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Flushing Commons breaks ground on megaproject’s first phase
Lack of funding has bedeviled massive project initially proposed in 2006
Work on Flushing Commons, a massive commercial and residential development that will rise atop a former municipal parking lot, is finally underway.
The $1 billion project will offer up a mix of housing, commercial and community space on the five-acre site, including a 1.8 million-square-foot YMCA, underground parking and one-acre public square. The first phase is slated for completion by 2017.
“It’s hard to overestimate how transformational this will be for Flushing,” Michael Meyer of F&T Group, which is developing the site along with the Rockefeller Group Development Corp. and AECOM Capital, told the New York Daily News. “This site is really the 57th Street and Fifth Avenue of Queens.”
The Rockefeller Group and TDC Development, the latter of which is a subsidiary of F&T Group, pulled together $313 million to finance the first phase of the project in April, clearing the final financial hurdle for the long-delayed project. Originally proposed eight years ago and approved by the City Council in 2010, the project repeatedly hit snags as a result of funding problems. [NYDN] — Julie Strickland
