City seeks development partners for Sandy rebuilding

[From: Crain's New York Business]

Six developers will be tapped to rebuild small properties that were damaged by Superstorm Sandy in waterfront neighborhoods in the five boroughs. The city program is completely voluntary.

The Bloomberg administration has launched a program to help speed up the restoration of New York City waterfront communities that were battered by Superstorm Sandy.

The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development released a request for qualifications last week seeking developers who would help rebuild one- to four-family homes. More than six months after Sandy, hundreds of houses across the five boroughs still need to be rebuilt. The city said putting the rebuilding work in the hands of a few experts would not only make it easier for displaced families to return home but also create more continuity within affected neighborhoods. The program is entirely voluntary, however, and if individual homeowners want to work with their own developers, designers and contractors, they can.

"For most people, designing a house, especially when you're dealing with new regulations, can be daunting," said RuthAnne Visnauskas, the city housing agency's deputy commissioner for development. "Building a new home in general can be daunting, so having a developer and a team of architects and engineers with the skills to tackle the challenges left by Sandy can be a real help to homeowners."

New zoning and building codes tied to new FEMA flood maps and other regulations stemming from the storms, such as raising homes and using new materials, have been implemented.

Under the request for qualification process, the city has divided affected areas up into six groups, and developers would take charge in each area: Breezy Point in Queens; the rest of the Rockaways and Broad Channel in Queens; Staten Island; Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach and Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn; scattered home sites in the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan; and scattered mixed-use buildings (residences with attached commercial spaces, usually ground-floor retail) in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

The program is aimed at rebuilding 400 to 750 properties with a portion of the $350 million in funding allocated to repair smaller properties from the $1.77 billion in federal Sandy aid being provided to the city. However, the total money spent for the program depends on how many homeowners participate.

Kevin Boyle, editor of The Wave newspaper and a member of the Graybeards, a Rockaways volunteer group that has done a lot of work after Sandy, said city officials had mentioned the program at a recent meeting with Belle Harbor homeowners, a number of whom had lost their homes on Beach 130th Street, and few had expressed a desire to participate.

"None of them were interested, but maybe for some of the smaller homes, people might be," Mr. Boyle said.

The city believes many homeowners will prefer its approach because it would streamline the design process and improve the community. Each of the six developers selected would be expected to come up with at least two to four different shapes and sizes of homes, with an eye toward maintaining the look and character of each neighborhood.

"If you lived in a bungalow or a modern ranch, we don't want to force you into a Cape Cod or a Tudor," Ms. Visnauskas said, referring to some common housing styles found in many of the waterfront communities. By choosing a developer for each area, it also ensures that the houses relate not only to each other but the neighbors who are still standing.

Applications for the request for qualification are due June 5. The city is expected to select six developers by July, so they can spend the rest of the summer mapping out possible home designs and begin construction in the fall.

The city hopes a range of developers will apply, from those who build small homes for the city to large local outfits or big national firms like Toll Brothers or KB Home. "For developers, we can offer scale that makes this a desirable project," Ms. Visnauskas said. "Instead of figuring out all these new challenges for one home, they can do it for 50 or 100."