Long Island City is undergoing a transformation, with massive amounts of private development and city infrastructure work underway. The waterfront is thriving, with four parcels of high-rise rental properties due in the next two years from TF Cornerstone. Court Square, near Queens Plaza, awaits two mixed-use residential and retail projects from Rockrose. Next year, Hunters Point South will start to bring 5,000 housing units to the Queens West coastline, with 3,000 units set aside for middle-income residents. Other new additions to the area include a waterfront public library, 35 residential projects, and Jet Blue’s corporate headquarters. Public investment in Long Island City, spurred by a zoning change, the Business Improvement District and programs organized by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, have also improved transportation. “We can’t just rely on Manhattan for the future of the city,” said Seth Pinsky, head of the EDC. “Look at where Long Island City was a few years ago. Not many people knew it was there. Today, we’re at a tipping point for this neighborhood where growth could go from steady to exponential.”

[NYDN]

[more]

Rockrose’s Henry Elghanayan and 200 Water Street

Rockrose’s 576-unit South Street Seaport rental building, 200 Water Street, is fully l [more]

Rockrose’s Henry Elghanayan and 200 Water Street

Rockrose’s 576-unit South Street Seaport rental building, 200 Water Street, is fully l [more]

Jeff Winick

From the May issue: Drugstore chain Duane Reade had a problem: A competitor was sniffing around a large space across the street from one of its best Midtown locations on Sixth Avenue near West 57th Street. Officials at the store enlisted its broker, Winick Realty Group, to take care of the situation.

Several months later, not only had the competitor disappeared, but Duane Reade had taken that site at 100 West 57th Street for itself.

That’s partly thanks to Winick Realty’s founder and CEO, Jeff Winick, who used back channels to help secure the site for the drugstore. Winick’s aggressive, take-no-prisoners style seems to win him accolades from clients but has created fierce enmity among his competition.

That style has been on full display for the last few weeks in a federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan, where two former Duane Reade executives are on trial for fraudulently pumping up earnings reports, partly through allegedly bogus real estate transactions involving Winick. [more]

The Real Deal got a first look inside TF Cornerstone’s new rental project in Hudson Yards, 505W37, at an opening party last night (see slide show above). The project’s two glass towers are located at 505 West 37th Street between 10th and 11th avenues, kitty corner to the company’s other Hudson Yards rental, 455W37. Nearly 200 market-rate units have been leased, according to Robert Schmidt, a leasing agent for the building, who led tours of the building for press and brokers at the event. The project has a total of 835 units, though a number of them are earmarked for affordable housing through the 80-20 program. [more]

Kevin Ellerton, the CEO of Blackstone Properties, which has snagged a significant market share but also drawn ire from competitors.

From the February issue: At the ripe old age of 24, Kevin Ellerton is managing to become one of
the most powerful players in the Lower Manhattan rental game. To hear
his competitors talk, he’s also one of the most loathed.
Ellerton is the CEO of Blackstone Properties, a company he started
less than two years ago with a high school friend, David Yomtobian.
(Ellerton’s company has no relation to the powerful private equity firm
the Blackstone Group.)
By Ellerton’s calculations, about half of all brokered rental deals
in the Financial District and Battery Park City are inked by Blackstone
agents. While executives at other Lower Manhattan firms say that number
might be closer to 40 percent, they grudgingly concede that Blackstone
has grabbed a formidable share of the rental market in a very short
period of time. [more]

From left: Twins Andrew and Kenneth Herzberg of Sirius

The depressed market for new condominium apartments is driving the creation of new incentives to facilitate the sale of distressed units. To that end, developers have been trying mortgage payment guarantees and buyback guarantees, with little indication of success. Toll Brothers, developer of Northside Piers in Williamsburg, offered a mortgage protection plan at the condo, but scrapped it last summer. And a little over a year ago, in December 2008, condo developer Rockrose Development, which has split into Rockrose and TF Cornerstone, said it would give 20 buyers at the View in Long Island City the right to sell their unit back in five years to the developer at the original sales price. It was not clear if that had any impact. Now a new financial firm based in Manhattan is setting its sights on a national price protection program, but some industry experts are uncertain about its chances for success in New York City. The company, Sirius Value Protection, headed by identical twins Andrew and Kenneth Herzberg, is talking with developers about its program that offers a qualified price guarantee to buyers, Andrew, a co-managing partner, told The Real Deal. [more]

From left: K. Thomas Elghanayan and brother Frederick started TF Cornerstone

Now that the division of Rockrose has been finalized, the two younger Elghanayan brothers are looking to snap up distressed assets. “Our plan is to look for properties that are in some form of incomplete state,” K. Thomas Elghanayan, who with his brother Frederick is now doing business under the name TF Cornerstone, told The Real Deal.
“We can take something that’s half-built and we can finish it, manage
it, rent it out, sell it, and do whatever we need to do. We’re looking
at a couple of opportunities like that, where we’d be buying these
[properties] from financial institutions.” In fact, he said, TF (for Thomas and Frederick) Cornerstone is close to making a deal on two properties in the New York metro area: one is a “broken condo,” and another is a development deal where construction started and stopped. [more]