB
Some More 411 on the “Schermerhorn House” [Brownstoner]
well I am not saying I would be a good candidate to live in that building. Well, if I can put my kid into daycare that’s trustworthy and inexpensive I could do that as well – but yes for me and for most parents in NYC area – those are your options when you have to return to work and you have a young child?
I think you are sort of unrealistic about the working parent and who takes care of a baby when both parents have to return to work.
How do you think babies are taken care of when parents return to work? and are you suggesting,the only people who should be having kids are the people that can afford to not work for 5 years until that kid goes to school?
Bxgrl:
Loving your posts today. There are also all of these Afghan and Iraqui women who are being taught how to make these gorgeous hand-knotted (and hand dyed) rugs and turn them into self sustaining businesses.
Unfortunately, too many people on this blog think of “art” as those skinny guys down at Gorilla coffee “writing” on their macs.
just checked out the units & location, would definitely live there cause “there” is a ton better than other alternatives that one can get for low low rent.
bxgirl sometimes i seriously think you have mad cognitive disorders. and 11217 is just too much for words. i completely picture him furiously typing his posts sighing and clucking and stomping his feet. (in a long blond wig)
*rob*
Bxgrl,
I am not disputing the intrinsic merits of art and music at all. More power to those women, and I would be happy to buy their jewelry.
Just don’t see why certain forms of art and music require government subsidies. My point to 11217 was that creativity is natural and will happen anyway without large taxpayer handouts.
“If I had to work all day to support my life, I wouldn’t have a child.”
If i worked in the “arts” and couldn’t afford to live comfortably without a handout – i would move to a different city.
etson- there are a number of nonprofits working in Africa to help them make their art and music into self-sustaining businesses. One of them was on TV recently, that enabled women to make jewelry by rolling paper beads. They then began marketing them in the US and did it so brilliantly, they have helped these women and their families to build houses and they are now learning business and agricultural skills (the organization has provided this) to become even more independent. All from art.
Gemini,
A lot of the people moving into this development would consider 90K a year rich. I know we’re all a little jaded here in NYC, but nannies are not the norm in the “real world”, yes I know people who use them and to each his/her own, but they are not a necessity. People who choose to have children work around these issues if they see fit. Instead today, some people like to say that having someone else essentially raise your child is a necessity, but I’m personally not buying it. If I had to work all day to support my life, I wouldn’t have a child.
Wasn’t Stuy town and Cooper village initially set up for City workers (FDNY,Teachers etc)??
I don’t have a problem with this bldg as it’s helping out one integral part of NYC attain low cost housing. I would like to see more developers also creating housing for other important sectors of folks