Donnie's used redbird car lot

Check it out, Boro Prez Donnie Richards is selling the old redbird next to Queens Borough Hall. 

Jeebus is the city that broke?

 

City sold street to unsuspecting woman

From CBS 2:

The map showed a long, skinny piece of property. Sight unseen, Parnell bid $30,000 and won. She figured she’d sell pieces to adjoining homeowners, Aiello reported.

Months later, she learned what the city sold as a “vacant lot” was actually William Court, a 280 foot long street – technically a “privately owned access way.”

Parnell told Aiello she’s willing to sell it back to the city. She said in 2010 the city offered to refund her $30,000, but she declined, because on her tax bill the city lists the property as “vacant land, zoned residential,” valued at $257,000.

“I would like the City of New York to pay me back the value of what the land is worth,” she said. “Not what they sold me for.”

On Friday, a city spokesperson told CBS2 “the city has made numerous attempts to offer her a full refund… she refused.” Even though the city values the property at $257,000, paying Parnell that much “was not an appropriate use of taxpayer money.”

Fresh Meadows eyesore has new owner

From the Times Ledger:

An abandoned Fresh Meadows home that drew complaints from neighbors for years has finally been sold at acution for $710,000, according to the Public Adminstrator of Queens County.

According to state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside), the 50-19 175th Place property was sold at the end of February. Avella has been at the frontline of a campaign to get the home sold and cleaned up for two years after neighbors asked for his help.

Avella worked with various city agencies to get the property cleaned and late last year the public administrator was able to have the property auctioned. The house was auctioned in December and sold in late February.

“I am extremely happy to be able to tell the community today that as a result of the relentless efforts of my office and the incredible help of the public administrator that this property is no longer going to haunt the community,” Avella said. “Being able to get this house sold will certainly go a long way in returning a better quality of life to the neighbors who had to live with this hazardous property on their block. I hope that this sale can also set a precedent for the control and auction of the many other zombie properties that haunt communities across the city.”

Whitestone parcel eyed as parkland

From the Queens Chronicle:

A northeast Queens lawmaker wants new greenery to be planted at an abandoned lot in Whitestone.

State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) made the pitch in a letter to the Parks Department and Tower Capital Management — a company that hired an attorney to force a sale of the property after the city hired it to manage the lot’s lien and collect taxes owed on the site. He requested that the 7,1000-square-foot derelict site at 24-19 Francis Lewis Blvd. be transformed under the city’s Greenstreets initiative, which would result in it being changed into a green space with shrubs, trees and ground cover made for capturing stormwater.

The site, which is owned by the New York City Tax Lien Trust, did not sell at an auction in September, though it will be available again on Jan. 20.

Abandoned Fresh Meadows property to be sold at auction

From the Queens Chronicle:

An abandoned Fresh Meadows home will finally go up on the auction block after laying untouched for more than 10 years, state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) announced in a statement last Friday.

“I am extremely happy to be able to tell the community today that as a result of the relentless efforts of my office and the incredible help of the public administrator this property is no longer going to haunt the community,” the senator said.

The house, located at 50-19 175 Place, will be auctioned by the Public Administrator on Dec. 7 starting at 11:00 a.m. at the Surrogates Court, located at 88-11 Sutphin Blvd., Courtroom 62.

If anyone is interested in buying the property, you can go to queenscountypa.com or call (718) 526-5037.

Sandy-damaged properties up for auction

From AM-NY:

More than three years ago, superstorm Sandy devastated homes across the Northeast, many of them right here in New York City.

In the aftermath of Sandy, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Office of Storm Recovery was tasked with purchasing damaged homes in an effort to help rebuilding efforts within some of the city’s hard-hit communities.

Now, New York state has teamed up with Paramount Realty USA to auction dozens of homes in Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn for less than their pre-storm values.

With bids starting as low as $14,650, these Sandy-damaged homes might just be your opportunity to plant new roots in New York City at a much lower cost.

The auction will take place at the Hilton Garden Inn, located at 1100 South Ave., in Staten Island on Tuesday, May 10, 2016.

For complete information on these homes and for due diligence information, head to prusa.com.

To register for the auction, you can submit a completed bidder’s affidavit to info@prusa.com or fax it to (516) 558-1148.

Parkway sold for $1M at auction

From the Times Ledger:

A Rego Park-based realty company seized the shuttered Parkway Hospital property with a $1 million bid during a foreclosure auction in Queens Civil Court last Friday.

The same firm, Auberge Grand Central Limited Liability Company, purchased the defunct hospital’s mortgages for $6.5 million in 2012 and then had a firm assess the 56,400-square-foot lot’s market rate at $6 million, court documents show.

After emerging from a brief bidding war, a representative from Auberge Grand Central said he was contractually prevented from discussing plans for the property.

The firm previously said it wanted to transform the six-story building into condominiums through a partnership with Jasper Venture Group LLC.

Parkway back on the block

From the Times Ledger:

The former Parkway Hospital property is heading back to the auction block.

The mortgage on the 56,400-square-foot lot in Forest Hills is scheduled to be offered up to bidders at a July 11 foreclosure auction in Queens Supreme Civil Court, according to the real estate website propertyshark.com.

The company that entered the winning $22.2 million bid during a January auction struggled to come up with the financing for months. As a result, the closing date for the 70-35 113th St. lot was rescheduled several times.

The group behind the bid, 70-35 113th St. Limited Liability Co., could not be reached for comment. Its officers have not been identified.

The company that holds the mortgage on the shuttered hospital, Auberge Grand Central LLC, had discussed transforming it into condominiums via a partnership with the Manhattan-based real estate firm Jasper Venture Group LLC.

It was unclear whether the partnership intends to bid at the upcoming auction.

Jasper Venture Group referred requests for comment to Auberge Grand Central, which did not respond to inquiries before deadline.

The court-appointed foreclosure referee Joseph Risi previously said Auberge Grand Central would need to go back to court and get a stay before formally pursuing development plans.

Risi did not respond to requests for comment.

So much for the condos.

Parkway Hospital for sale

From The Real Deal:

A Queens building which housed the defunct Parkway Hospital is set to hit the foreclosure auction block next month with an outstanding lien of $14.86 million, according to data from PropertyShark.

The 70,000-square-foot property, at 70-35 113th Street in Forest Hills, was home to the city’s only privately owned hospital until 2008, when the New York State Commission of Healthcare Facilities mandated its closure. The building has been vacant since.

The property, which sits on a 56,000-square-foot lot, has limited possibilities for adaptive reuse, it was previously reported. The court-appointed receiver of the mortgage speculated in 2009 that the property might be turned into a detention center or correctional facility, sparking concerns among local residents. But no official plans were ever filed. The building could also be reborn as a medical facility.

The auction is slated to take place June 28 at the Queens Supreme Court building at 88-11 Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica.

Purves Street lot for sale (hooray?)

From The Real Deal:

A development site in the Court Square area of Long Island City is slated to hit the foreclosure auction block May 17 with an outstanding lien of $38.54 million.

The residential development site, at 44-30 Purves Street, was formerly controlled by developer and landlord Baruch Singer and investor David Weiss, who financed a residential project at the site in 2006 with a $13 million mortgage-backed loan from G3-Purves Street LLC, an entity which appears to be linked to Goldman Sachs.

The lender filed to foreclose on the property last year after Singer and Weiss reportedly broke the terms of their non-recourse loan agreement with G3 by failing to pay $90,000 they owed in real estate taxes and several other liens against the property.

Baruch and Weiss acquired the property for $9 million in 2006, public records show. The duo also appears to have purchased an adjacent site for $5 million; that site is subject to the same foreclosure action. They listed the property for sale in 2007 with a broker team from Pinnacle Realty but failed to find a buyer before losing control of the site.

You may recall Purves Street from previous posts with assistance from Miss Heather.

Expensive trains scrapped

From the Daily News:

The state announced that it has sold four sets of rusting trains to scrap dealers — an embarrassing end for a once-grand plan to create high-speed rail service between Manhattan and Albany.

The sale of the trains and spare parts netted a mere $420,000, a far cry from the tens of millions of dollars taxpayers sank into the doomed project.

The trains were among seven retired Turboliners former Gov. George Pataki’s administration acquired from Amtrak in 1998.

Each of the trains consisted of two engines and three passenger cars — and were supposed to be refurbished for high-speed use.

But after spending $70 million on the project, the state could only get three of the seven to run — and then only sporadically.

They were plagued with problems, from fires to poor air conditioning.
By 2002 the project was halted and Amtrak towed the three barely working trains to a rail yard in Delaware.

The remaining four have been rusting away in a rail yard outside of Schenectady, costing taxpayers $150,000 a year just in storage costs.

In June, a frustrated Gov. Cuomo announced the state would finally rid itself of the trains, even auctioning them off for scrap if necessary.

And that’s exactly what happened.

City misrepresenting property in order to sell it

From the Times Ledger:

In a city auction nine years ago, a man put up hundreds of thousands of dollars for what he thought was waterfront property, but it turned out to be a parcel of land in the middle of a College Point boat yard and now the Department of Citywide Administrative Services is attempting to pawn off the parcel once again.

At the time, the 3,850-square-foot, irregularly shaped lot was completely surrounded by a gravel area that the College Point Yacht Club used to store boats, much to the bidder’s surprise.

In a brochure the city is distributing, a map of the lot shows it is bordered on one side by a road — a road that does not yet exist.

The city wants to extend Powell’s Cove Boulevard right through the yacht club’s borders on land the club rents from the department. The road would pass right by the property.

McCrossen said the club owns land on the other side of the proposed road that it wants to give to the city in exchange for the irregularly shaped lot. A trade would streamline its property without sticking the club with a useless triangle-shaped strip of grass across from the proposed thoroughfare.

The club turned to City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone), who sent a letter requesting the department look into the deal, but it has not received a response.

Otherwise, the lot, which is zoned for manufacturing use, will hit the auction block at what McCrossen called the absurd minimum bid of $114,000.

The department seems to be repeating some of the same procedures that led to the last misrepresentation of the property.

A picture in the brochure is a photo of the club. In it, McCrossen said there is a blue truck the club sold about nine years ago, showing that the city is again using outdated information to pitch the oddly shaped property.

Bronx estate to be developed

From the Wall Street Journal:

Back in 1980, a plan to develop a wooded estate property in the Bronx seemed like a brilliant compromise for both environmentalists trying to preserve a natural area and real-estate interests looking to put up houses there.

A 10.4-acre Delafield Estates in Riverdale that once belonged to Edward C. Delafield, an early president of the Bank of America, was to be the site of a gated community of 33 compact houses, clustered together in small groups, while the rest of the property would be turned into a shared woodland. The Georgian-style Delafield Mansion would become a home for three families.

But more than 30 years later, only nine of the clustered houses are occupied. The 19th-century mansion is gone, destroyed by fire, and the woodland is pockmarked with old foundations overgrown with small trees and weeds. A pond at the property entrance is mostly swamp. Three teams of developers have tried and failed to finish the project.

Now Delafield Estates is getting a fourth chance. A bankruptcy trustee is scheduled to auction off two partly finished houses on Dec. 1. The trustee is working on plans to auction off the remaining 22 development lots early next year.

Steinway contents for sale

The contents of the Steinway Mansion are now on sale, including the infamous voodoo mask found in the attic. Visit Capo Auctions for more details and to bid.

Steinway Mansion artifacts to be auctioned off

From the Daily News:

The contents of the Steinway Mansion in Astoria are going to be auctioned off later this month through a series of sales as the Halberian family prepares to sell the property, the Daily News has learned.

The first round of auctions, which will contain a majority of the assets, will be at the Capo Auction House in Long Island City on March 26.

"We're trying to honor his legacy. We're not trying to liquidate it," said Michelle Kazarian, whose father, Michael Halberian, lived in the mansion his whole life until he died at age 83 in December.

A majority of the items from the mansion are Halberian's. However, there are a few Steinway family heirlooms for sale, including a marble bust of Johanna Steinway from the 19th century.

The Steinway Mansion was originally a summer home for the Steinway family of piano manufacturers, but has been owned by the Halberian family since 1924.

Officials with the piano maker said Halberian made the mansion accessible to the public and surprised visitors with his "vast collection of museum-quality" items.

"Mr. Halberian had a unique appreciation for history and items of historical value," said Anthony Gilroy, a spokesman for Steinway & Sons, still based in Astoria.

Kazarian said she selected the Capo Auction House because of owner Michael Capo's ability to keep the hundreds of items together and his knowledge of antiques.

They also found an ancient voodoo mask in the attic.

If you were able to have toured the Steinway Mansion, consider yourself lucky because most, if not all, of the pieces within will likely never seen by the public again. And that's just sad.

If you can't sell it, auction it off

From the Daily News:

A slick new Long Island City high-rise has come up with a alternative way to sell its empty condominiums: auction them off.

The East River Tower is putting 15 to 25 of its roughly 75 luxury units on the auction block next month. And some housing experts predict that could be a boon for the building - and the neighborhood.

Sheldon Good & Co. announced last week that it will auction off the condos on Feb. 13 at The Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. Bids start at $195,000, representing a 67% price cut.

"In the real estate world, auctions have traditionally been seen as the means of last resort to sell distressed properties," said Mark Troen, chief operating officer of Sheldon Good. But "they're really now becoming an accepted and mainstream way to sell properties that have not conventionally sold."

Troen said he believes buyers shied away from the 18-story tower at 11-24 31st Ave. because of its hefty prerecession prices. The building's location near the edge of Astoria also probably played a part in its lackluster sales, he said.

Still no buyer for Atlas Park

From Retail Traffic via The Real Deal:

Societe Generale and Calyon are planning to put the Shops at Atlas Park on the auction block within the next two months. Last week, it looked like the center might secure a buyer in McCaffery Interests Inc., a Chicago-based firm that specializes in underperforming urban real estate. By Friday, however, McCaffery opted not to pursue the acquisition.

"We thought there was an ability to fix it,” says Daniel McCaffery, president of McCaffery Interests. “But negotiations broke down."

McCaffery would not reveal the reason for the breakdown in negotiations, but claimed it was not over price considerations. He said there appeared to be one other bidder for the asset, a fact that Paul Millus, the receiver, confirmed. Millus said the other bidder was currently negotiating with the lenders and waiting for the foreclosure sale to be completed.

In Davidowitz’s view, a prospective buyer of the Shops at Atlas Park could reasonably expect a 40% to 50% discount on the bank’s original investment. The surest way to make the center successful would be to overhaul the mix of tenants at the property, bringing in value-oriented big-box tenants such as WalMart, T.J. Maxx and discount shoe retailer DSW, as well as supermarket chain Aldi, he says.

These are the kinds of chains that fit well with the demographics in Glendale and that would also be a better draw for residents outside the immediate trade area, emphasizes Davidowitz.

October auction for Atlas Park

From the Times Ledger:

A lawyer for a Manhattan firm announced that the Shops at Atlas Park will be sold at a foreclosure auction sometime in early October. But despite the problems renting out the stores in the Glendale shopping center, Paul Millus of Snitow, Kanfer, Holtzer & Millus LLP said he is confident the property can have a successful rebirth.

“There is an expressed interest from various companies in the premises,” Millus said.

Millus is the court-appointed receiver for Atlas Park, which is a 21-acre mall at 80-00 Cooper Ave. in Glendale, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors in January 2009. He was appointed receiver in March 2009. As the receiver, he is overseeing the mall’s operations.

“I essentially sit in as the CEO,” he said.

This means that even though Atlas Park is in foreclosure, the stores will remain open during the proceedings. More than half the retail spots in the park are open, Millus said.

Atlas Park’s website listed more than 50 stores as open or opening.

Millus said Atlas Park has debt of about $125 million. He could not estimate what price the property would bring at auction and would not say which potential bidders were interested, but he contended the location made it an ideal purchase.

“What we have here is a new beginning for Atlas Park that will take place in short order,” he said.

Future of Atlas Park up in the air

From the Daily News:

The Shops at Atlas Park will unleash a new weapon during its summertime battle for survival.

The foreclosed Glendale mall - which is expected to be sold at auction next month - has hired a prominent agent to lure tenants ahead of a crucial shopping season for the open-air complex.

The entry of CB Richard Ellis, one of the world's largest commercial real estate firms, ends a 14-month management by Michael Mattone of the Mattone Group, whose contract recently expired.

Next in the Atlas Park saga: a highly anticipated sale - as early as June - that could determine the long-term success of the Cooper Ave. center.

It's also possible that a pact might be struck before the auction date, as teams and players often do prior to drafts in sports leagues.

"It's kind of like the draft," said Paul Millus, the court-appointed lawyer who controls the mall during foreclosure. "Sometimes you have a deal before you start."

Millus said several people have "expressed some measure of interest" in purchasing the mall, though he would not name them.

Community leaders have long figured the mall's founders, the family of former Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger, would bid on the mall they conceived.

A group of Israeli investors is also in the running, with hopes to shape the mall in the mold of the Tanger Outlets on Long Island, said City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Middle Village).

Crowley herself wants the City University of New York to offer classes at Atlas Park - a spot she thinks would be convenient for students in southern and western Queens.

Crowley said she will raise the possibility with university bigwigs after the city passes its budget this summer. CUNY officials did not return calls seeking comment.

Whether CUNY would even be welcome at Atlas Park depends on the philosophy of the mall's next owner.

You can't make this stuff up...

From Ebay:

This Is an Absolutely Beautiful Authentic Autographed Joe's O's Cereal Box Signed by None Other than Trader Joe's Crew Member Out of Queens, NY...Joe O. Yes, *Joe O. Himself*, the Man Behind the Demo Station Out in Flushing. That's Right—TJ's employee Joe O. Signed and Certified a Box of Trader Joe's Brand Toasted Whole Grain Oats That Shares His Namesake. Look Closely at That Authentic Name Tag! What a Great Collectible!!!

This Is a Gorgeous Piece of Memorabilia That Would Look Truly Spectacular in Your Home, Business, or Office. Impress Your Friends, Family and Business Associates with This Stunning Piece of Memorabilia Added to Your Collection.

Box is Unopened in Mint Condition with Entire 15 oz. of Cereal Still Inside. Expiration Date 03/24/11