Apartment buildings will sprout from parking lots at public housing projects around the city over the next few years, creating up to 600 new affordable housing units on what’s now underutilized land, according to a joint plan by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).

As part of Mayor Bloomberg’s Housing Marketplace Plan, current residents of Brooklyn’s Linden Houses and Boulevard Homes, Manhattan’s Harborview Terrace, Fulton Houses and Chelsea Elliot Houses, and the Stapleton Houses on Staten Island may all see new construction in parts of their complexes by 2010.

According to HPD spokesperson Neill Coleman, the initiative is part of his department’s broader push to find and create new housing units in the city by collaborating with traditional and non-traditional governmental partners.

“Altogether, these partnerships with city and state agencies are expected to generate over 20,000 units of new affordable housing by 2013,” Coleman said. In addition to NYCHA, HPD’s partners include the Economic Development Corporation, Department of Citywide Administrative Services, Department of Transportation, Health and Hospitals Corporation and Human Resources Administration.

The move to replace parking lots at the Fulton complex in Chelsea was met with open arms, according to Jimmy Pelsey, president of the Fulton Houses Tenants Association.

“We support it wholeheartedly. We endorsed it from the beginning,” Pelsey said. A 16-story, nearly 100-unit building will replace a parking lot on 18th Street, which is now used mostly for storage, he said. Developers will replace lost spots with underground parking.

Pelsey said current Fulton tenants negotiated with the city to get first crack at living in the possible new tower. According to NYCHA documents, a final proposal will be expected from the city agencies and developers in January 2008 with the project ending two years later.

NYCHA reached a similar agreement for its current tenants, setting aside a minimum quota of 30 “eligible NYCHA households” for an opportunity to purchase 160 new townhouses or condominiums for the Linden Houses and Boulevard Houses project. That development has an expected completion date of October 2009.

In September, NYCHA and HPD announced the completion of their first collaborative development at the University Macombs Apartments in the Bronx, rehabilitating former NYCHA land to produce more than 200 apartment units. [11/06/06]