New York City 300-Foot 'Micro Apartments' In The Works [PHOTOS]

The Bloomberg administration has given the go-ahead to a project that will construct mini apartments in New York City.

The city selected a winner for a miniature housing model competition on Tuesday, the Observer reports.

The competition, launched last July by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, received 33 entries for creating “comfortable, attractive housing units between 250 and 375 square feet,” to be implemented within the city, according to the Observer.

The winning entry, My Micro NY, is a collaborative design by Monadnock Development, the Actors Fund for Housing Development, Capsys, and New York firm nArchitects. It will be developed into an actual housing complex that will be constructed in the Manhattan neighborhood of Kips Bay at 335 East 27th Street.

Construction is scheduled to begin at the end of 2014, according to Business Insider.

The building will feature 55 rental apartments with “with big windows, ample storage space, and Juliet balconies,” the business news website reported.

The building will boast such amenities as a “public meeting space, café, and a common rooftop garden for residents, as well as a laundry room, residential storage space, a bike room, and fitness space.”

The Observer notes that My Micro NY will be the first modular development in Manhattan. The project aims to be a model for possible future miniature apartment development in the city.

The development will entail modular construction, meaning that each module will be built individually. That part of the project will be spearheaded by modular home manufacturer Capsys at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Currently, it is illegal to build apartments smaller than 450 square feet in New York City; however, as New York City is home to over 8 million residents, many scrambling for limited housing availability, the Mayor said that the development will be an exception.

The contest that My Micro NY won was part of the city's New Housing Marketplace Plan to develop affordable housing for small-household New York residents by creating 165,000 units of affordable housing for approximately 500,000 small-household New Yorkers, according to Business Insider.

“We’ve chosen Manhattan because more than three-quarters of its homes are one- or two-person households,” Mayor Bloomberg said at a press conference on Tuesday.

“We already have the population seeking housing for a small number of people; we just don’t have the apartments to house them.”

Units will be priced between $940 per month and $1,800 per month; the city expects that there will be a wait list for the apartments. Business Insider notes that some units will also cater to low-income tenants.