Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA)

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Span of the SPURA area, with Hotel on Rivington in the center far left and Blue Condo, still under construction at the time of the picture to the center right.

SPURA The Seward Park Urban Renewal Area

1 History
2 Fact
3 Debate
4 Geography
5 Citations and References
6 Articles of Interest

[edit] History

For more than 35 years, New York City has been sitting on five city-owned vacant plots of land on Manhattan's Lower East Side, acquired as part of a 1965 urban renewal plan, near Delancey and Grand Streets. These sites were originally part of the broader Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA), a federal program designed to tear down several tenements to develop low-income housing. Some of the original SPURA property was developed, but five remain vacant to this day^[1].

[edit] Fact

SPURA remains the largest tract of undeveloped New York City-owned land in Manhattan, south of 96th Street. Deciding what the “appropriate redevelopment” of SPURA would be has stalled the process and kept it undeveloped.

[edit] Debate

The competing forces within the neighborhood have been debating whether SPURA should be used to develop affordable housing within Manhattan Community Board 3, whether some mixed use – low and middle income as well as commercial – or all large commercial retail should be created. This debate, often waged in the community halls of local public school auditoriums and other City meeting places, is often argued in newspaper columns^[2]^[3], at coop board meetings and private strategy sessions in individual homes.

The debate, however, is the very reason that no public offical has been willing to take a firm stance and create some project. The divide between the advocates for the poor and those for the middle to upper income New Yorkers has been so vast here, that politicians appear to have lost nerve to move on any idea. During the Koch administration that ended in 1989, they contracted with Sam LeFrak to build^[4], but massive divided oppositon caused it to be withdrawn. The land still sits vacant in 2007.