Thomas Elghanayan

The Elghanayan brothers’ TF Cornerstone has more than a dozen residential projects rising in Long Island City, of 35 in the area total, the New York Observer reported. So what makes the Elghanayans, who left their brother Henry, of Rockrose Development, to form TF Cornerstone in 2009, so confident that Queens is the next Williamsburg? “It’s four minutes on the 7 train to Grand Central [Terminal],” Thomas Elghanayan told the paper.

Elghanayan goes on to say that LIC is “the prime outer-borough location,” that TF Cornerstone has refinanced its entire portfolio to the tune of $1.1 billion, and that while he is glad Henry is building in the same area, his and Frederick’s is “the real luxury property out there.” [more]

28-20 Borden Avenue in Long Island City

FedEx Ground is building a new 140,000-square-foot distribution center in Long Island City, Queens, according to Real Estate Weekly, as part of a nationwide network expansion to boost volume capacity and to replace an existing facility at 5590 48th Street in Flushing.

Construction on the new $56 million center, at 29-01 and 28-20 Borden Avenue, is slated to begin in February, REW said, and will be completed in early 2013. [more]

Long Island City prices (source: Modern Spaces)

For the first time in several years, Long Island City apartment sales prices rose across the board in 2011 and buyers put a premium on larger units, according to a year-end report released yesterday by Modern Spaces.

The average price per square-foot of a studio increased 3.6 percent from 2010 to $697.45, and the average price paid per square-foot for a one-bedroom jumped 3.4 percent to $700.94. But the biggest increases occurred in the two- and three-bedroom sectors. [more]

A meal at M. Wells before it went out of business

Popular Long Island City restaurant M. Wells will get a second chance after a dispute with their former landlord shut the beloved eatery last August, the New York Daily News reported.

M. Wells owner Hugue Dufour told the Canadian Broadcasting Company that he and wife Sarah Obraitis would be opening a cafeteria-style eatery in at the Museum of Modern Art PS1. The museum would not comment, the News said. [more]

From left: 4720 Center Boulevard, the View condominium and a rendering of planned TF Cornerstone development in Long Island City

TF Cornerstone is just more than halfway into the $1 billion-plus development of seven buildings on the Long Island City waterfront, according to the Wall Street Journal, and a neighborhood is starting to take shape. But despite the impressive scale of the 3 million square feet of development on 21 acres with 3,500 market-rate apartments, and the resident-friendly public park space that has replaced roads, the Journal critiques the aesthetics of the development as belonging in “a party-happy beach town” and not the city.

“We could have made it look like it was built over time, by different architects and developers, and that it sort of emerged organically like the rest of the city,” explained Jon McMillan, director of planning for TF Cornerstone. [more]

A model apartment at the Yard, with art and furniture for saleFrom the October issue: New York City home-seekers are used to model apartments staged with generic, if tasteful, furniture.

Not so at Long Island City’s the Yard, a new 83-unit condo. Potential buyers who visit the building’s model apartments find galleries full of eclectic pieces like Amy Ruppel’s oval portraits of extinct birds, which have words like “moron” scrawled across them.

The Yard’s model apartments were decorated by We-Are-Familia, an international collective of over 50 artists, including local photographer Sam Contis and Brooklyn-based furniture designer Nightwood. Almost all of the art, chinaware, lighting — even a handful of dresses — is for sale, in what is essentially a pop-up shop. Walk-ins are welcome, and interested customers are handed a price sheet for the furnishings.

The Yard isn’t the first development to try this model apartment/pop-up shop approach. In 2008, the Battery Park City condo Riverhouse hired Vivavi, a green furniture company, to furnish and sell pieces in their model units. [more]

David Lichtenstein’s Lightstone Group, owner of multi-family, retail and office properties in 27 states, is set to enter one of New York’s emerging residential markets, having just purchased a residential development site at 50-01 2nd Street in Long Island City for $19.3 million, or $105 per buildable square foot, Real Estate Weekly reported.
The site’s close proximity to Avalon Bay Communities’ Avalon Riverview South, the 7 train and the East River were all selling points, said Gary Blum, a partner at Pinnacle Realty, who represented the seller alongside Pinnacle’s Decio Baio and David Junik.
“They knew Long Island City was growing,” he said. [more]

Sample of a Brightfarms hydroponic greenhouse

The largest rooftop hydroponic greenhouse in the country is close to
coming to Long Island City. Brightfarms, a Manhattan-based firm
that designs, builds and operates high-tech farms, is in the final
stages of negotiating the lease of a 32,000-square-foot space on top of
a building near LaGuardia Community College, the New York Daily News reported.
The company will not only move its headquarters there, but also plans
to invest $1 million to build a 25,000-square-foot rooftop hydroponic
greenhouse, in addition to building 7,000 square feet of office space.
The project will bring 25 jobs to Queens the first year and 30 over the
following two years. The plan is for the construction to take place
this coming March, so that by the end of the spring the farm can
produce 200,000 pounds of fresh produce annually for the local
markets. Hydroponic systems are a method of growing plants using
nutrients in water without soil. [more]

Long Island City’s rental market in the first half of 2011 is flat compared with the end of 2010, with 94 percent of 2,084 rentals leased, according to Modern Spaces’ mid-year residential report based on neighborhood-wide data (see full report below). The for-sale market was up almost 10 percent compared to the end of 2010, with 86 percent of 2,359 units on the market snapped up compared to 77 percent at the end of last year. The majority of the units in the area are condos, Modern Spaces CEO Eric Benaim said. Monthly rents in the first six months of the year averaged $1,475 to $5,323,
depending on whether the buildings had doormen or elevators.
Sales prices ranged from $319,725 for studios to
$1.27 million for three-bedroom apartments. — Miranda Neubauer

Long Island City Orange Report 2011 Mid Year (1) [more]

A group led by Tishman Speyer has sold Two Gotham Center in Long Island City at a $100 million profit, for $415 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. H&R Real Estate Investment Trust, a large Canadian public company, bought the 670,000-square-foot property, which is leased by the city’s Health Department. The building was completed a year ago and cost $316 million to develop. So far, Two Gotham Center is the only part of the planned 3.5 million-square-foot mixed-use complex to be developed near Queensboro Plaza. Tishman Speyer and the city are jointly the backers of the project. It wasn’t immediately clear why the group sold Two Gotham Center. [WSJ]