Revitalizing a large portion of the underutilized superblock east of Albany Avenue provided an excellent opportunity to transform this area into a vibrant neighborhood of buildings promoting health and wellness for their new residents and the surrounding communities. The masterplan’s approach was to scale down the superblock by providing a pedestrian and vehicular extension of East 43rd Street through the site and adding a large publicly accessible open space for the enjoyment of the entire neighborhood.

This publicly accessible open space, dubbed Forsythia Park in this proposal, connected to the 3 bounding streets to draw in nearby neighborhood residents and extend pedestrian access through the site along East 42nd street. The park’s form provided large areas of usable open space, maximizes views across the site, and provides ample daylight and greenery to the site and the surrounding buildings.

The extension of East 43rd street through the site provides a much-needed vehicular connection through the block, a smaller scale private residential street, and required Fire Department access to Buildings 1 through 5. Major retail stores were proposed on Albany Avenue at the corners of Clarkson Avenue and Winthrop Street to take advantage of the greater foot-traffic and visibility available on the main thoroughfares, while the smaller retail and community facility spaces face Forsythia Park to provide activities which would more suitably engage these green spaces and more leisurely pedestrian flow.