After years of delays, developer Edward Minskoff is moving forward with plans for a 110,000-square-foot parcel in Long Island City that was once a strip club.
Minskoff has completed plans for both an office building and a college dorm at 30-30 Northern Boulevard, which is near Queens Plaza and the intersection of 40th Avenue and 31st Street.
His development company, Edward J. Minskoff Equities, first planned an office building after acquiring the property about three years ago.
After no anchor tenant was found, Minskoff switched gears and planned for a college dorm at the parcel. Now, Minskoff has completed one plan for an 18-story, 650,000-square-foot Class A office building and another for a 1,600-room college dormitory with classrooms and administrative offices that could be 18 stories or taller.
Either way, the project will be designed by Perkins Eastman and will cost a little more than $300 million, Minskoff said.
“We still are looking at the economics, and talking to some tenants that are potential users of the entire building,” Minskoff said.
Minskoff Equities has spoken with seven public and private New York City colleges, including Queens College, Baruch College and New York University. The building could be leased by one college or up to four schools, Minskoff said.
“They all have a shortage of accommodations for their students,” he said, noting a shortage of 40,000 rooms in New York City. “This is one of the things we are seriously looking at.”
Whether it becomes a school facility or an office building, Minskoff said Long Island City’s “wonderful mass transit” makes it a quick trip to most areas of the city.
Minskoff said a commercial tenant would enjoy a number of economic incentives — employment-based credits, sales tax exemptions, lower real estate taxes and energy savings. Rents would run about one-third the price of rents in a comparable Manhattan building, said Minskoff, who hopes to lease the building to a single tenant.
A small vacant building must be cleared from the property, which was once home to the Runway 69 strip club.
Once he makes up his mind, Minskoff expects construction to commence this year and end by fall 2009.