This month in real estate history

1994: $2.3B Queens mega-project gets underway

Governor Mario Cuomo and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attended the groundbreaking ceremony for a massive public-private residential development in Queens along the East River 19 years ago this month.

The event, which began construction on Hunters Point Community Park, was the official kickoff for the first phase of a plan that called for creating 6,385 apartments on the 74-acre site on reclaimed industrial land south of the Queensboro Bridge.

The groundbreaking was a show of serious progress for a mega-project discussed as early as 1984. Indeed, the momentum was viewed as crucial to securing government financing for private developers who would handle the residential component.

A joint venture of developers called M.O. Associates (standing for Manhattan Overlook) that included the Zeckendorf Company and Victor Elmaleh’s World-Wide Holdings, as well as an affiliate of the investment bank Dreyfus, built the first apartment tower at the site. The 522-unit cooperative building, which was called Citylights, opened in 1996.

The Empire State Building was constructed by the Starrett Corporation

1935: Firm behind Empire State Building goes bankrupt

The renowned Starrett Corporation — the firm that built the Empire State Building in less than a year during the start of the Great Depression and invested in properties nationwide — filed for bankruptcy 78 years ago this month.

In addition to the Empire State Building, the company, founded by Paul Starrett in 1922, built several large office buildings in the early 1930s such as 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan and the Starrett Lehigh Terminal Building in West Chelsea. But with the economic decline, the company ran into financial trouble.

In its bankruptcy filing, the firm said the gross rental income for the office buildings it owned fell from $4.4 million in 1932 to $3.7 million in 1935.

Despite reorganizing in bankruptcy, it did not turn an annual profit until 1946, according to the International Directory of Company Histories.

The company went on to build massive residential development projects such as Parkchester in the Bronx between 1939 and 1942, Stuyvesant Town on Manhattan’s East Side in 1947 and Starrett City in Brooklyn, which opened in 1974. Today it owns and manages apartment buildings in the New York City metro area.

The under-construction Queensboro Bridge

1908: Players back name for Queensboro Bridge

Real estate players lobbied to change the name of the soon-to-open Blackwell’s Island Bridge to the Queensboro Bridge, 105 years ago this month.

Manhattan and Queens property owners sent a petition seeking the change to the city’s Board of Aldermen, noting that the name Blackwell’s conjured up images of the infamous prison that operated on the island.

Landlords also pointed out that typically New York’s bridges carried the name of one of the ends of the span such as the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges.

The proposal was far from a sure thing though. One alderman said he did not believe a good case had been made to alter the bridge’s name, the New York Times reported. And a handful of the city’s Irish organizations opposed the name Queensboro, arguing that it was too English.

However, by the end of the month, the Board of Aldermen had approved the change. Six months later, on March 30, 1909, the bridge was opened to traffic. More than a century later, in 2011, the bridge’s name was changed again to the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge.