The East 125^th Street Development Project, sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), is conceived as a catalyst to revitalize the eastern end of 125^th Street in conjunction with the City's program to revise all of 125^th Street ("River to River Plan"). The NYCEDC objective was to "pre-package" the two block City-owned site by preparing a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) to be included in an RFP solicitation to private developers. The project, when complete, will include approximately 1.7 million square feet of new construction, replacing mostly vacant and underutilized land with new affordable housing; office, media and entertainment businesses; cultural space and retail uses and a relocated MTA bus garage.

The prime contractor, STV, retained the ESC to prepare the Urban Design/Neighborhood Character, Zoning and Shadow Analysis for the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DGEIS). The ESC created a 3D digital base model of East Harlem/125^th Street, which was used to prepare the DGEIS components. Working collaboratively with the NYCEDC, the ESC modeled the NYCEDC proposed development program, as per the NYCEDC's draft design guidelines and analyzed its impact on neighborhood character, distribution and location of proposed uses, the quality of proposed public and private residential open spaces, parking and off-street loading and the relocated MTA bus garage. Based on this analysis, the ESC prepared a series of development alternatives and corresponding development and design guidelines, which were similarly analyzed. The proposed development program, distribution of uses, design guidelines and building massing for this as-of-right development were the refinement and synthesis of the original development concept and the ESC-developed alternatives.

Of note was the ESC's analysis of the environmental quality of the public and private open spaces. In addition to the CEQR required shadow analysis, the ESC performed a natural light, or radiance, analysis (radiance is the combination of daylight and sunlight) to determine the light-levels resulting from the alternative building massing. This was the first time radiance analysis was included in an EIS.
 

Isometric View Showing a Proposed Conceptual Plan