By Alex Davidson
After years of negotiations and almost a decade of lying fallow, the former St. Anthony's Hospital site in Woodhaven is being transformed into 68 two-family homes and an early childhood center.
Joseph Ciampa Jr., chairman of Ciampa Inc., which is developing the seven-acre site, said the new homes will be priced in the range of $500,000 and will include three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and dining and living rooms.
During a telephone interview Monday, he said the homes will sit adjacent to the 400-seat early childhood center to be developed by the city School Construction Authority.
“We looked at the community, we studied it, and we think it (the development) will fit in perfectly,” Ciampa said. “We worked extremely hard to give it a great look for the community.”
Ciampa said all the development on the property at 89-15 Woodhaven Blvd. is as of right, which means his firm did not need to apply for any zoning variances. The Woodhaven property is currently zoned residential. Ciampa said his firm has already broke ground on the project.
The homes will be divided categorically as either perimeter or interior homes, Ciampa said, with garages for those on the outside and driveways only for homes inside. He said his firm worked with architects who did not need to perform a traffic impact study for the site.
The former hospital site, which opened in 1914 and was demolished in 2001, was operated by the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, Borough President Helen Marshall has said. The Diocese of Brooklyn owned the site until a few weeks ago, Ciampa said, when it decided to sell it for an undisclosed amount.
A portion of the Woodhaven site will be turned into parkland within the residential development, Ciampa said.
The new early childhood center on the Woodhaven lot will sit atop a roughly 38,000-square-foot rectangular portion of the superblock bounded by 89th Avenue to the north, 91st Avenue to the south, Woodhaven Boulevard to the west and 96th Street to the east.
The center will become part of Community School District 27, which includes Richmond Hill, Ozone Park, South Ozone Park, Howard Beach and the Rockaway peninsula.
Local civic groups, including Community Board 9 and the Greater Woodhaven Development Corp., had been negotiating with the diocese for more than five years to begin construction of the proposed school.
Marshall threw her support behind a proposal in December for a joint housing-school development at the site.
“It's moving along, so that's good,” said her spokesman, Dan Andrews.
Ciampa said the whole development, excluding the school, will be finished in a year and a half. He said the site will be built in phases, with the initial models to be finished by the end of the year.
Reach reporter Alex Davidson by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
