Massive Bronx affordable housing project will include home for Universal Hip-Hop Museum

The 1,000-plus apartment complex will also bring new public parks, a food hall, and an outdoor performance venue to the Harlem River waterfront

The city has unveiled a $200 million plan to reshape a long-neglected stretch of land along the Harlem River in The Bronx into a massive affordable housing complex with a new public esplanade, a home for the Universal Hip-Hop Museum, an outdoor theater, and a new food hall.

Bronx Point, as the project is called, is being developed by L+M Development Partners with Type A Projects and is a response to a request for proposals the New York City Economic Development Corporation issued in July 2016. The project will include up to 1,045 units of permanent affordable housing and rise just south of the 145th Street Bridge.

Bronx Point will be constructed in two phases, the first of which will bring 600 units of permanent affordable housing for extremely low- to moderate-income New Yorkers, half of which will be two- and three-bedrooms targeting families.

And this phase's amenities are ample—it's set to include a new 2.3 acre waterfront esplanade and park that will connect to Mill Pond Park, an outdoor performance space with public seating, a public plaza along Exterior Street, a multiplex movie theater, the Universal Hip-Hop Museum, a food hall curated by the founder of Foragers that will focus on incubating Bronx-based food and beverage purveyors, and space for educational programming.

The project will also bring unglamorous, but much-needed upgrades to sewers; the redesign of high-traffic intersections in the area; new lighting and sidewalks, and other streetscape improvements along Exterior Street; and the expansion of high-speed broadband.

The local community board, City Planning, and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. are all on board with the project. It's currently undergoing a uniform land use review procedure (ULURP), after which the major undertaking will be cleared to rise.

The first phase of Bronx Point is slated to be complete by 2022.

• Old Bronx County Courthouse Scouted as Site For a Hip-Hop Museum [Curbed]