Philadelphia tore down 21. Chicago leveled 79. Baltimore took down 21 as well, and when six of them came down in one day in 1995, it threw a parade.
Since the 1990s, public housing high-rise buildings have come tumbling down by the dozens across the country as cities replaced them with smaller suburban-style homes that did not carry the stigma of looming urban despair and poverty.
New York City has long been the great exception, and red-brick towers still dominate the skyline from the Lower East Side to East Harlem, from Mott Haven to Bushwick. But now, for the first time in its 75-year history, the New York City Housing Authority wants to knock down an entire high-rise complex, Prospect Plaza in Brooklyn ? a move that has surprised and angered a number of former tenants and advocates for low-income housing.
The authority has in the past chosen to renovate rather than tear down its aging housing stock, often at great expense. Its decision to demolish Prospect Plaza was not the result of a sweeping policy shift, but of the failure of a renovation project that became bogged down in years of administrative, financial and legal problems.
Prospect Plaza ? three 12- to 15-story towers in Brownsville ? is plagued by neither despair nor poverty: It has been vacant since 2003, when the last tenants were moved out with the promise they could return to refurbished apartments.
One recent evening, the sole occupant of Prospect Plaza ? many of the windows on the upper floors have been removed, giving the buildings a hollowed-out look ? was a security guard in a ground-floor office. The window frames and doorways on each tower?s bottom three floors were sealed shut with cinderblocks or metal gates. The flagpole was flagless, but an old wooden sign remained: ?Welcome to Prospect Plaza.?
Agency officials say they want to tear down the 35-year-old buildings and erect new apartments in their place. Officials initially planned on leaving the towers standing and reconfiguring the apartments, by eliminating some units to create bigger living rooms and bathrooms, but those plans were scrapped by the authority?s new leadership because demolition made better financial sense.
Ilene Popkin, the agency?s assistant deputy general manager for development, said it would cost $481,000 to renovate each of the 269 apartments. Demolishing the structures and building 361 new units would cost $381,700 per unit. Ms. Popkin and other officials said the three buildings had deteriorated from vandalism and exposure to the elements, and were out of context with the neighborhood. The new apartments ? including public and private housing, not only for the poor but also for low-income and moderate-income families ? are likely to be built in low-rise buildings.
Prospect Plaza originally included four towers housing 1,200 people. One was torn down in 2005; the plan was to use the extra space for a new community center, shops and additional housing. But today, the building?s old footprint is just a fenced-off lot.
That building was the first high-rise demolished by the authority. In 2007, the agency also knocked down a number of two-story buildings as part of the redevelopment of the Markham Gardens complex on Staten Island.
The authority has completed the first two phases of its Prospect Plaza redevelopment plan, involving not the actual housing project itself but 37 two-family houses and 150 rental units in four-story town-house-style buildings that were constructed on nearby lots formerly owned by the city.
Several former residents of Prospect Plaza and groups that represent public housing tenants said they did not support the demolition, in part, because it was unclear to them that the authority intended to replace the old units with the same number of new public housing units. Agency officials have not decided how many of the new apartments will be public housing, but they said that former residents and community leaders would help make that determination.
?We are committed to being shoulder to shoulder with you,? the agency?s new general manager, Michael Kelly, told former tenants and others at a community meeting last week a few blocks from the vacant buildings.
The cost of demolishing the towers and building the new apartments is estimated at $138 million. Part of the financing will come from a $21.4 million federal grant the authority was awarded in 1999 to revitalize Prospect Plaza, of which about $17 million remains. At the meeting, Mr. Kelly said it was too early to say where the rest of the financing would come from. Agency documents describe the project as ?mixed finance,? meaning it will be paid for with public and private dollars, with some of the money coming from the sale of federal low-income housing tax credits.
Michaels Development Company, a real estate company based in New Jersey, was hired in 2003 to rehabilitate the three towers, but the agency terminated its agreement with Michaels in 2007. In a letter to Representative Yvette D. Clarke?s office in December, the agency said that Michaels ?was unable to develop a financially feasible plan for rehabilitation.?
A spokeswoman for Michaels disputed that description. ?We had a viable plan to fully finance the deal,? said the spokeswoman, Laura Ochipinti Zaner.
Michaels sued the agency in April 2008 for breach of contract, accusing it of mismanaging the project and of failing to compensate the company for $5.6 million in predevelopment and other costs. The project stalled in part because it took the agency three years to finish the development agreement and because of turnover at the authority, according to the lawsuit.
In court documents, the agency denied many of the company?s assertions, stating that Michaels breached the agreement by failing to obtain commitments from lenders willing to invest in the project. An agency spokeswoman said Michaels was paid about $4 million from the federal grant for architectural, engineering and environmental review work.
Even as the three towers sit vacant on Prospect Place near Saratoga Avenue, they continue to be a costly expense for the cash-strapped agency, which has paid a security firm $25,000 a month since 2005 to keep watch over the buildings. The demolition, which must be approved by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, is planned for this fall, with construction scheduled to start in 2012.
Preference for the new public housing units will go to former residents, many of whom were relocated to other public housing in Brooklyn.
At the community meeting, Priscilla Davis, 40, a former tenant, said she would not believe anything the agency told her until she was handed the keys to her new apartment. Milton Bolton, 50, a former resident and the president of the still-intact Prospect Plaza Tenants Association, held up a thick draft of a 1998 application for the federal grant and said, ?It?s hard to have trust.? More than three dozen tenants have died since 2003.
Ms. Popkin and Mr. Kelly acknowledged ?bumps along the road? for the project in the past, but they stressed their desire to rebuild the neighborhood. ?I understand that folks here are frustrated,? Ms. Popkin said. ?There is a new management at N.Y.C.H.A. We have a commitment to these towers. This is a top priority to move forward.?
