Governor Wilson, Mayor Beanie and a number of other dignitaries are scheduled to go to the southeastern edge of Brooklyn this morning to dedicate Starrett City, the largest housing development to be opened in New York thus far in the nineteenseventies.
Also on hand for the coffee, cake and speeches will be many of the first 300 families who have already signed leases to live in the 46‐building, middle ‐ income apartment project. The first are scheduled to move in on Nov. 1.
When it is fully occupied in about a year, the 153‐acre Starrett City, development will house 5,888 families—an estimated 25,000 persons—on what previously had been a sprawling tract of garbage landfill and marshes along Jamaica Bay in the Spring Creek section, on the fringes of Canarsie and East New York.
While the focus today will be on public ceremonies, a good deal of activity has been going on without fanfare in an attempt to assure that the first Starrett City families experience a minimum of inconvenience as the final stages of construction continue in the publicly assisted development.
When a new project opens in a previously barren area, there is usually a gap between the time the first occupants move in and all the necessary shopping, transportation and education facilities and arrangements are complete.
Continue reading the main storyIn the case of Starrett City, a minibus service is planned that will transport residents not only through various parts of the development, but to shopping centers in the surrounding area, until the commercial facilities planned in the project itself are gradually ccunpleted over the coming months.
The minibuses will each carry 16 passengers and “we'll rent as many as we need,” said Robert C. Rosenberg, general manager of Starrett Housing Corporation, one of the two developers of the project. The other is the National Kinney Corporation.
The minibuses, he said, will also be used to carry elementary and intermediate school children to nearby schools during November and December. The first of Starrett City's own two schools will not be ready until January, despite earlier plans to have it available when the first families moved in.
In another transportation arrangement affecting the new project, the Board of Estimate last week gave temporary, one‐year approval for the Pioneer Bus Corporation to extend to Starrett City the express bus service it now operates between Canarsie and downtown and midtown Manhattan.
The fare is $1.25 each way and the trip from Starrett City to lower Manhattan is expected to take between 45 minutes and an hour, according to a Pioneer official. Travel time to the final stop, at Madison Avenue and 56th Street, will take about an hour and a quarter, he said.
The Transit Authority has also applied for permission to establish an express ‐ bus route to Manhattan, according to the Board of Estimate's Bureau of Franchises, which is considering the application. The authority is also planning to extend local bus routes to serve Starrett City, Mr. Rosenberg said.
For Starrett City residents who want to travel to work by regular public transit, the trip will be a double‐fare one if subways are involved. The subway stops closest to the development — the Pennsylvania Avenue station on the New‐Lots IRT line and the Rockaway Parkway station on the BMT Canarsie line—are both a bus ride away.
Marked by Reverses
For the public officials and private developers responsi?? for Starrett City, today's ?? is the culmination of nearly a decade of planning and effort—marked by reverses, delays and disputes —to build housing on the site.
The development lies on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue between Flatlands Avenue and Shore Parkway, re stretch of the Belt Parkway, from which it appears to loom like a masonry forest the tan, brown and white buildings rise up to 20 stories.
In the middle sixties, the site was planned for a Park Shore apartment development, but the sponsor withdrew reportedly because of financial difficulties.
In 1967 the United Housing Foundation, developers of the even larger Co‐op City in the Bronx, planned a cooperative complex, Twin Pines Village, on the Brooklyn site.
The foundation withdrew in 1972 after experiencing what it assailed as “unconscionable” delays in getting needed city approvals from the Lindsay administration.
Rent Schedules
The joint Starrett‐Kinney Venture, costing $325‐million, is being tarried out under a combination of state and Federal housing programs. These, Mr. Rosenberg said last week, will generally make it possible for‐families with basic incomes, of less than $18,000 a year to pay an average of $53 a room in monthly rent, or $2,75 for two‐bedroom apartment with a balcony.
Those with higher incomes will gradually pay a monthly average of $95 a room, or $425 and up, depending on location, for the same kind of two‐bedroom unit. (The largest apartments in Starrett City have three bedrooms.)
However, whether a family qualifies for the lower or higher rent schedule will de pend not only on its income, but on its size and composition as well. Thus a family with a $16,000 gross annual income may qualify for the lower rent schedule if there are five or six people in the family but probably not if there are two or three.
Mostly Lower Rents
Because of the complexity of the rules, those interested in living in the development are advised to write for information to the Delmar Managenient Company, 121‐50 Flatlands Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11207.
Mr. Rosenberg said that he typetted that the majority of Starrett City residents would qualify for the lower rent schedule — the so‐called “moderate‐income” schedule. There will be no low‐income families because no subsidies for such families have been included in the project, state housing officials have explained.
The development is being built under a combination of two programs. One is the state's Mitchell‐Lama program, which provides for reduced ‐ imterest, long ‐ term mortgage loans and sizable fax abatement for the construction of middle‐income housing. The second is a Federal program that, through subsidies from Washington, lowers the project's mortgage interest costs even further, thus making possible rehts that can be afforded by the “moderate‐income,” or lower ‐ middle ‐ income, families.
Continue reading the main story