Carmen Villegas Apartments (CVA)
Location: East Harlem, NY
Client: Ascendant Neighborhood Development Corporation, Xylem Projects, Urban Builders Collaborative (UBC)
Type: Affordable Senior Housing
Size: 174,758 SF
Units: 217
The 28-story Carmen Villegas Apartments (CVA) will offer 217-units of affordable senior housing, ground floor commercial, and community facility space in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. Named for prominent local activist, the late Carmen Villegas, this corner lot development will be a high-profile testament to the vibrancy of the neighborhood, and a support for those who have spurred the area’s vitality for so long.
The development will aim for Passive House certification and will feature geothermal heating, cooling and domestic hot water with programmable thermostats located in each unit, a solar canopy and potentially Building Integrated Photovoltaics, central ERVs to provide fresh air and exhaust for the apartment units and corridors and open community spaces to foster connection and socialization.
The project team is working closely to identify opportunities to reduce embodied carbon through material selection will also explore resiliency strategies given that the site is in a future flood zone.
The project will include a second phase sustainable retrofit of the neighboring Casita Park Apartments with the goal of bringing the two buildings to net-zero operational carbon.