Taconic Investment restores hope with Eastchester Heights
Sometimes, real estate development is about more than buying and selling properties Landscaping Rock. Taconic Investment Partners, for example, transforms neighborhoods.
Nowhere perhaps in the entire five boroughs is this better executed than in the North Bronx neighborhood of Baychester, where the Manhattan-based Taconic purchased a mammoth five-block, 114-building, 1,416-unit apartment complex, riddled with drugs and prostitution.
“It’s part of a focused strategy to buy properties that can turn around an entire area,” says Charles Bendit, a founder of Taconic, who also owns the full-block-size 111 Eighth Ave., between 15th and 16th Sts., and the Apple Store building in the Meatpacking District. “With large projects, you can create value by re-creating entire neighborhoods. Everyone benefits - the residents, us as owners as the asset appreciates in value, and the community.”
While this might sound like idealistic developer-speak or masquerade for profit-driven long-term planning, Taconic’s immediate impact through community outreach programs, apartment renovations and security upgrades has given new life and a new name - Eastchester Heights - to this Boston Road residential complex that locals once nicknamed “Homicide Homes.”
“When this housing complex sneezes, the entire area catches a cold,” says Harley Frank, Taconic’s residential asset manager, spearheading tenant-landlord relations and Eastchester’s makeover. “If each household spends $100 per week on nearby Boston Road, that’s $140,000 per week spent right in this neighborhood. That’s a lot of money.”
The history and architecture: This massive development is an architectural gem. Designed by Clarence Stein, one of America’s most famous architects of the 1930s, Eastchester Heights was built as a planned community for middle-income city residents. Stein Landscaping Rock, involved in the design of Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, studied planning and landscaping in England.
His work at Eastchester Heights, originally called Hillside Homes, complements the landscaping with large interior spaces across a series of four- and six-story brick buildings that rise with the hilly landscape. The streets act as terraces. Plush interior courtyards that look more like meadows harmoniously coexist with dark red-brick buildings accented by arched passageways and sidewalks serving as paths.
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