The Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA) covers five vacant plots of land owned by New York City 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, 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].
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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.
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 is often waged in the community halls of local public school auditoriums and other city meeting places, in newspaper columns[2][3], at coop board meetings, and at private strategy sessions in individual homes.
The debate, however, is the very reason that no public official 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 hesitant to move on any idea. During the Koch administration that ended in 1989, they contracted with Sam LeFrak to build[4], but massive divided opposition caused it to be withdrawn. The land still sits vacant in 2009.
In January and February 2011, the local community board took the issue of SPURA's development up and came to a community consensus that the area will be built to accommodate mixed use of low income housing, commercial properties/retail spaces and market value homes [5]. The Board, community and city planners and public officials will finalize the plans for development, which is expected to begin within 2011 and completed in stages over a five year period[6].