Tower developer envisions gentrification of Woodside

 

The Real Deal 

New Empire Real Estate acquired a site in Woodside where it plans to build a 120-unit condominium, a rarity for the quiet Queens neighborhood.

The New York-based development firm, led by Bentley Zhao, paid $16.2 million for a 19,000-square-foot corner lot at 58-01 Queens Boulevard occupied by Walgreens. New Empire is planning to build a mix of one-, and two-bedroom units with an average price of around $750,000, according to Zhao. Construction is expected to start next year.

The new building’s amenities are to include a fitness center, personal storage and parking, a children’s playroom and indoor and outdoor residents’ lounges.

Zhao said the condo will target local buyers and renters in the area looking for an upsize. The 12-story tower will also offer unobstructed views of Manhattan, as many of the surrounding buildings are low-rise, according to Zhao.

Woodside is sandwiched between Sunnyside and Jackson Heights. It is not known for fancy residential developments, but New Empire is betting that as Long Island City and Astoria become more expensive, buyers will look deeper into Queens.

Surely it will be in context with all the other towers on the boulevard of zombie condo development

Judge orders circumcision on luxury tower development

New York Times

 In an extraordinary ruling, a State Supreme Court judge has ordered the developers of a nearly completed 668-foot condo tower on the Upper West Side to remove as many as 20 or more floors from the top of the building.

The decision is a major victory for community groups who opposed the project on the grounds that the developers used a zoning loophole to create the tallest building on the West Side north of 61st Street. A lawyer representing the project said the developers would appeal the decision.

Justice W. Franc Perry ordered on Thursday that the Department of Buildings revoke the building permit for the tower at 200 Amsterdam Avenue near West 69th Street and remove all floors that exceed the zoning limit. Exactly how many floors might need to be deconstructed has yet to be determined, but under one interpretation of the law, the building might have to remove 20 floors or more from the 52-story tower to conform to the regulation.

“We’re elated,” said Olive Freud, the president of the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development, one of the community groups that brought the suit.

“The developers knew that they were building at their own peril,” said Richard D. Emery, a lawyer representing the community groups that challenged the project before the foundation was even completed. Mr. Emery said this decision sent a warning to other developers who proceed with construction in spite of pending litigation.

The question at the heart of the suit was whether the developers had abused zoning rules to justify the project’s size.

It is common for developers to purchase the unused development rights of adjacent buildings to add height and bulk to their project. But in this case opponents of the project argued that the developers, SJP Properties and Mitsui Fudosan America, created a “gerrymandered,” highly unusual 39-sided zoning lot to take advantage of the development rights from a number of tenuously connected lots. Without this technique, the tower might have been little more than 20 stories tall, instead of the nearly finished 52-story tower that now stands.

The decision also sets an important precedent, said Elizabeth Goldstein, the president of the Municipal Art Society of New York, one of the advocacy groups that brought the suit against the project.

“The way this zoning lot was constructed has been invalidated, and that is extremely important,” Ms. Goldstein said, adding that the decision would deter other developers from attempting similar strategies.

Scott Mollen, a lawyer with the firm Herrick, Feinstein, which is representing the project, said the ruling contradicted earlier decisions from the Department of Buildings and the Board of Standards and Appeals that were based on a long-established zoning interpretation. SJP, one of the developers, said they would “appeal this decision vigorously.”

No shit, Sherlocks at City Council; the city planning department doesn't evaluate the effects of overdevelopment?

LIC Post


City Planning’s predictions as to the outcome of neighborhood rezonings will be put under the microscope if a number of bills sponsored by Council Member Francisco Moya become law.
 
The bills would require city agencies to review past neighborhood rezonings to see how accurate City Planning’s projections were with what took place on the ground in following years.
 
The bills come at a time when there have been a number of neighborhood rezonings—where existing residents have voiced concern about being displaced due to gentrification– and instances where City Planning’s projections have been found to be way off.
 
For instance, City Planning’s projections were proven wrong when it rezoned a 37-block area in 2001 in the Court Square/Queens Plaza area. The city anticipated, according to its Environmental Impact Statement in 2001, that no more than 300 residential units would be built in the rezoned area by 2010, according to a report released by The Municipal Art Society of New York last year. In 2010, there were 800 residential units and by 2018 almost 10,000 units—with more coming.
 
With each neighborhood rezoning, the city goes through an environment review process, called the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR), to identify the likely outcome.
 
Based on the CEQR manual, the city must evaluate the impact of a rezoning on land use, traffic, air quality, open space, schools, socioeconomics, among other items. City Planning studies these impacts and makes projections that go into an Environmental Impact Statement, which the public relies on when it undergoes the ULURP public review process.
 
City Planning works with other city agencies, such as the School Construction Authority, Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, to produce an Environmental Impact Statement. The agencies provide guidance based on City Planning’s calculations.
 
However, the city is not held accountable for its predictions and legislators want that to change. There is no mandate requiring officials to re-examine their projections.

Here's more unaccountability:

Hunters Point developers for parcel C given the green light to build their towers higher and higher

Developers have released new designs for Parcel C of the ongoing Hunters Point South development, a shift that will result in the two planned towers to rise significantly higher than expected along the 

Long Island City waterfront in order to accommodate the complex infrastructure running below the ground along with a recently planned school for the site.
 
The two residential towers, referred to as “north” and “south” will rise to 55 stories, or 550 feet, and 44 stories, or 440 feet, respectively. The north tower’s new design is 14 stories higher than previously planned, and the south tower will see an additional nine stories, up from 35 stories in the previous plan.
 
The developer, TF Cornerstone, aims to break ground in June 2018.
 
The two towers will be flush against the perimeters of the parcel, as will the newly incorporated elementary school, resulting in cleared-out space in the middle of the site, where no built structures will rise, save for a food pavilion with outdoor seating amidst greenery and public art installations.

 The changes were revealed during Community Board 2’s Land Use meeting Wednesday night. Jaclyn Sachs, a senior planner at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and John 

McMillan, director of Planning for TF Cornerstone, said that they had to redesign the two towers so they wouldn’t disturb  power lines, an Amtrak tunnel, and other infrastructure running below the site. 

Furthermore, easement holders such as the New York Power Authority and Amtrak, wanted unobstructed access to the site.
 
Sachs added that while the New York Power Authority and Amtrak and other easement holders were part of initial conversations about the development, it wasn’t until a specific proposal for the parcel was put out by TF Cornerstone that easement holders preferences for an undisturbed center became clear.
 
TF Cornerstone also had to incorporate an elementary school on the parcel, which was not part of the original plan, after the city pushed for its addition during the developer’s redesign. The school will be 34,000 square-feet, with 572 seats, and have a ground level playground directed toward the center of the site.

 “This was not an easy thing to do,” Sachs said, adding that parcel C is the largest and most complex of the parcels on the 30-acre Hunters Point South development.

This obviously got permitted because it contains, ahem, "affordable housing", which as we have been told ad nauseum that it can only be achieved if market rate and luxury housing get built also. Like the nearby "zipper building":

The Zipper Building, a new luxury condominium development in Hunters Point, has officially placed all 41 of its units on the market.
 
The available condos, located inside the converted and expanded zipper factory at 5-33 48th Ave., range from studios to four-bedrooms. The units begin at $650,000 and go up to $2.5 million.

“The Zipper Building will complement the budding Hunters Point neighborhood, which is in the midst of a real estate boom,” said Eric Benaim, CEO of listing brokerage Modern Spaces.

And the behemoth at Court Square,

The first units have hit the market in the 67-story, 802-unit building that is going up in Court Square.
Twenty-units are now available in the condo, which will be the tallest building in Queens when it is complete. The listing prices for those units now on the market range from $660,400 for a studio to $2,325,610 for a three-bedroom.
 
The development, called the Skyline Tower and located at 23-15 44^th Drive, is across the street from One Court Square and is being marketed as offering spectacular views and more than 20,000 square feet of luxury amenities.
 
The condos offer floor-to-ceiling windows, modern appliances, and marble-adorned bathrooms.
 
The initial listings are in floors four through 36. The developer anticipates that buyers in the bottom 36 floors will be able to move in by the end of 2020, around the same time that the Dept. of Buildings is expected to issue a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy.
 
Residents will be able to move into the higher floors by the end of 2021, when the TCO is expected to be issued. The upper floors will tower over the Citigroup building.
 
Eric Benaim, the CEO of Modern Spaces, anticipates that it will take four years to sell all of the units. Modern Spaces is the exclusive marketing and sales firm for the project.

Apparently, the city and the real estate industry that truly runs it is building for speculative, well, hypothetical residents to supply instead of and for the present demand of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who are having difficulty finding affordable housing right now.

Court Square condo project is is quite huge

From LIC Post:

The developer of a 67-story building that will contain 802 condo units got the go ahead from the state attorney general’s office to start selling units.

The building will be the tallest in Queens to date, with the total value of all units in the 100 percent condo-building to exceed $1 billion, according to the offering plan. The units are expected to begin closing in July 2020.

The development, called the Skyline Tower and located at 23-15 44th Drive, will consist of about 30 percent of the condo stock in Long Island City when it is complete, according to Patrick W. Smith, an agent with Stribling & Associates who focuses on new development and who is heading up the company’s first office in Queens.

Rego Park tower to be pretty tall

From Curbed:

A large, corner site in Rego Park, Queens is set to welcome a 23-story residential tower, making it one of the tallest structures in the neighborhood. YIMBY first reported on the development, which will be located at 98-04 Queens Boulevard, and the construction site seems to span half a block on Queens Boulevard between 65th Road and 66th Avenue.

Plans filed with the city’s Department of Building list SLCE Architects as the architect of record. The 23-story tower will have a total of 116 apartments, which will average nearly 1,200 square feet.

Riding the subway there should be even more fun!

Another too tall tower for LIC

From LIC Post:

Yet another tower could be heading to Long Island City, with reports of a 70-story skyscraper in the works for the Queens Plaza neighborhood.

The massive development has been pegged at 42-50 24th St., according to City Realty, just one block away from the Queensboro Plaza station, meaning the tower would join several 60 to 70 story towers under development in the area.

While there have been no building permits filed for the site yet, records dating back from 2015 show that the property, a taxi dispatch garage spanning 34,000 square feet, was purchased for $69 million by Property Markets Group and Dynamic-Hakim.

Renderings posted by one of the developers show plans for a one-million square foot project, with both commercial and residential components. The site, still under development, will be a “luxury tower”, according to developers.

The property is within an M1-5/R9 zoning district, which allows for high-density, tall towers.

Queens condo boom

From The Real Deal:

For the second time this year, monthly condominium plan filings in Queens have reached levels not seen since 2008. After reaching a nine-year high in January with nine new condo plans submitted to the New York Attorney General’s office, filings reached yet another new high last month with 12 new plans.

An analysis of data from the AG’s real estate finance bureau found that 37 new condo plans have been submitted for Queens from January through May 2018, already surpassing the year-long totals for both 2016 and 2017, which each saw 35 submissions.

May’s batch of condo plans centered around Long Island City, with seven out of 12 plans located in LIC proper, plus two in Hunters Point and one in Astoria. Other neighborhoods have contributed to the early-2018 Queens condo boom as well – from January through May, Flushing saw eight new condo plans filed, Corona had three, and six other filings were scattered across other parts of the borough, from Woodside to the Rockaways.

The largest single Queens condo filing last month was the Alexandra Condominium in Astoria, a Danzig Realty property at 23-43 31st Road with 25 residential units.

88 units of Ridgewood gentrification finally underway

Passed by this recently, and if you recall, a couple of years ago, this was supposed to be a "beer beach" but the community beat that back. The permanent use for the dirty truck lot was yet another luxury condo project. You can read the backstory here. But don't worry, a grand total of 8 "permanently affordable" apartments will be included!

Non-profit is building up Astoria property

From the Queens Gazette:

Plans have been revealed for the development of a 14-story, mixed-use building at 21-12 30th Road in Astoria, on property owned by the Variety Boy’s & Girl’s Club.

The 145-foot-tall building will feature 133,090-square-feet of residential space, 7,780-square-feet of commercial/retail use and 114,430-square-feet of space for a community facility for the Boy’s & Girl’s Club, according to a post on the YIMBY (Yes, In My Back Yard) website.

The development will feature 112 condominium units averaging 1,228-square-feet each.

The development will be split between two towers with the community space occupying floors one through six and residential units occupying floors seven through 14.

Bid riggers busted

From the Daily News:

Two men were charged with a bid-rigging scheme to fix construction prices at a luxe Brooklyn development, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Thursday.

Christopher Chierchio and Anthony Molohnic were arrested and charged with colluding to avoid competition on bids for plumbing, sprinkler, and heating and air conditioning at the new luxury condo building on Baltic Street.

Chierchio — a reputed Genovese mafia soldier — was also charged with tax fraud for evading $94,094 in personal income taxes since April 2016, and could face up to 19 years in prison, according to the attorney general’s office.

Too-tall buildings to be reined in

From Crains:

The de Blasio administration is taking aim at developers’ practice of stacking luxury condos atop multistory hollow spaces to achieve greater heights and more lucrative sales.

Marisa Lago, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, said at a town hall meeting last month that her office is working to change how it treats such large voids, which do not count against a building's density limit. Limiting their size could shrink the height of future towers.

“The notion that there are empty spaces for the sole purpose of making the building taller for the views at the top is not what was intended” by the zoning code, she said. “We are already working under the mayor’s direction with the Department of Buildings to see how we can make sure that the intent of the rules is followed.”

Putting a building on stilts is a common gambit used by developers of very tall luxury condo towers to boost a project’s height yet comply with existing zoning. It works because floors for mechanical equipment are exempt from the limits. By stretching the ceiling of one or more mechanical floors to dizzying heights, developers can essentially create a pedestal upon which to stack the priciest units.

Last survivor standing no more

From Brownstoner:

A curious survivor, a freestanding Second Empire mansion at 489 Washington Avenue in Clinton Hill, will soon vanish, to be replaced by an apartment building. Workers were demolishing the upper floors of the already gutted house before Labor Day weekend, knocking holes in the roof and walls.

The faux-stone sheathing is gone, the stoop demolished, and windows and masonry have been removed from the side facades.

The mansard-roofed house is located just outside the Clinton Hill Historic District, and therefore unprotected. Plans call for conversion of the property into a four-story, 21-unit residential building.

This stretch of Washington Avenue, between Gates and Fulton streets, was once scattered with grand 19th century residences on generous lots. In the 20th century, many of the large homes were transformed into religious, institutional or commercial uses. Today, only a few of the houses remain, interrupted by new condos and 20th century apartments.

SROs: not just for poor people anymore!

There are now "luxury" SROs in this town as reported by the NY Times.

I gotta get outta here.

Lawsuit filed over building switcheroo

From DNA Info:

A neighborhood coalition is suing to stop a “monstrous” 11-story building from rising above a church on its block, saying the city may have improperly approved the developer's plan to nearly double the project's height despite its own concerns.

After the French Evangelical Church on West 16th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, sold its air rights and an adjacent church building to Einhorn Development Group several years ago, the developer announced plans to construct an 11-story condominium above the house of worship.

A neighborhood group called the Save 16th Street Committee has been fighting Einhorn’s plans ever since, said member Paul Groncki, president of the 100 West 16th Street Block Association, who lives in the six-story co-op next to the site.

On Friday, the committee filed a petition in Manhattan Supreme Court asking the city’s Department of Buildings to hand over documents they believe could prove Einhorn’s plans violate city statutes and codes, or show that the department improperly approved the project.

Einhorn had originally filed plans to construct a six-story building at the site, but added five additional stories to its plans by filing a “post-approval amendment” with the DOB, the committee’s petition says. The DOB issued a permit for the project this past October, records show, and construction started soon after.

In June 2015, the committee asked the DOB for copies of architectural plans, application forms and other documents related to the post-approval amendment, but wasn’t able to get them, according to the group’s filing.

The committee and its representatives have since submitted several Freedom of Information Law requests seeking those and other materials — none of which have yielded results, the petition says.

Crappy building materials can't withstand wind

From DNA Info:

Strong winds tore pieces of the facade off a luxury building that opened to renters just three years ago on Fourth Avenue and Sixth Street on Monday afternoon, the FDNY said.

Several FDNY companies responded to a 2:56 p.m. report of "Styrofoam-like debris" raining down from 278 Sixth St., which is right next door to FDNY Engine Company 239's firehouse, an FDNY spokesman said.

In addition, a Fresh Meadows gas station collapsed and trees came down:

NYC real estate prices on downward trend

From Crains:

New York City’s real estate market is showing telltale signs of slowing after an extraordinary three-year run that saw average office rents in Manhattan jump by 20%—from just under $60 per square foot to more than $70—and the median home price in the borough climb to a record-high $1.15 million from $800,000.

The pessimism centers on residential development sites amid concerns the city is overstuffed with high-end apartments.

Among the recent string of sobering reports is news that a 10-story building in Brooklyn Heights—one of three large properties being sold by the Jehovah’s Witnesses there and in Dumbo—will fetch a price 25% below the $300 million or more for which it was initially projected to sell. The parcels are considered prime places for both residential and commercial development.

Brokers said the decrease mirrors a precipitous drop in the value of land sites in the city by 20% to 25% so far in 2016. These brokers declined to speak on the record because several are marketing such properties and don’t want to openly disparage the products they are trying to sell.

Flagship Diner may face wrecking ball

From the Queens Chronicle:

For nearly 51 years, the Flagship Diner at 138-30 Queens Blvd. in Briarwood has served hungry Queens residents.

But according to city records, another half-century of juicy burgers and steaks may not be in the cards.

Department of Finance documents show the land the eatery sits on was sold to White Rock Management Group LLC on July 14 for $6.125 million, as first reported by real estate website New York YIMBY.

And according to Department of Buildings records, demolition permits were filed and approved for the site on July 26 and plans to construct a seven-story, 64-unit residential complex there were filed on Monday.

But in a Tuesday interview, diner co-owner Vincent Pupplo told the Chronicle he expects the Flagship to remain open at least through the remainder of its lease, which expires Oct. 31, 2019.

Not what we crave

This one is just over the county line in Brooklyn, but it's a pretty good example of the nutty overdevelopment going on across the city. Naturally, there is a partial stop work order.

The building here is bringing 80 units of housing where there was a fast food restaurant, which means a huge tax on infrastructure. It sits above a "major road" which is down to one lane in each direction at this particular spot. And it's going to regularly send hundreds of people onto the L train, which will be going down for an extended period of time.

What could possibly go wrong?

What it's really all about

From Gotham Gazette:

It seems the Mayor is intent upon staying on the good side of the real estate industry, and thus far he has succeeded. As has been widely reported, industry players have been his biggest financial backers, and generous to the "Campaign for One New York," the nonprofit fund which supports the Mayor's 'affordable housing' and other initiatives. The Mayor seems to be trying to make his plans as palatable to big real estate as possible, regardless of how it affects the outcomes.

A further example: right now we are pushing the Mayor to rezone a 12-block area of Greenwich Village that allows 300-foot-tall towers, and guarantees they will be 100 percent luxury housing, hotels, or dorms. We want reasonable height limits for new development while keeping the allowable square footage the same, elimination of incentives for dorms and hotels, and incentives (or requirements, if the City agreed) for including affordable housing.

The administration's response: an adamant no. De Blasio wants to keep the existing luxury tower-only zoning. ZQA and MIH as proposed may please the Mayor's real estate backers, but won't accomplish their purported goals of increasing affordability and quality. Community Boards and groups across the city appear to be getting that. It remains to be seen if the City Council and others that will decide these measures' fate will as well.

Tenants not benefiting from 421-a

From Brownstoner:

Despite some of the most extensive rent regulation laws in the nation, a bureaucratic entanglement is leaving New York City tenants at the mercy of developers’ illegal and unpunished abuse of tax breaks, according to a report.

The developers and landlords of several glassy new luxury condo towers have been swindling residents out of thousands of dollars each month by illegally increasing rents beyond regulated caps, found a new investigation by ProPublica and WNYC.

In luxury apartment buildings like Williamsburg’s The Driggs, pictured above, generous 421-a abatements give property owners massive tax cuts in exchange for designating a certain number of those apartments rent-stabilized. The Driggs received a 93 percent property tax reduction this year through the program, from $678,000 to $47,000, according to ProPublica.

The city hands out more than $1 billion in tax breaks every year through 421-a, yet ProPublica found many developers are not carrying through with their part of the deal. The government does little to ensure landlords are not overcharging tenants, the report said.