Construction on Sendero Verde, a sizable Handel Architects-designed affordable housing development in New York City, is expected to break ground later this summer. 

Patch reports that L+M Development Partners, Jonathan Rose Companies, and Acacia Network, the developers behind the project, have secured the necessary funding to get shovels in the ground. AECOM is providing landscape architecture services for the project. 

The $233 million, three-phase development will ultimately bring close to 700 affordable housing units to New York's East Harlem district, where recent developer interest and real estate activity have disturbed the area's naturally affordable existing housing stock. The project results in part from the recent re-zoning of the East Harlem neighborhood, an effort that is expected to bring up to 1,288 affordable housing units to the area, overall, according to Patch. 

The three-building development is wrapped in vertically striated brick bands and features punched openings, set back roof terraces, and ground floor retail and educational spaces. The complex will contain a variety of community-serving uses along its lower levels, including a YMCA gym, a health foods market, a community health center, a charter school, and dedicated nonprofit meeting spaces. A portion of the site will be left unbuilt to accommodate a series of sizable community gardens that currently occupy the site. The tactical but broadly based program of the project is designed, according to the architects, to create a multifaceted "community of opportunity" for the neighborhood's residents. 

The project's first phase will include 361 below-market-rate apartments, including 120 units reserved for New Yorkers classified as "extremely low income" residents. The phase will also include roughly 36 units set aside for residents who have experienced homelessness, according to Patch. 

Phase one of the complex is slated for completion in 2022.