NYCHA proposal would restore West 129th Street in the St. Nicholas Houses as part of Harlem Children’s Zone’s charter school plan. On March 30, 2011, the City Planning Commission approved the New York City Housing Authority’s proposal to re-connect West 129th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem. The City in the 1950s closed a portion of West 129th Street by creating a cul-de-sac between Frederick Douglas Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard to facilitate the development of NYCHA’s fourteen-acre St. Nicholas Houses apartment complex. The cul-de-sac intersects with Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and provides access to the tower-in-the-park housing development.

NYCHA requested that the City eliminate the cul-de-sac and reestablish West 129th Street as a through street as part of Harlem Children’s Zone’s plan to  build a 1,300-seat charter school. Harlem Children’s Zone has already broken ground on the five-story school, known as Promise Academy, on land northwest of the cul-de-sac. The school is scheduled to be completed by the 2012 school year. Rather than following the City’s land  use review process, NYCHA, as a state authority, was required by federal law to follow the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s public review requirements in order to transfer its land to Harlem Children’s Zone. (read more…)