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From the
Wall Street Journal:
The LeFrak family, which built thousands of apartment units in Queens in the 1960s and 1970s, will create its first new residential project in the borough in 38 years.
The Manhattan real-estate family's third-generation head, Richard LeFrak, plans to convert a 13-story office tower in Rego Park built by his father 50 years ago into 108 luxury rentals. The project is tiny compared with the family's megadevelopments in the region, such as LeFrak City in Queens and the Newport complex in Jersey City.
The Queens project reflects a new era of real-estate investment in that borough. When the family built LeFrak City, it was manufacturing low- and middle-income housing for teachers, firefighters and the area's working class. Now, the LeFraks are planning to build high-end rentals to cater to Queens' booming young and immigrant population.
From
the Real Deal:
New York hasn't heard much from the LeFraks -- one of the city's true real estate dynasties -- in a while, and there's a reason.
Unlike a lot of developers now hawking $1 million apartments or struggling to finance half-completed projects, the LeFraks got out of the condo business just in time, instead focusing on rentals and buying up commercial properties in Los Angeles, Richard LeFrak, chairman and chief executive of the LeFrak Organization, told The Real Deal in a discussion about the market, for a cover story in the February issue.
The LeFraks, who operate a family business stretching back five generations, will soon celebrate the grand opening of the new Westin Jersey City in their Newport development, which has some 880 condos and 3,480 rental apartments, on the waterfront in Jersey City. A new rental tower, the Aquablu, is slated for occupancy this spring. Their most recent condo project, the sold-out Shore Condominium Residences at Newport, went on the market in February 2008, months before New York began feeling the effects of the nationwide housing downturn.
But once the Aquablu is completed, LeFrak will have no new construction projects underway in the New York City area.
From the Wall Street Journal:
