Full Spectrum of NY and My Image Studios have closed on financing to begin construction of an African and Hispanic arts and culture center on the ground floor of the Kalahari Condominium at 40 West 116th Street, Malcolm X Boulevard and Fifth Avenue, Crain’s reported. BRP Community Development intends to allocate $21 million in New Market Tax Credits to the My Image Studios project, which will be located in the retail space of the Kalahari Condominium, an affordable housing development between Lenox and Fifth avenues that was completed in 2008.

Prudential Insurance Company of America has provided an additional loan at the site. The project had hoped to receive Recovery Zone Facility Bond funding last year, but that deal did not come to fruition. [more]

Jessica Cohen of Prudential Douglas Elliman

From the January issue: When Core’s Kirk Rundhaug started marketing 32 Clinton Street, a four-unit boutique condo in a far-flung corner of the Lower East Side, he was somewhat surprised at who showed up at his open houses. In addition to the young hipsters generally associated with the edgy neighborhood, Rundhaug fielded inquiries from empty nesters from the suburbs of New Jersey and Connecticut. “They were Lower East Side people when they lived in New York,” he said of one 60-something Westchester couple who are eyeing a two-bedroom unit. “They want to come back.” Manhattan’s population of people aged 65 and older is expected to surge nearly 60 percent by 2030 as the baby boom generation ages. And while boomers had largely disappeared from the city’s real estate market in the wake of the financial crisis, brokers say this all-important demographic is now becoming active again. With prices no longer in free fall, many of the city’s boomers are now putting their sprawling apartments and townhouses on the market as they look to downsize to one- and two-bedroom homes. Meanwhile, suburban empty nesters are also reentering the market with an eye toward eventually retiring in the city, exchanging large, labor-intensive houses for apartments rich in services. [more]