After 23 Years, Melrose Commons & Bronx Music Hall Break Ground

After years of delays, WHEDco’s Bronx Commons and Bronx Music Hall affordable housing development is officially under construction.

The 426,000 square foot, 305 unit development will include The Bronx Music Hall, a 14,000 square foot, 300 seat concert hall dedicated to not only preserving The Bronx’s vast and rich music and cultural history but to foster a new generation of music artists as well.

Located at Brook Avenue and 163rd Street at the northern boundaries of Melrose, once complete, it will be the last development in the 30 block Melrose Commons urban renewal plan culminating 24 years of visioning and the community resistance.

Bronx Commons will offer deeply affordable units for residents making 30% of the area median income mixed together with middle income residents. Income for eligible tenants will range as low as $4,000 and as high as $115,600 for middle income tenants as well as units set aside for formerly homeless individuals and families.

Included in the square footage is 22,000 of retail space that will line the 163rd street side leading into 161st street which will close the retail and commercial gap between 3rd and 163rd all the way to Yankee Stadium and 161st creating one long contiguous corridor for the first time in decades since the fires of the 70s and 80s.

The development will also include an open plaza and amphitheater for programming live events, a green market and the ability to utilize the exterior of the building for “large and small scale artwork”.

“In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the Bronx not was a place where mambo, doo wop, be bop, salsa and funk were performed and created, it had as many music venues as Manhattan and great music programs in Bronx schools.

What the Bronx Music Heritage Center has been doing, and what the Bronx Music Hall will take to new heights is highlight not only music once created in the Bronx, but all the great music being created today, much of it the product of new immigrants from West Africa, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and South Asia.” added Fordham Professor, Mark Naison.

Melrose Commons was selected in 2010 as the first and so far ONLY LEED certified neighborhood in New York State.

Also under construction is the long promised and delayed Melrose Commons Park on Melrose Avenue between 159th and 160th Streets.

The modest 1.07 acre park is scheduled to be completed by 2019.

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