Daily News from New York, New York • 117

4 i a 4 A j-1 ITT I I i Daily News, Wednesday. August 31, 1983 Artist's rendering of townhouses to be built on Park Slope site. 1 A Vrf i 3 By SUZANNE GOLUBSK1 Mayor Koch, along with a group of city and state officials, yesterday attended at a long-awaited groundbreaking ceremony in a rubble-strewn Park Slope lot, promising to transform it into a row of 44 city-subsidized middle-income townhouses a year from now. "We're trying to provide opportunities for neighborhoods to live and grow again," said Koch, referring to the 132-family, privately developed housing project and to a number city-sponsored rehabilitation projects in the area. Park Slope Village will go up in a six-and-a-half acre vacant lot on Baltic between Fourth and Fifth adjacent to a new city park and Public School 133.

THE PROJECT IS viewed by some community members as further evidence of the "gentrification" of their neighborhood. As "gentrification" spreads, they claim, low-income residents are being pushed out of their own neighborhoods by wealthier middle-class residents moving in and sending market prices through the roof. The townhouses, selling for $137,500 each, wUl have three apartments equipped with large kitchens and deluxe appliances, wall-to-wall carpeting and private, fenced-in yards. The developer of the project is the Fifth Ave. Committee, a nonprofit organization of residents and merchants who live in the Fifth Ave.

area from Flatbush Ave. to 24th and from Third Ave. to Sixth Ave. The immediate area around the townhouse project is a low-income ethnically mixed neighborhood, with large numbers of blacks and Hispanics, including" many Haitians. The neighborhood has in the past five years enjoyed an influx of government fun- EOWARO MOUHAW DAHV NEWS General view of area at Baltic between Fourth and Fifth where townhouses will be constructed.

In The mortage payment will run $1,150 per month, HPD said, but the actual cost to the homeowner will be $485 per month, after he collects the other rents. City officials referred to a number of city-sponsored redevelopment projects, including the on going $3 million refurbishing of Public School 133, the nearby Warren St rehabilitation of 13 three-family rowhouses, and the Shopsteading Program on Fifth Ave. There, the city sells stores at low prices to owners who promise to refurbish buildings with stores on the lower floor and apartments above. Officials also toured a nearby supermarket which is being completed as part of the Baltic St. area development.

for five years arid after that, there are no restrictions on rent charges. There is no cap on the income of those who will be allowed to purchase the buildings, nor is there an income cap on renters, said Philip Johnson, of Johnson-Robinson Association, which is marketing the project. Aetna Life Insurance Co. is offering 10.3 mortgages to eligible buyers, with the rate to vary after two years. A CITY SUBSIDY of $13,500 per home, repayable when the home is resold, allows a purchase price of $137,500 per building with a down payment of 10 or $13,500.

The city also is selling the land to the developer at $15,000 per lot and giving buyers a partial tax abatement for up to 20 years. ding and a wave of new growth from more affluent residents. THE 44 TOWNHOUSES in Park Slope Village are to be purchased by one owner who will live in one unit and rent out the other two apartments. The rents will be $500 per month for a six-room apartment and $350 per month for a three-room apartment. A spokesman for the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the agency administering, city funds, said the buildings are not eligible to be protected by rent-stabili-zion because they are under, the six-unit minimum.

There is, however, an Informal agreement with the city, he said, which will keep the rents the same for two years. They then can be raised slowly 1.