Macy’s love of Queens has given Rob Speyer 867,000 reasons to smile

Retailer takes another 300K sf at the JACX, which is now fully leased

From left: Rob Speyer, the JACX at 28-10 Queens Plaza South in Long Island City, and Macy's CEO Jeffrey Gennette (Credit: Getty Images and CityRealty)
From left: Rob Speyer, the JACX at 28-10 Queens Plaza South in Long Island City, and Macy's CEO Jeffrey Gennette (Credit: Getty Images and CityRealty)

Macy’s is expanding its lease at Tishman Speyer’s the JACX complex in Long Island City by more than 50 percent, adding 300,000 square feet to its existing 567,000.

The 1.1-million-square-foot office-and-retail development at 28-10 Queens Plaza South is now fully leased, with Macy’s accounting for more than 70 percent of leased space. The company’s lease includes all 22 floors of the project’s east tower, 11 floors of the west tower for its Bloomingdale’s division, and the third and fourth base floors.

Most of the remaining space at the JACX is occupied by the We Company’s office leasing division WeWork, which signed a 250,000-square foot lease in 2016. Other tenants include a 28,000-square-foot primary care practice for New York-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine, and a 5,000-square-foot restaurant from star chef Dan Kluger, who also owns Loring Place in Greenwich Village.

A CBRE team represented Macy’s in the deal, while Tishman Speyer had an in-house team work on the lease transaction.

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Tishman started construction on the project in 2016 with an equity investment from Qatari Diar Real Estate and a construction loan from Bank of the Ozarks, now Bank OZK. The developer secured $275 million in new financing from OZK in November. The complex is expected to open later this year.

The JACX is located directly across from Tishman Speyer’s three-building, 1,871-unit rental complex, Jackson Park. Tishman acquired an interest in that plot back in 2003, long before most other developers began to show interest in the neighborhood.

Amazon’s decision to place half of its latest campus in Long Island City is expect to be a boon for Tishman’s properties in the area.

“The Amazon deal will help every piece of real estate in Long Island City,” Tishman CEO Rob Speyer told Commercial Observer in November. “Every office building, every hotel, every restaurant, every store.” [NYP] — Kevin Sun