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http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...have-potential

Two low-income, desolate corners of the city have potential to become major mixed-use communities, according to a pair of reports released Monday by the Urban Land Institute.

The reports, which stemmed from a pair of two-day panel discussions convened earlier this summer by ULI New York, the local chapter of the Washington D.C.-based think tank, outline short- and long-term goals to unlock development opportunities along the University Heights waterfront in the Bronx, and the Broadway Junction area in East New York, Brooklyn. The reports were sponsored by the Department of City Planning, and complemented two proposals for the areas that the city released earlier this year.
The University Heights waterfront along the Harlem River is currently a strip of mostly industrial properties and parking lots largely cut off from the rest of the Bronx neighborhood by both Metro-North railroad tracks and the Major Deegan Expressway.

Only a few circuitous pedestrian routes allow access there, but the report notes that the waterfront nevertheless has potential because it is next to a Metro-North stop and within walking distance of MTA Select Bus Service, the No. 4 subway farther inland and the No. 1 subway, which is across a bridge that connects the area to Inwood in Manhattan. But before any development can occur there, the perception of the waterfront needs to change.