From left: Michael Dana, president of Onex, the Sky View Center and a Coco location

Taiwanese tea brand Coco Fresh Tea & Juice opened a new 600-square-foot tea shop at Sky View Center, Flushing’s new 800,000-square-foot shopping mall that opened its doors last year, Onex Real Estate Partners, the developer of the mall, announced today. The shop is the company’s fourth location in New York City and its second in Flushing; it has a sister location on Flushing’s Main Street.

Ricky Wong, an agent at Super Connection, represented Coco in the deal. Onex declined to comment on the asking rents.

Coco Fresh Tea & Juice opened last Thursday near the entrance of Sky View Center at the intersection of College Point Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue. – Katherine Clarke and Lauren Elkies [more]

DelShah Capital, led by investor Michael Shah, has officially re-launched the Sunrise Terrace Condominiums in Flushing, Queens, after acquiring the unsold shares at the stalled complex at a foreclosure auction in July.

DelShah, after acquiring the project’s original $9.6 million senior mortgage from ChinaTrust in November 2009, spent nearly two years working to take over the deal after negotiating a complex series of legal hurdles and direct negotiations with several creditors involved in the project.

Delshah acquired the property’s $6.9 million loan balance for $3.7 million in a foreclosure auction, after a judgment was issued against the previous owners, Paramount Management, in April.

Sunrise Terrace has operated in a tough submarket in Flushing, competing against larger rivals like SkyView Parc and other new condominiums. [more]

Several neighborhoods are changing significantly along ethnic and racial lines, the 2010 census reveals, according to news reports. In Bedford Stuyvesant, for example, the population is only 60 percent black, the New York Times reported, down from 75 percent. And in the older Bedford section, blacks have become a minority for the first time in 50 years.

John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, attributes the change in the neighborhood to the fall in the crime rate and improvement of subway conditions. [more]

Having just received the final approval from the Board of Standards and Appeals, developer Patrick Thompson is moving ahead with plans to turn the landmarked RKO Keith’s Theater in downtown Flushing, Queens into a 17-story, 357-unit residential rental complex, according to Crain’s.
“I am very delighted and look forward to starting construction,” Thompson said.
At the close of last year, Thompson submitted his plans to the board, which included a modification of plans that had been submitted by its previous owner. The new proposal included increasing the number of units from 200, increasing parking spaces inside the building to 385 from 229 and increasing the retail square footage to 17,000 from 11,000, according to Crain’s. [more]

A settlement will give buyers who backed out of contracts on $50 million worth of luxury apartments in Flushing’s $1 billion Sky View Parc complex a 75 percent refund on their $5 million down payments, the New York Post reported. The arrangement will recoup $3.69 million plus interest for 118 buyers. Adam Leitman Bailey, the lawyer who represented the buyers, called the decision “the largest [Interstate Land Sales Act] settlement on record in New York.”

The buyers filed suit last year, making use of a 1968 federal law known as the Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act, which requires condo sponsors to register their project with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and provide full disclosure to protect buyers from corruption. [more]

Flushing’s new 800,000-square-foot shopping mall has opened its doors, the Wall Street Journal reported, with several big box retailers already lined up. BJ’s Wholesale Club, Best Buy and Bob’s Discount Furniture
are among the Sky View Center’s tenants that have already opened. The
development, which will be fully completed in 2011, is currently 75
percent leased, with additional retailers like Target, Marshall’s and
Old Navy expected to open their doors in the fall. Michael Dana,
president of Onex Real Estate Partners, the project’s developer, said
that he believes the mall’s location will make it a success. “There is
no shortage of patrons to Flushing, but it is dramatically underserved
from a retail and residential perspective,” Dana said. [WSJ]

[more]

Queens property owners are battling Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to redevelop Willets Point, a 62-acre site near Citi Field, and are accusing Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of prolonging a yearlong investigation into whether a city-funded corporation broke state law by lobbying for the plan, the Wall Street Journal reported. The controversy surrounding the Flushing Willets Point Corona Local Development Corp. has exposed friction between aides to Bloomberg and Cuomo over how quickly the city handed over documents to state investigators. According to a June 17 letter reviewed by the Journal,
Willets Point property owners demanded that Cuomo respond to their allegation that the corporation, led by former Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, conducted an extensive lobbying effort in violation of state law. Shulman denied any wrongdoing. [WSJ]

[more]

Queens property owners are battling Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to redevelop Willets Point, a 62-acre site near Citi Field, and are accusing Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of prolonging a yearlong investigation into whether a city-funded corporation broke state law by lobbying for the plan, the Wall Street Journal reported. The controversy surrounding the Flushing Willets Point Corona Local Development Corp. has exposed friction between aides to Bloomberg and Cuomo over how quickly the city handed over documents to state investigators. According to a June 17 letter reviewed by the Journal,
Willets Point property owners demanded that Cuomo respond to their allegation that the corporation, led by former Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, conducted an extensive lobbying effort in violation of state law. Shulman denied any wrongdoing. [WSJ]

[more]

The chairperson of the Flushing, Queens Business Improvement District has quit his post, allegedly due to his opposition of the Flushing Commons development, a five-acre multi-use project, according to the New York Daily News. Jim Gerson announced his resignation shortly after the BID board voted down a planned study of how the development would affect local businesses. Although the city had allocated around $2 million for a business assistance program, Gerson has contended that the economic impact study was needed to determine what kind of assistance local businesses would need to weather the sprawling development‘s construction. Gerson, who has been in his post since 2003, has been a vehement opponent of Flushing Commons, contending that it would “destroy the community.” [NYDN]

[more]

The empty Caldor site at 136-20 Roosevelt Avenue in Queens and Sam Chang, head of McSam Hotels (building photo source: PropertyShark)

After sitting empty for over a decade, the one-time home of a Caldor department store in Flushing will see new life, according to the New York Daily News. A team of developers, including McSam Hotels, is planning a three-story shopping mall, which will include a restaurant, supermarket and 350-space subterranean parking garage, for the site at 136-20 Roosevelt Avenue. [more]