From left: L&M CEO Ron Moelis and the Pearson Street development site
A 15,000-square-foot development site at 45-46 Pearson Street in Long Island City, once the prospective home of a 20-story Robert Scarano-designed condominium, is set to hit the foreclosure auction block, according to data from PropertyShark.com. [more]
From left: interior and exterior of La Celia
The sales office at La Celia, a new 123-unit middle-income cooperative development located at 64 East 111th Street is officially open, a statement from developer L+M Development Partners today said. The income-restricted building, developed as part of a joint venture between L+M and the Urban Investment Group at Goldman Sachs offers homes starting as low as $140,000, and ranging to $373,000. [more]
From left: 5th on the Park and a rendering of 5 West 127th Street
Harlem real estate fell further than the rest of Manhattan during the bust, but with a recovery taking hold it’s now flying higher. Citing Streeteasy.com data, the New York Times reported that the median home price in Central Harlem rose 18 percent between 2010 and 2011, while the median price in East Harlem rose nearly 5 percent, compared to an island-wide increase of just 1 percent. [more]
From the November issue: In 1998, L+M Development Partners started its first affordable housing project on West 148th Street, between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass boulevards. At the time, the vacant block was inhabited solely by boarded-up, graffiti-scrawled buildings, abandoned by their owners in the ’60s and ’70s. In the middle of the block sat P.S. 90, a Collegiate Gothic-style structure built in 1907 by architect Charles Snyder. Unused by schoolchildren for 30 years, the building’s windowpanes were broken or missing, and its stone gargoyles tarnished. Trees sprouted amid overturned desks.
This spring, a buyer paid $1.13 million for a three-bedroom combination apartment in the P.S. 90 building — restored and converted to condos by L+M. [more]
Edge developer Douglaston Development has taken the lead on building a nearby site at 3 Northside Piers in Williamsburg and plans to break ground on a $300 million project in March, the Wall Street Journal reported. Douglaston, led by CEO Jeffrey Levine, intends to build a 40-story rental tower where rents range from $55 to $60 per square-foot.
The tower was originally supposed to be part of a three-building complex developed by Toll Brothers, L&M Development Partners and RD Management, but after sales were slow — even after price cuts — in the first two Northside Piers buildings, Toll Brothers backed out of the project. L&M and RD will help on Douglaston’s version of the tower. [more]
Manhattan condominium projects are dropping dramatically in size, as banks remain reluctant to finance megaprojects and developers have difficulty finding sites for large-scale construction, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“You’re going to be very, very hard pressed to build a condo in this city for a number of years that has more than 100 units,” Ron Moelis, chairman and CEO of L+M Development Partners, which built the 1,000-unit Northside Piers in Williamsburg, told the Journal.
According to data compiled by Streeteasy.com, new condo projects hitting the market in 2005 and 2006 had an average of 83 units per building. That number has decreased to just 34 units in 2011. [more]
The Real Deal got word that Jennifer Aniston’s Manhattan house hunt continues, and her latest stop was 50 Gramercy Park North. We also ran into TV crews from “Selling New York” while checking out an open house at 83 Franklin Street in Tribeca, where the building’s loft-style, 2,000-square-foot units are commanding near five-figures per month. 
And we sat down for lunch with the Brooklyn Historical Society, where some of the borough’s big-name developers updated their latest projects. Click here for more from The Real Deal on the town. – Katherine Clarke, Adam Fusfeld and Sarabeth Sanders
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Work on a new 15-story housing tower at 11 Broadway and the corner of Kent Avenue in Williamsburg is angering local residents, as construction is set to begin even though a six-year-old toxic spill underneath the site has not been fully cleaned up. “There are dozens of stalled projects in Williamsburg, more than in any part of the city, so what’s the urgency of putting this building up?” resident Bill Storandt said to the Brooklyn Paper. The project, financed by L+M Development Partners and Goldman Sachs, would consist of 160 units, 80 percent of which will be priced at below-market rates. Comments
PS90
Harlem’s PS90, the abandoned public elementary school-turned-condominium at 220 West 148th Street between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass boulevards, has been approved for Federal Housing Administration financing, the development team announced today. Sales launched in September at the 75-unit building, which is still under construction. Roughly 25 percent of its studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom units are reserved for middle-income residents and prices range from $400,000 to $899,000 for the market-rate homes. PS90 is being developed by L+M Development Partners and and marketed by Halstead Property Development Marketing. Occupancy is slated for this summer. Click here to see a slide show of The Real Deal’s backstage look at the one-time school’s transformation. TRD
