Melrose undergoing quiet transformation.The Melrose section of the South Bronx, one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , has been quietly undergoing a transformation for the past decade. It's a case study of how much can be achieved when community advocacy groups, a committed design and planning team and the city join forces. In the early 1990s, the grassroots organization Nos Quedamos/We Stay made a commitment to help guide the future development of the South Bronx. The group brought us in to provide design and planning services for a proposed urban renewal area -- a plan approved by the City of New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of in 1994. The 35-block revitalization zone, known as Melrose Commons, illustrated the need and capacity for approximately 1,700 units of new housing, 250,000 SF of commercial and community facility space, and four acres of open space. Today we are the primary architectural and planning firm for Melrose Commons. Since 1993, we have provided our services to Nos Quedamos on a partially pro-bono basis and also through grants from such organizations as the New York State Council on the Arts The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell (1905-1996), with backing from Governor Nelson , the Astor Foundation, the Environmental Simulation Center, and Neighborhood Housing Services. The first completed development in Melrose Commons, called Plaza de Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. , comprises 35 three-family, for-sale townhouses that we designed. Currently, all the homes have been sold and are occupied, bringing approximately 525 new residents to the area. Other projects that we have designed there include: * La Puerta de Vitalidad, the first new rental facility in the neighborhood, which consists of 60 one-to-three bedroom apartments and two ground floor commercial spaces. The recently completed building will house approximately 300 residents. * La Casa La casa (Spanish for The House) is a 1954 novel by Manuel Mujica Laínez. It tells the story of a family living in a stately Buenos Aires mansion from the heyday of Argentina's oligarchy in the 1880s to some time in the post-1946 period, the era of Peronist populism, De Felicidad, an 85-unit affordable senior housing facility scheduled to start construction in spring 2003. The project is currently under review by the New York City Buildings Department and is completing the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP ULURP Uniform Land Use Review Process ), and * Palacio del Sol, a 124-unit apartment building with 15,000 SF of ground floor commercial space, scheduled to begin construction in fall of 2003. In addition to the housing we designed here, we also provided an illustrated and photographic survey of all the existing buildings in the Melrose Commons area, which was used by Nos Quedamos to compile a report identifying buildings and landlords/owners who could benefit from receiving low interest loans for property rehabilitation rehabilitation: see physical therapy. . We've also provided consulting services to Nos Quedamos for the rehabilitation of Melrose Park Melrose Park, village (1990 pop. 20,859), Cook co., NE Ill., an industrial suburb of Chicago; inc. 1893. It has large railroad yards and shops, steel mills, and factories that make a wide variety of products. at Courtlandt Avenue and East 161st Street, for the expansion of the Melrose MetroNorth Station at East 162nd Street, and for the reconfiguring of roadways at l6lst Street between Elton and Washington Avenues and Melrose Avenue Melrose Avenue is a well-known Los Angeles street that starts from Santa Monica Boulevard at the border between Beverly Hills and West Hollywood and ends at Hoover Street in Silver Lake. Melrose runs north of Beverly Boulevard and south of Santa Monica Boulevard. from 149th Street to 163rd Street. Melrose Commons is well on its way to becoming a more welcoming place to work and live. The coming years will undoubtedly bring more changes to this area, and we look forward to being a part of the continued revitalization. |
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