Shovels are finally in the ground at 275 Chestnut Street, as developers and city officials marked the start of construction on the third and final building of the Atlantic Chestnut affordable housing complex in East New York. The last piece of the puzzle is set to rise about 14 stories and bring more than 300 below-market apartments, plus ground-floor retail that is expected to include a supermarket. With this phase, the team is wrapping up a full-block redevelopment that trades long-vacant industrial lots for new housing and neighborhood services. Local leaders joined representatives from Phipps Houses at the ceremony while crews started prepping the site for vertical construction.
According to New York YIMBY, this final phase from Phipps Houses will stack on top of the 840 affordable units already completed in the first two buildings. The outlet reports that the full Atlantic Chestnut master plan covers roughly 1.3 million square feet with an estimated price tag of about $850 million, positioning it as one of the largest affordable projects linked to the East New York rezoning.
What Phase Three Will Look Like
Design details from Dattner Architects show that the new building will keep the brick-forward style of the earlier phases. Plans call for a 14-story tower connected to an eight-story volume at the corner, capped with rooftop photovoltaic panels. The architect lists this phase at roughly 394,954 square feet with about 326 apartments and highlights a continuous rooftop "green ribbon" terrace that will tie all three buildings together.
Residents are set to get a full suite of shared spaces, including several landscaped courtyards, an outdoor roof deck, a fitness center, a children's playroom and a community room. The amenities are intended to make the complex feel more like a connected campus than a standalone tower.
Site History And Cleanup
Before anyone could talk about terraces and playrooms, the team had to deal with a messy past. The block had long been home to industrial uses and was hit by fire damage in the 2010s, which left it in rough shape. Extensive environmental work was required before housing could safely move in.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation notes that the Atlantic Chestnut parcels went through the state's Brownfield Cleanup Program to tackle contaminated soil and vapor issues. Environmental consultant AKRF's reports trace decades of industrial operations, document asbestos surveys and lay out the phased remedial steps that ultimately made the redevelopment possible.
Why This Matters To East New York
City officials and project partners frame Atlantic Chestnut as a key pillar of the 2016 East New York Neighborhood Plan, meant to bring deeply affordable homes, jobs and retail to a corridor that has seen more than its share of disinvestment. The NYC Housing Development Corporation points to nearby Chestnut Commons, a 275-unit passive-house project that opened in 2022, as part of a growing cluster of affordability and community facilities in the area.
Phipps Houses' own project materials underscore a mix of unit sizes, on-site services for residents and that long-promised supermarket, which is intended to improve local food access along with the new housing.
Timeline And Next Steps
New York YIMBY reports that construction on Phase Three is slated to run for several years, with completion projected for 2028. In the short term, the focus will be on foundations and below-grade systems while partners hammer out leasing details, retail strategy and community hiring commitments.
Public filings and financing notices show the final phase is being carried by a familiar mix in New York affordable housing: public subsidy, tax-exempt bond support and private lending. If everything stays on track, the last Atlantic Chestnut tower should close out one of East New York's biggest affordable housing bets in recent memory.
