A deal announced by Mayor Eric Adams’ office Friday would bring a new apartment building that houses a public pool and fitness center to the West Village.
The new building would house 280 apartments, and would be built on a vacant city-owned lot. Officials said all the units would be affordable housing, with 15% of them set aside for formerly homeless people.
The building’s pool and lower levels would be run by the parks department, and would offer an alternative to the historic Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, a once beloved downtown space that’s been closed to the public since 2019. Parks officials said the building's condition is too bad to repair.
Tearing down the center — known to locals as the “Tony Dap” — comes at the protest of neighborhood preservation groups.
“The public has been clear that they want the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center repaired and re-opened with new supplemental facilities at 388 Hudson — not the new facilities replacing Tony Dapolito and the center being destroyed as Mayor Adams proposed,” said Village Preservation Executive Director Andrew Berman.
During his campaign, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said he supported the rebuild plan pushed by Berman’s group.
City officials chose the Camber Property Group as the developer for the site. The space the building would make open for the public is dubbed ‘Hudson Mosaic’ and will include a six-lane indoor pool, full-size basketball court and other spaces for exercise.
Tricia Shimamura, the parks department's Manhattan borough commissioner, said that work to revamp the rec center and outdoor pool was still going to happen.
“We definitely hear and understand the community’s desire to preserve that history,” said Shimamura. “Unfortunately, we have a situation where the building constraints really don’t allow us to renovate it in a way that makes it accessible, up to code, and truly programmable the way we want it to be.”
