A massive project that would upgrade Flushing’s Long Island Rail Road station at Main Street and create new housing units around it is now taking a back seat to higher-priority projects like Flushing Commons, the Macedonia Plaza and Willets Point, city officials told the Daily News. The plan, first proposed by the Flushing Willets Point Corona Local Development Corp. during the fall of 2009, calls for new station elevators and a platform extension, plus housing and commercial space on a parking lot adjacent to the station and currently owned by the city’s Department of Transportation. [more]

Willets Point landowners will take legal action against the city for beginning construction on traffic ramps meant to ease congestion expected with the redevelopment of the area near Citi Field, according to the Daily News. Some property owners have been at odds with the city over the space for more than a year. This time, the landowners believe the city reneged on a promise to begin construction on the Van Wyck Expressway ramps only after obtaining permission from the Federal Highway Administration and the Department of Transportation. [more]

Opponents of Walmart’s big move to the city plan to apply pressure to Gateway II shopping center developer the Related Companies this week in an effort to persuade the company to find a different tenant for its 650,000-square-foot site in East New York, according to Crain’s. Related has been in talks to lease the site to Walmart, and has already received the City Council’s go-ahead to do so. But while opponents — including unions, small business owners and City Council members — have thus far been unsuccessful in convincing the discount giant to steer clear of Brooklyn, they believe they have a better bargaining chip when it comes to Related, in part because the company is said to be angling for a contract to redevelop Willets Point. [more]

Time is running out for the holdouts in Queens’ Willets Point, where the city is planning to make its first move towards seizing a 20-acre swath of land through eminent domain next week. According to the Wall Street Journal, the parcel represents the first phase of the 62-acre development project, for which the city will begin soliciting bids from developers in April. Among the developers who have previously expressed interest in the project are the Related Companies, Muss Development and the Wilpon Family’s Sterling Equities. Comments

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A metal fabricating company currently housed in Willets Point within the footprint of the city’s $3 billion mixed-use development project bought a $3 million parcel that is more than three times the size of its current location about a mile north in College Point.
Feinstein Iron Works, which produces structural steel, bought the approximately 118,000-square-foot parcel near the intersection of 31st Avenue and College Point Boulevard on Dec. 16 from the city’s Economic Development Corporation, property records published Tuesday show. At the same time, the city gave to the industrial firm a $3 million purchase money mortgage, city records show. [more]

For months, state officials have been privately questioning the safety, design and impact of highway ramps crucial to the $3 billion development of Willets Point in Queens, according to hundreds of e-mails that an opponent of the project fed to the New York Times. The state officials who have expressed concern are some of the same officials whose approval is needed for the project to move forward. “Unless the preparers of this report start accepting the idea that it is seriously flawed, we are going nowhere,” wrote Michael Bergman, a structural engineer for the state’s Department of Transportation Dec. 28, while reviewing the city’s application. The Bloomberg Administration has pushed hard for Willets Point, which would eventually have 5,500 apartments, office buildings, retail stores and a hotel in place of the auto repair shops, factories and junkyards in the area. The ramps in question are supposed to connect Willets Point to the Van Wyck Expressway, but officials have repeatedly been frustrated by the city’s inaccurate information and on the pressure it was placing on the state to finish its analysis quickly. Peter King, a state project manager, wrote to a colleague in January in response to a typo that stated the development’s expected completion date was 2107 instead of 2017: “Perhaps that reference to 2107 may have been closer to the truth than anyone realizes.” [NYT]

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For months, state officials have been privately questioning the safety, design and impact of highway ramps crucial to the $3 billion development of Willets Point in Queens, according to hundreds of e-mails that an opponent of the project fed to the New York Times. The state officials who have expressed concern are some of the same officials whose approval is needed for the project to move forward. “Unless the preparers of this report start accepting the idea that it is seriously flawed, we are going nowhere,” wrote Michael Bergman, a structural engineer for the state’s Department of Transportation Dec. 28, while reviewing the city’s application. The Bloomberg Administration has pushed hard for Willets Point, which would eventually have 5,500 apartments, office buildings, retail stores and a hotel in place of the auto repair shops, factories and junkyards in the area. The ramps in question are supposed to connect Willets Point to the Van Wyck Expressway, but officials have repeatedly been frustrated by the city’s inaccurate information and on the pressure it was placing on the state to finish its analysis quickly. Peter King, a state project manager, wrote to a colleague in January in response to a typo that stated the development’s expected completion date was 2107 instead of 2017: “Perhaps that reference to 2107 may have been closer to the truth than anyone realizes.” [NYT]

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Queens property owners are battling Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to redevelop Willets Point, a 62-acre site near Citi Field, and are accusing Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of prolonging a yearlong investigation into whether a city-funded corporation broke state law by lobbying for the plan, the Wall Street Journal reported. The controversy surrounding the Flushing Willets Point Corona Local Development Corp. has exposed friction between aides to Bloomberg and Cuomo over how quickly the city handed over documents to state investigators. According to a June 17 letter reviewed by the Journal,
Willets Point property owners demanded that Cuomo respond to their allegation that the corporation, led by former Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, conducted an extensive lobbying effort in violation of state law. Shulman denied any wrongdoing. [WSJ]

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Queens property owners are battling Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to redevelop Willets Point, a 62-acre site near Citi Field, and are accusing Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of prolonging a yearlong investigation into whether a city-funded corporation broke state law by lobbying for the plan, the Wall Street Journal reported. The controversy surrounding the Flushing Willets Point Corona Local Development Corp. has exposed friction between aides to Bloomberg and Cuomo over how quickly the city handed over documents to state investigators. According to a June 17 letter reviewed by the Journal,
Willets Point property owners demanded that Cuomo respond to their allegation that the corporation, led by former Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, conducted an extensive lobbying effort in violation of state law. Shulman denied any wrongdoing. [WSJ]

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The 106-year-old development firm struggles with one of the largest projects in NYC, but draws on its expertise in surviving recessions

Joshua Muss, president of Muss Development

From the May issue: It’s hard enough to sell an apartment these days in Manhattan. Try selling 448 of them in Queens — while trying to lease out 800,000 square feet of virgin retail space at the same time. That’s the challenge facing Muss Development, the 106-year-old, family-owned real estate company that usually does its own building, sales and management. Sky View Parc, the developer’s $1 billion, three-tower project in Flushing, has the dubious distinction of being one of the city’s largest mixed-used projects under construction during one of the worst real estate climates in generations. Located a couple blocks west of downtown Flushing’s epicenter on a 14-acre plot Muss purchased from Con Edison in 1983, the 3.3 million-square-foot venture seemed ambitious even back in the heady pre-crash days of early 2007. But with 421-a and other tax abatements as well as a city rezoning of the area, the groundbreaking seemed propitiously timed. And it provided Muss with a signature project that would transform the neighborhood.

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