[NYguy]

This multiple tower development is taken from the east river thread...
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=122763


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/ny...l?ref=nyregion
Team Chosen for Work on Big Middle-Income Complex in Queens



City officials at the Hunters Point South construction site on Wednesday.




A team led by the Related Companies was picked to construct two towers in the first phase of Hunters Point South, here in a rendering.


By CHARLES V. BAGLI
February 9, 2011

The Bloomberg administration announced Wednesday that it had selected a team led by the Related Companies to construct the first phase of a development on the Queens waterfront that will be the largest middle-income complex built in the city since the 1970s.

Related and its partners — Phipps Houses, the largest nonprofit operator of affordable housing in the city, and Monadnock Construction, one of the largest builders of affordable housing — will erect two towers at what is called Hunters Point South, with 908 rental apartments, at least 685 of which will be set aside for working- and middle-class families earning $32,000 to $130,000 a year.

Hunters Point South is a signature project of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s housing and waterfront development policies. The entire 5,000-unit complex, which was first announced by the mayor more than four years ago, will offer subsidized housing for an unusually broad swath of working- and middle-class families. The city has invested heavily in the site, buying this once industrial stretch of waterfront, where Newtown Creek enters the East River, for $100 million.

The city is also spending about $175 million on a toxic cleanup of the site, a 10-acre park, roads and water and sewer lines. It is also bestowing $50 million in grants to subsidize the affordable units in the first two buildings. A school is scheduled to open in 2013.

“At Hunters Point South,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement, “not only will we build the largest affordable housing complex in more than three decades, we’ll do it on a long-vacant waterfront property that has incredible views and sits adjacent to one of New York City’s fastest growing neighborhoods.”

The project has been a long time coming. Years ago, as part of its ultimately unsuccessful bid for the 2012 Olympics, the Bloomberg administration wanted to use the land to build housing for athletes; after the Olympics, the housing would have been turned into apartments. At the time, some officials in Queens feared that it would become a slum.

But as developers and investors began buying up large blocks of housing for poor and working-class families, raising fears that rents would quickly rise, Mr. Bloomberg announced plans in 2006 to build affordable housing at the waterfront site.

Stephen M. Ross, chief executive of the Related Companies, at first hoped to persuade the Real Estate Board of New York, the powerful lobbying arm of the real estate industry, to build the housing on a nonprofit basis. But Mr. Ross, who then headed the board, had trouble persuading his fellow developers to take on the project, and the city was reluctant to turn the entire site over to a single entity.

“This is something I believe in passionately,” Mr. Ross said. “To succeed and prosper, the city has to build workforce housing. It can’t be the most expensive city to live and work in. But there haven’t been any middle-income housing programs for the past 20 years.”

Rival developers complained privately that the city would favor Mr. Ross because of his close ties to the Bloomberg administration. City officials went to great lengths to explain why the Related team was chosen.

Rafael E. Cestero, the city’s housing commissioner, said that the Related-Phipps-Monadnock team had submitted the lowest-cost bid and adhered most closely to the city’s design guidelines. Indeed, it was the only one, he said, that offered to build all the apartments for poor, working- and middle-class families. The city will be subsidizing only 75 percent of the project because of financial constraints on its part, Mr. Cestero said.

“I’m disappointed,” said K. Thomas Elghanayan, chairman of TF Cornerstone, a finalist in the competition. “But Related is a very competent firm.”

The Related proposal is a victory of sorts for the city, which was hoping for at least 60 percent of the units to be affordable. The city plans to begin building the water and sewer lines next month, along with 5 acres of the planned 10-acre park.

Construction of the two apartment buildings will not begin until June 2012 and will take about two years to complete. The rest of Hunters Point South will not be completed until after Mr. Bloomberg leaves office.