The lease for the 1 million-square-foot Hunts Point Terminal Produce Cooperative Market expired yesterday, and today the Wall Street Journal brings word that its vendors have reached a tentative deal with the city to stay in the South Bronx for three more years while the two sides hammer out a more long-term arrangement. Per the terms of the deal, the co-op will negotiate exclusively with the city for the next nine months over the construction of a new facility and a long-term lease. [more]

The Hunts Point produce market is closing in on its May 31 lease deadline, but a new long-term agreement with the city is nowhere in sight. According to Crain’s, city officials and the vendors that make up the 1 million-square-foot Hunts Point Terminal Produce Cooperative Market are now scrambling to come up with a temporary lease extension that would keep the market in the Bronx for the next several years and would allow them to continue negotiations over a 30- or 40-year lease that would include a $320 million renovation of the outdated facility. It would also allow the vendors to continue being courted by New Jersey officials, who have been pushing them to relocate to the Garden State. [more]

New Jersey is courting the Hunts Point Produce Cooperative Association, the group that runs the South Bronx-based Hunts Point produce market, to take up residence in the Meadowlands, according to the New York Post. Governor Chris Christie is so intent on winning the wholesale cash cow, which does roughly $2.3 billion in business every year, that he sent his Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, to meet with the leadership there. The marketplace’s lease on 660,000 square feet of space expires this May, and some members of the co-op say they’re being swayed to move toward New Jersey. [more]

The city has formally begun discussions over a new lease with the fruit and vegetable merchants that occupy the massive market at Hunts Point in the South Bronx, and the Wall Street Journal reported that so far, they’re not going well. The current $5 million-per-year lease for the 110-acre, city-owned site that includes the Fulton Fish Market, expires in June. While both sides agree that the facilities need a major overhaul, they’ve been sparring over how much the merchants themselves should contribute to the upgrades — an estimated $320 million project. [more]

The fruit and vegetable merchants that occupy the run-down Terminal Produce Cooperative Market at Hunts Point in the South Bronx are threatening to leave the city-owned facility — the largest of its kind in the world — after a push by a regulator to impose new rules and increase fees, according to Crain’s. The 46 vendors, who together supply 60 percent of the city’s produce, have long endured poor conditions and overcrowding at the 112-acre property, which they say is the reason they’ve lost many of their customers to wholesalers. A $320 million modern market for the site is currently in the planning stages, but rents at the new facility are still up in the air, pending negotiations and also depending on how much funding the city, state and federal governments decide to contribute to the project. Meanwhile, pushed to their limit by the regulator’s more stringent rules, the merchants have tapped Jones Lang LaSalle to help them look into relocating altogether, possibly to New Jersey, when their lease expires in 10 months. [Crain's]

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Widely-known for its troubled past, when the neighborhood was rampant with arson, drugs and prostitution, Hunts Point is a community on the rise — and some of its residents think it’s high time their homes were landmarked. The owners of approximately 40 homes on the 800 block of Manida Street in the South Bronx neighborhood, say that their properties, which were built at the turn of the century and represent a style of Flemmish architecture rarely seen in the city, deserve recognition for their history, restoration and longevity in a community that was shattered in the 1970s. Cybeale Ross, a a homeowner in the neighborhood for more than 50 years, said that she, like other residents on her street, has taken great pains to keep her 2,792-square-foot home well-maintained, preserving the gothic arches, stained-glass skylight and other aesthetic touches on her house. “When the Bronx was burning, people were running like it was the plague,” Ross said. “We never sold our home… I said, ‘No, I live in the Bronx, I work in the Bronx, the Bronx is my home.’” Her decision to stay, however rooted in her emotional connection to the neighborhood, had an undeniable financial windfall: her home, which she bought for $16,500 in 1958, could be worth as much as $370,000 today. Although the residents on the block have made no formal landmark application yet, they said they’re considering seeking historic status.

Top to bottom: the current BankNote building and a rendering of the potential outcome of the redevelopment

Taconic Investment Partners is moving in a new direction with its project at Hunts Point’s landmarked BankNote building. Taconic, along with Denham Wolf Real Estate Services, has made a multi-million dollar commitment to transform one of the South Bronx’s most iconic buildings into an epicenter of higher education, in an underserved community. The century-old structure is one of the largest in the South Bronx and is an enduring landmark in a neighborhood dominated by new structures. It was there that current Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz chose to have his inaugural reception. “It’s a little bit of a departure from what we’ve done,” said Charles Bendit, co-CEO of Taconic. Bendit has teamed up with Paul Wolf, president of Denham Wolf, a non-profit real estate group. Bendit said on top of the $32 million they spent purchasing the BankNote commercial building at 890 Garrison Avenue in 2007, the development team plans to pour another $50 million into the project to transform portions of the building into educational use. [more]

A non-profit group, the Council on the Environment of New York City, has been awarded a $296,000 grant from the State Department of Agriculture and Markets to take over promotion and management at a South Bronx food center. Farmers at the Hunts Point Food Distribution center say that business is rough, three years after relocating from the Bronx Terminal Market near Yankee Stadium. The Food Distribution center, which sits on the south end of the Hunts Point peninsula, has imposing gates that deter many customers from going inside, vendors say. What’s worse, the grim locale, which bears a Riker’s Island view, is difficult to access by foot. Among the proposed changes is a plan to segregate medium-size farmers from larger food producers, to promote smaller local businesses.

From the June issue: Having transformed from blighted neighborhood to artists’ enclave,
Hunts Point in the South Bronx was poised to take the typical
four-decade route to gentrification that culminates in wine bars, Whole
Foods and an Apple store. But these are not typical times, as one
developer there has discovered. Taconic Investment Partners bought the
fortress-like American BankNote Building, a landmarked
400,000-square-foot, three-building commercial complex in Hunts Point,
for $35 million at the end of 2007, “in the good old days,” said
Taconic partner Douglas Winshall. [more]

The recession is hurting some neighborhoods in the city more than
others. In Downtown Brooklyn, about 20 of 100 shops on Flatbush
Avenue are vacant, said Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of the
retail leasing and sales division at Prudential Douglas Elliman. And
retail rents on Fulton Street have fallen by a third from their high of
$150 per square foot in 2007, brokers said. In the Forest Hills
neighborhood of Queens, asking rents for storefronts on Austin Street
have fallen to $70 per square foot, less than half of the peak of $150
per square foot in 2007. In Hunts Point in the Bronx, asking rents for
industrial spaces fell just 10 to 15 percent to around $10 per square
foot.