Applicant Washington introduces Phipps Houses and Sojourner Truth MAPES project
Matthew Washington of Phipps Houses introduces the team and provides background on Phipps Houses, a nonprofit founded in 1905 with 10,000 affordable apartments. He notes Phipps has served the Crotona Park West Farms community for over 50 years and that the project will relocate MAPES Court tenants to new homes.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair Lewis and Council, for your endurance.
It's been a full day.
We're glad to be here.
My name is Matthew Washington, Vice President and Chief of Staff at Phipps Houses.
We're excited to talk with you about a 100% affordable housing project built across two new buildings.
I just want to make mention of my colleagues.
I'm joined with Kelly Biscuso, Vice President of Development at Phipps Houses, Astrid Walker-Stewart, Director of Planning and Real Estate Development at Phipps Houses, and we're also joined by our architect, Magnus Westergren, who's an associate at Marvel Architects, and our...
environmental consultant Patrick Blanchfield, who's senior vice president at AKRF.
So we'll talk a little bit about the project and then we'll go into it.
Next slide, please.
Just a little background on who we are at FIPS.
So FIPS Houses is a nonprofit organization that's been around since 1905.
So 121 years of building and providing affordable housing here in New York City.
Today we have about 10,000 apartments, 100% affordable across New York City.
We also recognize the need for supports beyond that.
And so in 1972, established a nonprofit organization, FIPS Neighborhoods, which provides social service supports for members of our buildings, but also the communities we serve, building community centers and the like.
Welcome, Councilmember Felice.
We have been doing this work for many years, and we have been serving this community, the Cortona Park West Farms neighborhood, for over 50 years, and we're very proud of that.
With this project, we're excited because the building that we're going to talk about at Mabe's Court, originally built in the 1920s, we got renovated it in 1991.
It's a walk-up building, and so through this project, we'll be able to give our existing tenants brand new homes in a brand new building and pay for relocation across the street and keep them in the same neighborhood.
So excited for that and to create more affordable housing in the neighborhood.
And I'm going to pass the virtual mic over to my colleague, Astrid.
who will walk through more details of the project.
Next slide, please.