Phase one of the Hip Hop Museum’s campus is complete, bringing hundreds of apartments to the South Bronx.
L+M Development Partners, real estate agency Type A projects, BronxWorks, The Hip Hop Museum, and several elected officials unveiled 542 units of subsidized housing and 2.8 acres of public space on the Harlem River waterfront in the South Bronx on Thursday.
The 530,000 square foot unveiling marks the completion of the first step of what developers have dubbed Bronx Point, a $349 million mixed-use development with apartments directly above and retail shops and an early child care center built around the Universal Hip Hop Museum.
“The Bronx is no longer going to be first in everything bad and last in everything good,” Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson told an audience of nearly 200 attendees, noting that developers had received over 63,000 applications for those 542 units through the city’s housing lottery process.
The subsidized apartments are set aside for households earning certain incomes, defined by the area median income (AMI), a federal designation currently set at $141,200 for a family of four. Of the 542 apartments ranging from studios to three bedrooms, 81 are listed at 30% of the AMI, 108 at 50%, 162 at 80% and 108 at 120% along with one apartment set aside for a superintendent, according to L+M senior director Josue Sanchez, a Bronx native who oversees the development.
Sanchez said that residents will begin to move in next month, and expects all of the units to be leased by next summer.
Eileen Torres, executive director for Bronxworks, told THE CITY after the ribbon-cutting ceremony that the social services organization will provide on-site resources to occupants of the 82 units reserved for formerly homeless residents. She noted that the organization is putting at least $350,000 into an early child care center in the building that will serve 51 children ages three to five across three classes and is scheduled to open in January. Torres is hoping to fund the center through Head Start, a federal day care program.
Rocky Bucano, executive director of the Hip Hop Museum that is expected to generate big business as a tourist attraction, said construction on the institution would begin in January 2024 and that the doors should open by Spring 2025.
“I can guarantee you that this will be one of the most visited cultural institutions in the entire world,” he said. Formerly known as Kool DJ Rock of the Come Off Crew, Bucano began his career in hip hop as a teenage DJ in the 70s.
A concrete walkway and green space loops around the museum’s building, providing fitness equipment, water fountains and benches for seating. A section of the public space that connects with Mill Pond Park, leading to the Bronx Children’s Museum, features more green space and a playground should be accessible by the end of the year, said Sanchez.
“The Hip Hop Museum” is already etched onto the building, along with a line from the Notorious B.I.G.’s song “Juicy”: “It was all a dream … you never thought that hip hop would take it this far.”
The museum and housing now occupy land that had previously been slated for an expansion of Mill Pond Park following the construction of the new Yankee Stadium and its parking lots on what had been parkland.
Hector Duprey, 29, who works at three neighboring delis on East 149th street, a couple blocks away from the museum, said he has seen more foot traffic since construction began.
But he lamented that investment in the neighborhood came only with increasing development, noting work to install an elevator at the 149th Street-Grand Concourse train station that hosts the 2, 4 and 5 train lines.
“Nobody has an issue with the neighborhood getting upgraded,” Duprey said, but “I’ve been here for 18 years and I’ve never seen that elevator get fixed.”