Since the 1990s the vacant Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx has become a landmark, not just of hulking bygone military architecture, but it’s also a symbol that represents city and developer attempts to impose proposals—from homeless shelters to shopping malls or ice rinks—on community residents.
That was supposed to change two years ago when the city launched a new bid to repurpose the armory and enlisted community groups in its early planning. In January, the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) announced that it had selected a developer to turn the center and its grounds into an art venue, workforce development center, cultural and commercial space, sports fields, and more.
But the announcement failed to clarify what kind of oversight and local benefits the armory’s neighbors will have in the project, setting up a showdown with local advocates during the project’s next stage.
“We’re going to monitor and advocate for a project that’s transparent, that genuinely invests in the community that surrounds the armory,” says Sandra Lobo, the executive director of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC).
In the summer of 2023, residents were invited for the first time to have a say in determining how to adapt the city-owned fortress—the largest of its kind in the U.S.—to the present day. The city partnered with the NWBCCC and Pierina Sanchez, City Council member for the district, to set up a “visioning process” that asked neighbors what they wanted in the space.
The process produced a list of uses that largely correspond with those proposed by the chosen developer, 8th Regiment Partners, in its bid for the project—with one major deviation. Notably absent in the city’s announcement about its proposal selection was any mention of community oversight or ownership—a pillar of the community’s request.
The site’s history of unsuccessful proposals reflects the city’s changing approach to development on increasingly valuable publicly owned land. This time the EDC sought out community involvement, even as it put up certain limitations over what economic arrangements it would consider—community land trusts were out, for example.
Now it’s tasked with partnering with a developer to execute that vision, which will ultimately have to pass through the city council for a land use vote. Sanchez, whose vote will likely determine her colleagues’ approval, has positioned herself as an advocate, with “anti-displacement efforts, community control, and community involvement” as conditions of support.
“My intention is to use my seat in the council and my relationship with other elected officials to push for outcomes that are going to prioritize affordability, equity and are in the community’s interests,” Sanchez says. “All I can do is leverage my ability to veto the entire project if it fails to meet the needs of the present.”
So far the city has not made clear how these policies will factor into its plans. More than two months since it announced the new developer, the EDC provided a broad statement to Shelterforce about a system for community oversight on the project. Maddd Equities, which together with Joy Construction forms the winning joint venture, 8th Regiment Partners, did not respond to Shelterforce’s inquiry.
“The City takes these concerns seriously and EDC is having active discussions with City Hall and 8th Regiment Partners on various models for programs and policies to support small businesses near the Kingsbridge Armory,” said an EDC spokesperson in an email to Shelterforce. The overall project is earmarked to get $215 million in public funding
NWBCCC did celebrate that the development is bound to a project-labor agreement that Mayor Eric Adams announced with the building trades unions last year. The use of union labor marks a goal that the group had advocated for during the city’s previous proposals to develop the site. But the EDC has not yet provided information about how community members would be involved in decision-making over the building’s contractors and in local hiring stipulations for jobs in construction and contractors at the center, how they would be protected from gentrification, or whether there would be discounts for neighbors or low-income residents at the sports facilities.
“The City and 8th Regiment Partners are in conversations with [Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York] and more information will be available in the near future,” the EDC spokesperson wrote but would not specify when that would be.
Maddd Equities and Joy Construction are not new to the realm of public-financed projects. The two developers, who frequently partner together, reportedly work predominantly in affordable housing, which they have specialized in assembling financing for.
Council Member Sanchez says that experience or no, moving forward should involve close dialogue with community partners. “Make me an offer that I can’t refuse on behalf of our community,” Sanchez says.
The pressure from Sanchez and the NWBCCC is one of two fronts that the EDC is going to have to contend with in moving the project forward. On March 28, Agallas Equities, one of the real estate firms that unsuccessfully submitted a bid for the project, launched a lawsuit against the EDC, 8th Regiment Partners, and the Bronx Borough President’s Office for what it alleges were procedural violations in the selection of 8th Regiment Partners, as well as intellectual property theft. In response to questions about the lawsuit, an EDC spokesperson said, “After a rigorous evaluation of all proposals, NYCEDC selected El Centro Kingsbridge’s proposal, which is consistent with the values of the Kingsbridge Vision Plan and the requirements of the RFP.”
Institution Building: NWBCCC’s Role in the Process
Elisabeth Ortega, a parent who lives in Kingsbridge, has been organizing around the armory since she was a neighborhood high school student in the mid-2000s. Speaking prior to the selection of 8th Regiment Partners as the developer, she told Shelterforce that it’s always been a concern that development at the armory would increase financial pressure on residents. But, she added, the public workshops in 2023 on what the community wanted to see there presented an opportunity for her neighbors to become empowered.
“It was a chance for us to really make sure that we were in the forefront of really deciding what could be in the armory,” she said.
The fact that the city partnered with the NWBCCC and Council member Sanchez to poll neighborhood residents about what they wanted in the space meant that the city’s stated guiding principles were remarkably in sync with the nonprofit’s.
“We were really proud that the vision document that they published actually reflected what the community said they wanted,” said Lobo. “It also includes for the first time in the history of EDC the term ‘community ownership.’”
While this mention may be a first, it’s also a concession from what advocates were originally seeking. The language in “Together for Kingsbridge” and “Our Armory,” the separate reports by the city’s EDC and the coalition mirror each other in nearly every way—but one important difference is a request for the inclusion of a community land trust (CLT) to own the land.
The coalition wrote that one of its guiding principles was to transfer the land underneath the building into the custody of a land trust. An EDC spokesperson told Shelterforce over a year ago that selling city-owned land to a community-led group was simply not a policy option it would consider. It offered instead a 99-year lease that would keep revenue flowing into the city and give it ultimate control over the land—as it has done in other comparable projects like the Brooklyn Army Terminal or the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center.
The EDC’s refusal to consider community ownership didn’t stop the NWBCCC from throwing its hat in the ring with its own unsuccessful redevelopment proposal for the space, joining with two developers to submit a proposal that included urban agriculture, manufacturing, a culture and film area, and an event space.
Instead of ownership of the land, Lobo said, the coalition’s proposal contained a profit-sharing system that would funnel the nonprofit’s share of revenue into a land trust created to promote housing and commercial rent affordability in the area around the armory.
The site’s history speaks to the pitfalls of top-down planning. Ever since the property left the aegis of the National Guard in the ’90s, developer-led initiatives have failed.
NWBCCC has persistently organized around the vacant armory since it was decommissioned by the New York National Guard and taken over by the city in the 1990s. In so doing, the coalition built itself into a neighborhood power broker.
In 2009, Mayor Bloomberg supported Related Companies, the developer behind the Hudson Yards megaproject, in proposing a big-box mall in the space, but the plan was ultimately sunk in the City Council after Related refused to honor NWBCCC’s labor principles.
When a hockey star–helmed development team proposed a massive ice rink center for the property, NWBCCC worked with them to negotiate a benefits agreement that would add labor standards even though the advocates felt the plan didn’t reflect the community’s vision. The Kingsbridge National Ice Center proposal passed the City Council, but the developers then struggled to finance the project. It ultimately failed in 2021.
“I just turned 35 and when I first became super involved I was like in my 20s. I like to make a joke that I got married and had a kid and the armory stayed empty,” Ortega says.
Dabbling in Land Trusts
When the community was asked what they wanted to see at the site, a common answer was ownership. For many residents that meant a community land trust. But despite its community-focused approach to planning, for the EDC that was a third rail. The EDC said that it had been clear throughout the process that it had no intention to sell the land.
Over the past decade in New York City, CLTs have become an increasingly popular strategy to combat land speculation and displacement. Advocacy groups like the NYC Community Land Initiative have primarily promoted this strategy for affordable housing development, but have also advanced the model for commercial and recreation projects like the armory.
We don’t need people to come in to make our community beautiful. Because one, it is already beautiful. And two, we can make it beautiful ourselves.”
Elisabeth Ortega, Kingsbridge resident
At least 20 CLT organizations have formed across the city, a Pratt Institute survey found, but many are still looking to secure land and financing.
“We’ve seen that some city agencies, as well as the elected officials, are taking CLTs much more seriously,” says Elise Goldin, an organizer for the New Economy Project. “But we don’t think that they’ve fully embraced it and taken it seriously enough to truly see the full potential.”
Across the city agencies the response is also varied. According to Goldin, the Department of Housing and Preservation is the agency that has done most to claim community land trusts as a government tool. The agency created a new division focused on homeownership and shared equity and committed to turn over several acres of land in Queens to a land trust in the Rockaways’ Edgemere neighborhood.
“They certainly see the value of CLTs as a part of the puzzle of their existing goals,” says Will Spisak, another New Economy Project staffer.
While the EDC doesn’t want to be in the business of selling land, it is open to a model where community land trust organizations manage city-owned lots for decades at a time. Recently it awarded a 45-year lease for an abandoned, city-owned detox center to a community land trust called the Mott Haven–Port Morris Community Land Stewards to create a community health and arts center. The Stewards hope to advocate for land ownership after the lease expires. “I think it’s taken a lot to get them to this point. I’m glad they’re here,” says Mychal Johnson, a board member of the land trust.
The model of giving community land trusts a multi-decade lease could lead to community decision-making. In its visioning report for the armory, the EDC sees community ownership as the residents taking an active role in making decisions about the Armory, as well as a way to benefit the community through shared revenue.
Spisak says that the question for projects like the Mott Haven–Port Morris Community Land Stewards’ HEArts project and the NWBCCC’s armory proposal, which use a ground lease instead of straight-up ownership, is the extent to which they are able to independently shape the direction of the project after taking on the lease.
“I guess we’ll see that unfold in the coming years,” he says.
Ortega, the Kingsbridge resident and volunteer with the NWBCCC, says that her main concern today is to make sure that the plan includes a way to stem gentrification of the surrounding area. Businesses around the armory have already raised alarms that they are not being offered new leases in anticipation of more commercial interest in the area. Beyond addressing these fears, Ortega wants her community to feel like it had a hand in creating the new armory.
“We don’t need people to come in to make our community beautiful,” she said. “Because one, it is already beautiful. And two, we can make it beautiful ourselves. . . We’re not only just fighting something, but we’re fighting to create something, which I thought was really powerful.”
Editor’s Note: This article was updated on April 3, 2025 to include EDC’s comment on the lawsuit.
About the Author
Comments