A four-story residential building with 20 units is now proposed for 1552 Leland Avenue in Parkchester, the Bronx, on a lot where a fatal two-alarm fire killed 80-year-old resident Elizabeth Rodriguez just four months earlier. Permits for the new building were filed alongside demolition permits for the fire-damaged three-story structure that once stood on the site.
The application, first reported by New York YIMBY, lists Marash Voka of Voka Mechanical Corp. as the owner behind the filing. Voka is an NYC-licensed Master Plumber who, according to city records, previously used 1552 Leland Avenue, Suite G, as the official business address for his mechanical company. The proposed building would rise 50 feet tall and yield 12,302 square feet of residential space, with a masonry-based structure, a 29-foot-long rear yard, and a penthouse. John Backos of Grid Drafting and Consulting LLC is listed as architect of record.
The 20 residences would average roughly 650 square feet apiece, a scope that suggests the units are likely to be rentals rather than condos, per the YIMBY report. No estimated completion date has been announced. The site sits between Archer Street and Guerlain Street, near the Parkchester subway station served by the 6 train.
A Site Marked By Tragedy Just Months Ago
The speed of the rebuilding effort is inseparable from what happened at the address in the spring. Hoodline's earlier coverage detailed how a fatal two-alarm fire tore through the home on April 11, requiring 141 FDNY and EMS personnel to bring it under control before Rodriguez died. The blaze destroyed the three-story building that had stood on the lot, clearing the way, four months later, for demolition permits and the new construction filing at the same address.
Backos has been active elsewhere in the borough as well. In August, the architect filed permits for a six-story, 54-unit building at 2419 Crotona Avenue in Belmont, replacing another single-family Bronx home, according to New York YIMBY. That Belmont filing was also covered in Hoodline's report on a six-story Belmont building tied to a cited landlord, and Backos separately filed plans for a 20-unit building in Williamsbridge last September, per the Marketproof Blog.
Why Developers Are Targeting This Corner of the Bronx
The Leland Avenue proposal lands squarely within a broader push to densify housing near East Bronx transit corridors. The site sits close to the future Parkchester/Van Nest Metro-North station, part of the MTA's $2.9 billion Penn Station Access project that is expected to bring regional rail service to the area by 2027, according to the NYC Department of City Planning. In August 2024, the New York City Council approved the Bronx Metro-North Station Area Plan, which pairs $500 million in public investment with zoning changes meant to enable nearly 7,000 new housing units across those corridors.
That policy shift comes against a backdrop of acute housing scarcity. New York City's net rental vacancy rate fell to 1.41 percent in the 2023 NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey, the lowest level recorded since 1968, per the NYC Rent Guidelines Board. In the Bronx specifically, more than 57 percent of renter households spent over 30 percent of their income on housing in 2024, even as the borough's median household income sat at $48,676, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Development activity has followed that pressure. Bronx development-site transactions made up 37 percent of all commercial real estate sales volume in the borough during the first half of 2024, reaching a record $166.4 million at an average of $110 per buildable square foot, per Ariel Property Advisors. Property records show the Leland Avenue lot itself last sold in October 2003 for $485,000, according to PropertyShark.
Whether the 20 units planned for the site will include income-restricted affordable housing or be offered entirely at market rate remains unclear, as does how neighbors feel about the added density so soon after the fire that claimed Rodriguez's life. Those questions, along with a construction timeline for clearing the fire-damaged lot, remain open as the permit application moves forward.
