Mayor Seeks to Atone for Botched Condo Deal
The city-owned building on Pike Street where the successor to Rivington House will be built (image via Google Maps)
Oct. 3, 2016 — New senior housing and health facility to replace Rivington House.
While his deputy Tony Shorris was being grilled by the City Council over the botched sale of a Lower East Side health care facility to luxury condo developers, Mayor Bill de Blasio was busy trying to make amends. The mayor has proposed using the city’s $16 million profit from the lifting of the Rivington House deed restriction to finance affordable senior housing and a health care facility on a nearby parcel of city-owned land, Bowery Boogie reports.
Acknowledging that the sale of Rivington House “never should have happened,” de Blasio said, “Our reforms will prevent that from ever happening again.”
The new 100-unit facility will be located at the corner of Pike and Henry Streets, currently the site of a prosaic brown brick box owned by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.
After the news broke, Bowery Boogie posed a reasonable question: “Is this peace offering enough, or should the sale (of Rivington House) be annulled somehow?”