United Hoisting and Scaffolding Company, one of the city’s biggest scaffold-and-sidewalk-shed suppliers, is looking to sell its large, 1.5-acre yard in Long Island City as a development site for upwards of $35 million.
“This site is primed for conversion into office, creative or industrial uses, particularly given its proximity to Manhattan and the Cornell Technion Campus on Roosevelt Island,” said Marcus and Millichap’s Jakub Nowak, who along with colleague Jonathan Eshaghian has the listing for United’s site a few blocks north of the Queensbridge F Train station.
The property is made up of two different parcels across the street from each other: the larger one at 38-42 12 Street that holds slightly more than 319,000 buildable square feet, and smaller yard across the way at 38-26 11th Street, which has shy of 49,000 buildable square feet.
United, which is owned by the Halloran family, bought the site back in 1979 when the company relocated from New Jersey.
In recent years the neighborhood, part of one of the city’s Industrial Business Zones (IBZ), has been popular with hotel developers, with 10 new or proposed hotels in an area encompassing about a dozen blocks. But two months ago Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council announced they had reached an agreement as part of an effort to preserve manufacturing jobs that would require hotel developers to receive a special permit in order to build in an IBZ.
The IBZ agreement didn’t impact office development, which is still allowed as of right. And Nowak, who last year sold a development site nearby on 11th Street to a hotel developer for $100 per buildable square foot, said that with LIC office rents ranging from $25 to $30 per square foot, the site could very well go to an office developer.