Long Island City’s business improvement district is set to explode its reach this year, doubling both its geographic size to about 10 square miles and its budget to more than $2 million in collected assessments a year.
Paying what is essentially an extra layer of taxes may daunt some property owners. And indeed, some communities have rejected BIDs in part for this reason. Jackson Heights, for example, in 2017 rejected a proposed BID over fears of gentrification.
But in Long Island City, where the bigger BID seems to have the blessing of real estate interests, landlords appear to be betting the added costs will lead to cleaner streets and better marketing.
In a way, improvements have already happened, especially east of Sunnyside rail yards in the expanded BID zone. Consider Thomson Avenue, which once produced weapons systems, paper bags and gum but now embraces education and government, two sectors that have shown durability in the currently weak office market.
“The street is a great story of reinvention,” said Randall Briskin, a vice president at the Feil Organization; its building at 30-20 Thomson Ave. enjoyed a significant 210,000-square-foot, multi-floor deal by LaGuardia Community College in January.
Not all is rosy, of course. Hybrid work trends have helped empty out stylish conversion projects, just like what has happened at offices in other business districts. And those vacancies come despite the fact that the area’s asking rents of $40 per square foot are less than half of what more established business districts seek. Less-redeveloped 47th Avenue is also not as in demand, brokers say, despite being just one block away.
But the enclave within an enclave can still seem leaps and bounds better off than decades ago.
Long Island City’s enlarged BID, which is part of the Long Island City Partnership economic development corporation, was proposed in 2021 and is expected to activate in July.
Overall, the city has a total of 76 BIDs, which were conceived at a time when municipal services were strained and neighborhoods struggling. The first, covering Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall, launched in 1976; Little Italy is now mulling what could be the 77th. Some of the larger, wealthier and more powerful versions maintain the Grand Central area, Times Square and Union Square.
31-10 Thomson Ave.
To understand how sharply the area has pivoted from its industrial days, it may help to consider the evolution of LaGuardia Community College. In 1971, the school opened its first location at this site, which churned out trucks in the 1920s before becoming a factory where military contractor Sperry Rand made navigation systems in World War II. In the 1980s, LaGuardia expanded into next-door 31-28 Thomson, a former paper bag factory, before reinventing the block of 31st Place between the two parcels into a lawn- and sculpture-dotted courtyard. The school’s high-profile presence also includes 29-10 Thomson, a biscuit factory turned telephone plant turned Gimbels warehouse that LaGuardia purchased for $52 million in 1998. Classrooms line the 9-story, 64,000-square-foot building today. One of the 25 schools that are part of the City University of New York system, LaGuardia enrolls 18,000 students, 95% of whom receive financial aid. Full-time tuition for city residents is $4,800 per year.
30-20 Thomson Ave.
The Feil Organization bought this 7-story, 530,000-square-foot former battery factory from Oaktree Capital Management in 2000 for $104 million in a package deal with next-door 30-30 Thomson, records show. Early on, Feil stocked it with students. The DeVry Institute of Technology, part of a for-profit college chain, arrived in 1998, and by the time the school shuttered the location in 2014, DeVry controlled a 210,000-square-foot berth. LaGuardia, a major real estate force, took over DeVry’s lease for new classrooms and in January renewed the lease for another 10 years. The balance of the space in the building, which is 100% occupied, is rented by three high schools, including an outpost of the Bard Early College program, an affiliate of upstate Bard College that offers two years of college prep for 9th and 10th graders. Adorned with a tower and colorful tiles, No. 30-30 was once a Chiclets gum factory until 1981, when it closed and laid off 1,600 workers. The sweet spot for Feil at the address has been city agencies, which have helped prop up the leasing market at a time of persistently high vacancy rates. But Feil was not able to entice the city’s School Construction Authority to renew, and the agency will soon decamp for Savanna-owned 1 Court Square before its lease ends, leaving a 300,000-square-foot hole at the 650,000-square-foot, atrium-lined prewar site in its wake. The New York Police Department and the Department of Transportation are also tenants.
31-00 47th Ave.
Built in the 1920s as a warehouse for the Gimbels department store chain, this five-story, 573,000-square-foot full-block site transitioned to office uses in the 1980s; a building owner in that era was developer Larry Silverstein. Back then, Brazilian designer Carlos Falchi, famous for handbags made of alligator skins, apparently had so much sway upon being recruited to the site that he convinced the owners to slap his name on the facade. Falchi died in 2015, but No. 31-00 is still called the Falchi Building today. In 2012, the Chetrit Group sold the property for $81 million to the developer Jamestown, which hoped to recreate its success with Manhattan’s Chelsea market by installing a food court and tech-minded businesses. Indeed, the Doughnut Plant chain opened a production space and cafe, while Uber and Lyft became upstairs tenants. The formula at least helped Jamestown unload the site just four years later to Savanna for a hefty $257 million. A $35 million renovation followed, including a lobby revamp. But the site is now pocked with 14 office and retail vacancies, according to Savanna, with spaces ranging from 2,000 to 62,000 square feet. CBRE’s Mitchell Arkin, who handles leasing, had no comment.
30-30 47th Ave.
Another full-block prewar site with connections to a department store — in this case, Macy’s, which reportedly stored furniture and furs there through the 1970s — this 10-story, 1.2 million-square-foot hulk is also enjoying a second act as an office. Called the Factory, No. 30-30 has tenants like organ donation advocate LiveOnNY and a pair of apparel companies, J.Crew and Ralph Lauren. The latter has a photo studio there, which Ralph Lauren expanded from 19,000 square feet in 2016 to 55,000 square feet in 2023. Since 2015, Macy’s has also had a photo studio there for catalog shoots. In 2006, a group led by Mark Karasick’s 601W Companies bought the building from Helmsley-Spear for $35.1 million. But Karasick later declared bankruptcy and surrendered the deed to current landlords Atlas Capital Group, Square Mile Capital and Invesco Real Estate. (Atlas helped create the bigger BID.) No. 30-30 currently has 15 availabilities, the largest measuring 78,000 square feet, according to a brochure. The building offers a handful of casual restaurants and shuttles to Court Square and other subway stops.
31-36 Queens Blvd.
This oddly-shaped parcel, which sits at the spot where Queens Boulevard begins its long and loud march across the borough, was snapped up in 2006 for $1.8 million by prolific hotel developer Sam Chang. He built a six-story, 23,000-square-foot structure that operated as a Days Inn at a time when Long Island City vied to become a lower-cost alternative to Manhattan for tourists. But the site is currently serving as a homeless shelter, according to a woman who answered the phone there in March. It’s not the first Long Island City hotel to welcome the homeless in recent years, as city contracts have provided steady streams of income amid reduced tourism. As remote work has hollowed out boardrooms, some office buildings have also switched gears, like nearby 47-11 Austell Place, a warehouse-turned-office building owned by Cannon Hill Capital Partners that became a migrant shelter in the fall. (City officials had to create a new emergency exit in the boiler room first.) Chang, meanwhile, appears to be exiting the lodging business. Among his flurry of deal-making was the December sale of a trio of hotels in Manhattan for more than $200 million.
30-35 Thomson Ave.
Overlooking Sunnyside Yards and its rumbling Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road trains is this 2-story, postwar building, which has been home to a Janovic paint and wallpaper store for decades. But in April, the store will relocate a few blocks away to 32-02 Queens Blvd. Leslie Tabet owns No. 30-35, whose zoning would likely support a much larger structure. At the same time, the next-door triangular lot that contained a gas station in the 1970s and is currently owned by Accel Motors is also vacant after a black-car service closed. Together they could represent a 56,300-square-foot parcel in a neighborhood that has been awash in development.
45-55 Van Dam St.
A trace of the neighborhood’s bluish-collar past endures at this blip of a corner site, home to the Van Dam Diner, where the Malonoukos family has been serving omelettes and waffles to diners on swiveling stools since 1971. It opens at 6 a.m. Arnold Levien, who developed industrial buildings in the area, completed its 2,700-square-foot building in 1965, according to the city register. Levien’s children sold the site for $975,000 in 2010 to a limited liability company, Van Dam Realty, linked to the Malonoukos family, which means a tenant is now in control of their business’s address. City officials put the market value of the low-slung site at $650,000, which means it could likely sell for twice that, though a skinny 100-by-30-foot lot might present jigsaw-like challenges.
C. J. Hughes , 2024-03-05 11:03:04
Source link
