NYC Lets Developer Build Apartment Complex With Separate ‘Poor Door’

One World Trade rises above the skyline of lower Manhattan in New York, Friday, June 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
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New York City has approved a real estate developer’s plan to construct an apartment complex with a separate entrance for its less fortunate residents, the New York Post reported Monday.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development signed off on the application from Extell to build a 33-story building on the Upper West Side. The building will have 219 luxury condos that overlook the waterfront, according to the Post, and 55 “affordable” units that face the street. They will have separate entrances, which, as Gawker noted, sparked outrage last year when the plans were first revealed.

The city allows developers to build larger buildings if they include on-site or off-site low-income housing, according to the Post.

Another developer involved in similar projects explained the rationale for the separate entrances to the Real Deal, a NYC real estate news outlet, last year.

“No one ever said that the goal was full integration of these populations,” David Von Spreckelsen, senior vice president at Toll Brothers, said. “So now you have politicians talking about that, saying how horrible those back doors are. I think it’s unfair to expect very high-income homeowners who paid a fortune to live in their building to have to be in the same boat as low-income renters, who are very fortunate to live in a new building in a great neighborhood.”

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