RXR Realty is bringing a new mixed-use office tower to Long Island City, which is set to be the first project outside of North Brooklyn to make use of Industrial Business Incentive Area (IBIA) special permits.
Plans filed with the Department of Buildings last Friday call for a 21-story mixed-use building at 42-11 9th Street, just south of the Queensboro Bridge and with frontage on both 9th and 10th streets. The 396,365-square-foot building will feature an 18-story tower on top of a three-story podium with ground-floor retail and 64,180 square feet of manufacturing space.
Representatives for RXR did not respond to a request for comment.
The project site is now home to a one-story machine shop occupied by Titan Machine Corporation, and has experienced contamination from, among other things, an oil spill and prior use by a plastic hanger manufacturer. RXR applied to include the project in the city’s Brownfield Cleanup Program in April.
Pending zoning approval, Scott Rechler’s firm expects to begin construction in July 2020 and complete the project in 2022, application documents show. The developer is under contract to acquire the property from the current owner, Carlos Escobar, for an undisclosed price.
To facilitate the project, RXR filed another application last month to designate the area as an IBIA, which would increase the floor area allowed on the site and modify parking and loading requirements.
If successful, this would be just the fourth development in New York City to make use of the IBIA designation, which requires that a certain amount of floor area be set aside for industrial uses. All three existing IBIAs are located within a two-block radius in northern Williamsburg.
(Caption: Map of existing IBIAs. Source: NYC Zoning Resolution)
The first project to receive an IBIA rezoning was Toby Moskovits’ 25 Kent, the first ground-up commercial building developed in Williamsburg in more than 40 years. After completing construction in July, the nearly 500,000-square-foot building secured its first office tenant, fashion brand Kith, just two weeks ago.
The second IBIA rezoning was for Simon Baron Development’s 12 Franklin Street three blocks north, a seven-story boutique office building with 23,000 square feet of manufacturing space. The third went to nearby 103 North 13th Street, where Simon Dushinsky’s Rabksy Group is developing a seven-story, roughly 60,000-square-foot mixed-use office building.
RXR has been an active player in Queens’ industrial real estate scene of late. Earlier this month, the firm was reported to be in talks with Amazon to lease a 770,000-square-foot, four-story logistics center in Maspeth to the e-commerce giant.