City Planning Commission approves Flushing Creek hyperdevelopment with some "affordable housing"

 

QNS  

The City Planning Commission (CPC) on Wednesday, Nov. 4, voted in favor of approving the highly controversial Special Flushing Waterfront District (SFWD) proposal that will now move forward to the City Council for a vote. 

The City Planning Commission’s 11-2 vote is a milestone for the development, which after a halted land-use process, is steadily gaining momentum.

Marisa Lago, chair of the City Planning Commission, voted in favor of the project saying, “the application is an important step forward for Flushing.”

The three developers behind the Special Flushing Waterfront Development include F&T Group, United Construction & Development Group, and Young Nian Group, known collectively as FWRA, LLC. 

Their proposal seeks to revitalize 29 acres of inactive and underutilized land that the developers say will provide substantial public benefits such as a privately funded and maintained road network and a 160,000-square-foot waterfront promenade along Flushing Creek that will both be publicly accessible.

The plan also includes 1,725 residential units, including affordable housing, 879 hotel keys, office and community facilities, retail space and parking spaces to help alleviate traffic along College Point Boulevard.

In response to the CPC’s vote, the developers said they’re pleased that the City Planning Commission has voted to move the application forward. 

“With 3,000+ permanent jobs, a new traffic-alleviating public road network, publicly accessible waterfront with public amenities, and $164+ million in projected annual tax revenue among many other benefits, SFWD will bring Queens a step closer to the future our communities deserve,” the developers said. 

The CPC’s vote marks another step in the right direction, the developers said. 

“City Planning rightly sees that the SWFD is not a rezoning, but an essential next step for Queens at large towards recovery. Our vocal community submitted more than 300 letters supporting the project, showing that our vision resonates with those we are working to serve,” the developers said. “Without question, the months since COVID-19 have been among the most trying times our city has ever seen. TThere is no better time to give Flushing and New York City this exciting new chapter.” 

Meanwhile, opponents of the proposal have said that the rezoning of the waterfront will exponentially increase the process of gentrification and displacement. 

The MinKwon Center for Community Action along with the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce and Chhaya CDC, had filed a lawsuit against the Department of City Planning and the City Planning Commission, arguing that an environmental review must be conducted for the development proposal. 

Local organizations such as the Flushing Anti-Displacement Alliance, The MinKwon Center and the Flushing Workers Center took to social media describing the CPC’S vote as “shameful” while criticizing the mayor and Councilman Peter Koo.

25% of condos in recently built luxury towers remain vacant

New York Times

Picture an empty apartment — there are thousands in Manhattan’s new towers — and fill it with the city’s chattiest real estate developers. How do you quiet the room?

Ask about their sales.

Among the more than 16,200 condo units across 682 new buildings completed in New York City since 2013, one in four remain unsold, or roughly 4,100 apartments — most of them in luxury buildings, according to a new analysis by the listing website StreetEasy.

“I think we’re being really conservative,” said Grant Long, the website’s senior economist, noting that the study looked specifically at ground-up new construction that has begun to close contracts. 

Sales in buildings converted to condos, a relatively small segment, were not counted, because they are harder to reliably track. And there are thousands more units in under-construction buildings that have not begun closings but suffer from the same market dynamics.

Projects have not stalled as they did in the post-recession market of 2008, and new buildings are still on the rise, but there are signs that some developers are nearing a turning point. Already the prices at several new towers have been reduced, either directly or through concessions like waived common charges and transfer taxes, and some may soon be forced to cut deeper. Tactics from past cycles could also be making a comeback: bulk sales of unsold units to investors, condos converting to rentals en masse, and multimillion-dollar “rent-to-own” options for sprawling apartments — a four-bedroom, yours for just $22,500 a month.

The slowdown is uneven and some projects are faring better than others, but for well-heeled buyers there is no shortage of discounts and sweeteners to be had.

The analysis, a compilation of both public and proprietary listing and building data, is one of the most sobering looks yet at the city’s flagging condo market, which peaked about three years ago amid a glut of inventory. Now the market could face new obstacles, from growing fears of a recession, to changes in tax law and political instability heading into an election year.

For an industry accustomed to selling apartments years ahead of completion and skilled at concealing the pace of sales when the market falters, further headwinds could force more drastic measures.

Moreover, a growing share of condos sold in recent years have been quietly re-listed as rentals by investors who bought them and are reluctant to put them back on the market. Of the 12,133 new condos sold between January 2013 and August 2019, 38 percent have appeared on StreetEasy as rentals.

And Billionaire's row, Hudson Yards and Pacific Park are not even done yet.

Apologies for my miscalculation readers. 

"Temporary" wall put up by luxury tower developer at Court Square Station collapses from downpour and nearly kills a commuter

Ok this one is scary. Wall gave out last night during a rush of water while a train was coming and took someone out #subwaycreatures pic.twitter.com/WtzgY1FuWv

— Rick (@SubwayCreatures) July 18, 2019

Gothamist 

In a lengthy statement, MTA spokesperson Shams Tarek blamed the flooding on a "shocking lapse" by contractors working for a nearby private development, which is also building a new entrance and elevator at the Court Square Station. The property is luxury condo Skyline Tower, soon to be the tallest skyscraper in Long Island City, and developed by United Construction & Development Group. 

The building did not have the proper pumping system in place during the storm, Tarek said, leading to the "absolutely unacceptable and avoidable incident."

"Their worksite was inundated with rainwater during severe thunderstorms, causing water to build upat their worksite and breach plywood separating their worksite from the station," according to the MTA's investigation. There were no reported injuries as a result of the breach.

This is the thing that commuters have to sacrifice their safety on the subway for:

 

Drastic undercounting of construction site fatalities during city's hyperdevelopment last year

THE CITY

A least a dozen construction workers died on the job in New York City last year — but building owners and contractors reported only a single fatality, THE CITY has learned.

A 2017 city law requires building owners or contractors to report all deaths and injuries on their construction sites to the Department of Buildings.

But they’ve fallen far short – without facing any penalty, so far.

The one reported death was that of Over Paredes in November, which was filed by the general contractor at 859 Myrtle Ave. in Brooklyn, according to DOB records.

Worker deaths that went unreported include some that made headlines: Ju Cong Wu, who fell nine stories down an elevator shaft during a hotel project in Manhattan, and Luis Almonte, who was crushed under a brick wall at a Sunset Park worksite.

The DOB has not yet cited any company for failing to report.

The department will begin issuing $2,500 initial violations to building owners who do not report deaths or injuries beginning June 1, agency spokesperson Joseph Soldevere said after THE CITY inquired about enforcement.

“Developers need to be aware that we will be holding them to their obligations under the law and taking all appropriate enforcement actions if they fail to meet those obligations,” he said in a statement.

Owners also could face fines of $1,000 for each day they fail to submit the reports, Soldevere said.

The law went into effect immediately after it was signed in May 2017. Soldevere attributed the delay in enforcement to a slew of new construction safety-related laws — 50 since January 2017 — that has stretched the agency thin.

“We’re implementing dozens of new laws and have had to allocate our resources among many major priorities,” Soldevere wrote.

Private construction is the most lethal industry in New York City, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, which counted 20 deaths in 2017. The bureau’s 2018 tally is not yet available.

The building in the picture is the site where Gregory Echeverra got killed when a crane collapsed and a counterweight fell on him three weeks ago. It's not known if the developer reported this to the DOB.

Hudson Yards got twice as much tax subsidies as Amazon and their condos' property taxes are dirt cheap

6 Sq Ft

 The $20 billion, 28-acre Hudson Yards megaproject has been in the news recently as its official March 15 grand opening approaches. The New York Times reports that the nation’s largest residential development has gotten more than a little financial help from the city government to get there. In fact, public records–and a recent study by the New School–reveal that the development has received nearly $6 billion in the form of tax breaks and additional government assistance, twice the controversial $3 billion in incentives held out to Amazon to entice the retail tech giant to bring its second headquarters to Queens.


Where did $6 billion in taxpayer dollars go? Included in that tally were the $2.4 billion spent by the city to bring the 7 subway line to Hudson Yards; $1.2 billion was set aside for four acres of green space within Hudson Yards. The City Council kicked in $359 million to shore up interest payments on bonds when the development fell short of its revenue projections.

The point to be made is that the world’s most successful real estate developers–In this case Related 
 Companies and Oxford Properties Group–are among the biggest beneficiaries of generous government tax breaks, meant to encourage development.

Of the incentives given to the Hudson Yards project, defenders say they’ll reap an enormous benefit to the city in the form of thousands of new jobs created. The subway extension is definitely a boon, and who can argue with parks and improvements at what was for years a jumble of old factories, tenements and a stretch of rail yards once known as “Death Avenue.

But the city was lacking a subway stop on the far west side before the wealthy developers made it happen, and the counter-argument in both the case of Amazon and Hudson Yards is that big businesses with big profits at stake should pay their own way rather than getting government incentives–particularly tax breaks–sorely needed elsewhere.

The New School’s recent analysis, headed by Bridget Fisher and Flávia Leite, focuses on a particularly fortuitous property tax break that developers within the Hudson Yards area benefitted from which has cost the city more than $1 billion so far. This incentive can mean as much as a 40 percent discount for future developers in the area for as long as 20 years.

President Trump's first luxury hotel will be demolished for new tower

 

NY Post


Midtown’s Grand Hyatt Hotel is getting torn down.

The glass-sheathed tower — Donald Trump’s first major Manhattan project — is being bought out by developers who plan to raze it and replace it with a 2-million-square-foot, mixed-use space.

Manhattan developer TF Cornerstone and computer billionaire Michael Dell’s MSD Partners are in contract to buy the 100-year-old hotel and take over its ground lease, which expires in 2077, from Hyatt, they announced on Thursday.

In its place, they’re planning a new skyscraping project that would include offices and a scaled-down Hyatt hotel.

The land under the Hyatt, which includes numerous underground concourses that connect to Grand Central Terminal, was owned by the New York State’s Urban Development Corp. — until it was sold to the MTA in December 2017 for $13 million. Changing ownership of that lease would require city consent.

Building the new project would also require state approval.

This was the bad orange man's project genesis. A fitting and more productive use of this re-development would be a tower jail or homeless shelter.

Futuristic cartoon high rise luxury tower development gets approval from D.O.B. and City Planning.

YIMBY

Rafael Viñoly has become one of the more prominent designers of Manhattan’s residential real estate in recent years, and today, YIMBY has the first rendering for the architect’s latest skyscraper, at 249 East 62nd Street on the Upper East Side. While the tower will technically comprise only 32 floors, it will stand 510 feet to its rooftop, taking advantage of a Jetsons-esque podium to boost its upper levels high into the neighborhood skyline.

The Schedule A for the project reveals the exact configuration, and shows that retail and a townhouse will occupy the base of the building. Those will be topped by apartments rising through to the 12th floor.

Above that, the 13th through 16th floors will all be mechanical, with the 15th floor holding the residential amenity spaces, including a bar/wine tasting area with private dining room and pantry, a media lounge, and a study.

Residential space will then continue, with three units per floor from floors 17 through 29, and then another three mechanical floors up on the very top. The 17th floor will start about 350 feet above street level.

 The configuration of 249 East 62nd Street begs the question of whether Viñoly’s design for the site could start a trend to rival the cantilever. The extended mid-section of the tower results in the displacement of a substantial amount of residential space to an elevation far above what one would normally expect for a 32-story building, and is likely to result in pricing that is far higher than what would otherwise be possible.

 As engineering continues to improve, it seems that the premiums people are willing to pay to live in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side could be a driver behind additional developments that mimic 249 East 62nd Street.

I think it looks more like an e-cigarette cartridge than someplace the Jetsons would live in but they definitely wouldn't be able to afford to.  Mr. Spacely or Cogswell would more likely be residents.