A sleepy one-story warehouse in Wakefield is now staring down a much taller future. Permits were filed this week for a 12-story mixed-use building at 4541 Furman Avenue in the Bronx, a block-footprint site just off the Wakefield–241st Street 2-train stop. The filings call for well over 200 residences and a sizable community facility that together would take the place of the existing single-story industrial building. Developer Tom Eswein's Vertical Community Development is listed as the owner, with Aufgang Architects on the plans.
Permits and plans
The application describes a 124-foot-tall, 12-story concrete structure that would span roughly 138,778 square feet in total, with about 57,590 square feet set aside for housing and 81,187 square feet for community facility use. It lists 220 residential units at an average size of about 261 square feet each. The plans also call for a cellar level and 12 enclosed parking spaces.
Demolition permits for the current warehouse have not yet been filed, and the paperwork does not include a projected completion date, according to New York YIMBY.
Who owns the lot
Public records and real-estate reports show that Vertical Community Development recorded a purchase of the Furman Avenue property in 2024 for about $10.5 million. Separately, renderings published by the project's general contractor depict two connected towers totaling about 200 units and roughly 180,000 square feet, suggesting the permit filings may reflect a revised or larger concept for the site, per PincusCo and Vertcon Builders.
Rezoning cleared the way
The block was rezoned in 2022 through the city’s ULURP process, which changed the zoning map designation from M1-1 to R7D/C2-4 and established the area as a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing zone. The City Council signed off on the rezoning, and the city’s environmental review issued a Negative Declaration with an (E)-656 designation to address hazardous-materials and noise concerns, according to City Council records and the OER E-656 report.
Neighbors pushed back before
Local resistance is not new on this block. Neighbors and Community Board 12 previously pushed back on earlier versions of the project, citing parking shortages and concerns about neighborhood character. CB12 voted against a prior 150-unit affordable-housing proposal in 2022, according to the Bronx Times. CityLand’s coverage of the ULURP review also noted that applicants tweaked parking counts along the way in response to those complaints, but public opposition remained a prominent feature of the hearings.
What comes next
With permit applications now in, the project heads into Department of Buildings review, and public job filings are expected to start appearing in the agency’s DOB NOW system. Demolition permits for the existing structure have not been submitted, and the owner has not announced a construction timeline, per New York YIMBY.
The city’s online DOB NOW resources explain how job filings and permit statuses are posted and tracked, including for this site, through DOB NOW: Build.
