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]
what montrose said!
Why do people automatically assume that the building is full of Sarah Lawrence grads, or some other form of suburban dilletantes?
Does anyone know who will be living there? I don’t think so. So why assume it’s the “undeserving” hipster Richard Serra wannabe? More than likely, the building will house more former homeless folks than soap opera actors, more recovering addicts than Jackson Pollock clones. The people “in the arts” will be vigorously screened, and their incomes factored into their rents, as the article says. They may end up paying as much as in a more traditional situation. Sheesh.
You want to rail against subsidies? Take to the streets about the bazillions of dollars in corporate welfare, tax breaks to the wealthy, and public funding of private developer’s projects. Not complaining about a handful of people living in tiny studio apartments, the aquisition of those apartments being about the only good thing in life that’s ever happened to them.
oh but i DO know. and why cant they get roommates like everyone else? why are they so entitled to have their own studio apartments and a gym in a gorgeous new construction apartment? oh yeah that’s right, no one can really answer THAT question. i dont argue with you at ALL that the arts are important in this city, but if you choose to work in the arts that is your choice. you shouldnt get your own luxury projects.
*rob*
Heather- that’s what the application process is for. The arts are enormously important to NYC and they can’t survive on their own (unlike the CFO’s and CEO’s we’re bailing out these days.)
Theater, Performance, art exhibitions, film production are require skilled craftsmen and laborers. These people are necessary but are not making much money. Most artists never make much money- your experiences aside, rob. You just don’t know.
I think ENY sees exactly where you’re coming from.
same thing. i didnt say CHEAP construction. i said living ON the cheap with a subsidy. it’s still new construction, it’s still super nice and luxiourious. and thanks heather for agreeing with me on this. i cant believe not a single person can even see where im coming from on this issue. and alol at the sarah lawrence grad comment haha
*rob*
“yeah id LOVE to have a cheap ass subsidized new construction apartment ”
“yeah but that still doesnt negate the fact that they can get roommates LIKE EVERYONE ELSE WHO CANT AFFORD THEIR OWN LXURY STUDIO WITH FLOOR TO CEILING WINDOWS AND A PRIVATE GYM. spare me, please.”
So which is it rob? luxury studio or cheap ass subsidized new construction? It can’t be both.
Perhaps he is, but I agree with him on this point. I am not really into arts subsidies, unless they’re artists involved in WPA-style projects, which, by the way, it’d be nice if we had. But subsidizing Sarah Lawrence grads who want to do black box theater that looks exactly like Richard Foreman’s stuff? Eh, no. Let them get roommates and eat cake.
> omg slope, what is your point?
My point – and I do have one, you should try it some time – is that you opine incessantly about things about which you know absolutely nothing.