Prominent Forest Hills developer Heskel Group has sold a commercial building on Austin Street for $13.35 million, according to public records filed this week. The buyer is a Flushing-based limited liability company called Sawyen.

The property is a 21,000-square-foot building with ground-floor retail space and office space in the basement and second floor at 70-10 Austin Street near 70th Avenue, that has been anchored by a Sprint store for more than 20 years. Sprint recently renewed its lease at about $120 per square foot, according to Heskel Group founder Yeheskel Elias, keeping the property 100 percent occupied. Other tenants include an AT&T store, several medical offices and Heskel Group’s office. [more]

The Rockaway Beach Branch LIRR tracks and the High Line

Queens residents have renewed efforts to turn old Rockaway Beach Branch Long Island Rail Road tracks into an outer borough version of the High Line, the New York Daily News reported.

The tracks, which run above street level for 3.5 miles from Rego Park to Ozone Park, have been out of service for nearly 50 years, and have already become overrun with trees and vegetation.

“It’s green, yet it has economic development opportunities,” said Andrea Crawford, chairwoman of Community Board 9, who met with city officials to discuss preliminary plans for the transformation. [more]

City Council member Domenic Recchia and a rendering of the West Side Tennis ClubCity officials are considering using tax dollars to renovate the rundown Forest Hills tennis center that hosted the U.S. Open from 1923 through 1977, the New York Daily News reported.

City Council Finance Committee Chairman Domenic Recchia, from Brooklyn, backed a plan by the non-profit Stadium Arts Alliance that would use a public-private partnership to transform the crumbling stadium into a major venue that hosts tennis matches, concerts, art exhibits and even ice hockey. [more]

Queens-based landlord Muss Development is searching for a new tenant to fill 200,000 square feet of Class A space at 118-35 Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, the current headquarters of JetBlue Airways, Crain’s reported. The airline will be moving out of the property late this year and relocating to Long Island City.
Muss is asking $35 per square foot for space, though the rent could be subsidized by various incentive programs, including the city’s Relocation and Employee Assistance Program and exemption from the city’s commercial real estate occupancy tax, Crain’s said, bringing it to $20 per square foot.
Jones Lang LaSalle is marketing the space on behalf of Muss. Consolidated Edison, the New York Times, the Daily News and several law firms are also tenants of the 310,000-square-foot building. [Crain's]

One of the allegedly targeted buildings at 99-45 67th Road in Rego Park and DA Richard Brown

(Updated 3:10 p.m., July 13)
A former managing agent for a collection of five Queens apartment
buildings has been charged with embezzling almost $950,000 in
tenant-paid maintenance fees, according to the Queens district
attorney’s office. The defendant, Michael Richter, and his company,
Charter Management Realty, allegedly siphoned off the cash over a
six-year period, concealing his scheme behind a lock- [more]

One of the allegedly targeted buildings at 99-45 67th Road in Rego Park and DA Richard Brown

(Updated 3:10 p.m., July 13) A former managing agent for a collection of five Queens apartment buildings has been charged with embezzling almost $950,000 in tenant-paid maintenance fees, according to the Queens district attorney’s office. The defendant, Michael Richter, and his company, Charter Management Realty, allegedly siphoned off the cash over a six-year period, concealing his scheme behind a lock- [more]

JetBlue announced plans today to keep its headquarters in New York City, while consolidating its Forest Hills office and its Connecticut location into one central office in Long Island City. The move will keep 880 corporate jobs in the city and will bring 70 from Connecticut, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who announced the news today along with Governor David Paterson and JetBlue CEO Dave Barger. The decision comes after a multi-year, nationwide search to determine the best home base for the airline. Barger said that the decision was made for logistical reasons and as a way of maintaining the company’s distinct brand. “The city is an important part of our heritage and culture, our brand and our customer connection, as well as our operation, with our base at JFK’s Terminal 5,” Barger said today. TRD

There is no place like New York City for national and international retailers and a few such food and coffee chains are seizing opportunities to set up shop in the New York metropolitan area.

Texas Buffalo chicken wing franchise Wingstop, which has sold nearly two billion wings, plans to open its first New York restaurant in the spring of 2010, in Astoria or Forest Hills, Queens. The company seeks to open a minimum of 25 locations in the five boroughs as well as restaurants in Fort Lee, Newark, New Brunswick and Trenton, NJ. The 15-year-old company, which has more than 600 restaurants existing or under development in 32 states, has more than 70 restaurants planned for the Northeast. [more]

Bernstein Liebhard, the firm that represented tenant plaintiffs in the recent landmark Peter Cooper Village-Stuyvesant Town lawsuit, is pursuing similar complainants in Queens, the New York Daily News reported. Residents of Forest Hills’ condo building Parker Towers have received mailings from the firm, which is reportedly looking to represent tenants who may have had their rent illegally deregulated. “We believe that your landlord may also be overcharging you,” the mailings say. The firm has also targeted other developments, beyond the 1,327-unit Parker Towers complex, although it is not immediately clear which residential developments those may be.

Queens residents were up in arms last week after an erroneous report suggested that the Parkway Hospital, a shuttered health facility at 113th Street and 71st Avenue in Forest Hills, would be reopening as a detention center. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who represents Brooklyn and Queens, along with State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky and Assembly members Andrew Hevesi and Karen Koslowitz, held a press conference outside the hospital yesterday in order to assuage fears that the facility, which closed last year after a “state recommendation,” according to the New York Times, would be converted into a prison. The kerfluffle erupted after both the Queens Courier and the Queens Chronicle quoted an Oct. 15 deposition, in which the building’s court-appointed mortgage receiver said: “aside from a health care facility, there would be few viable uses for the building such as a low-security correctional or detention center or a halfway house.” Last week a federal judge dismissed an early-stage injunction to reopen the facility.