NY Post
THE LONG WAY HOME
L.I.C. IS A-OK WITH DOZENS OF NEW CONDOS AND RENTAL BUILDINGS
RISING: EastCoast (left) and Avalon Bay
By ADAM BONISLAWSKI
January 25, 2007
'WHY the hell are you moving there?" That, says Alan Capper, was the question posed to him by a friend last year when he announced his plans to move with his fiancée and daughter from his one-bedroom West Village pad to a new two-bedroom apartment in Long Island City, Queens.
"I had a number of expressions of sympathy from people in Greenwich Village when I told them," recalls Capper, president of the New York-based Foreign Press Association. "It was like they were thinking, 'Oh dear, they must not be doing well at all to be moving over there.'"
Such concern, Capper believes, is misplaced. True, his new home has never exactly been what you'd call a destination neighborhood, but big change is under way in Long Island City.
One stop from Grand Central on the 7 line, the area has long been mentioned in discussions of the next big outer-borough nabes. And while other places like DUMBO and Williamsburg have thrived, L.I.C. has been more a story of unmet potential.
But
with roughly 50 new buildings currently either under construction or in the planning stages, Long Island City is now beginning to look like something of a boomtown - one that could become more viable than those Brooklyn 'hoods.
"There's easy access, transportation; the views are spectacular," says Tom Elghanayan, president of Rockrose Development, builders of the new EastCoast complex, which includes a rental building at 4720 Center Blvd. that Capper calls home. "The neighborhood is just in the beginning stages, but you're going to see in two years' time a huge transformation."
Rockrose should figure prominently in the process. The firm plans to build six more luxury towers on a 22-acre waterfront site formerly occupied by a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant. The high-rises will be part of the larger Queens West development - a 74-acre project from the Empire State Development Corporation calling for 15 residential buildings and 2 million square feet of commercial space along the banks of the East River.
Moving inland to the east and north of the Queens West project, there's plenty of activity as well. At the 237-unit Arris Lofts development just across the street from the high-rise Citicorp building, one-bedroom units start at $560,000, two-bedrooms at $870,000 and three-bedrooms at $1,360,000.
Nearby, on Jackson Avenue, the new Echelon building offers 54 one- and two-bedrooms starting at $515,000 and $755,000, respectively.
Add into the mix other new projects like 47th Street's 44-unit Badge building, the Andres Escobar-designed Powerhouse development along the waterfront on Second Street and the 47-unit Gantry building, and you've got a community on the rise in L.I.C.
And with several dozen similar developments in the works, a neighborhood long considered a kind of pretender is turning into the new center of the outer-borough boom, with units going for around $600 per square foot and waterfront units in the $700 range.
"A lot of people feel they're getting an opportunity here," says Prudential Douglas Elliman Executive Vice President Andy Gerringer. "They saw Williamsburg go from $400 to $800 per square foot. They saw DUMBO move from $500 to $900. They're getting an opportunity to get in on the ground floor here and they feel like, 'Hey, this is a shot for me'."
When the Gantry building put out its pre-sales list in late 2005, more than 900 potential buyers signed on to receive information. A year later, the building is sold out. Rockrose's rental development at 4720 Center Blvd. is 90 percent occupied after opening in the fall. Just a single one-bedroom is available for rent ($2,755 per month for 730 square feet with water views). A handful of two-bedrooms start at $3,400.
Even in the neighborhood's grittier northern reaches, in the area surrounding Queens Plaza, new construction has been met with great interest. Last May, in order to snag a spot in the Developers Group's Queens Plaza building, KeySpan employee MaryAnn Behan took a cab in from Nassau County at 3 a.m. to make sure she'd be near the front of the line when sales started.
"I said, OK, if I get there and there's either no one in line or already 50 people in line, I'm turning around and leaving," Behan recalls.
As it turned out, she was the third person to arrive in a crowd that grew to around 30 by noon. Two weeks later, she went into contract on a one-bedroom apartment.
As for the fact that it's still easier to find a strip club than a grocery store in her new nabe, Behan says she's counting on the developments to the south and west of her to bring the necessary services to the area.
"I feel like that wave will spread," she says. "I feel like I'm on the cutting edge right now of something that will happen in the next few years."
Filmmaker Roberto Mitrotti is similarly optimistic. He and his wife moved to the neighborhood from Manhattan two years ago, but having had an office in the area for some six years, he's arguably an L.I.C. veteran.
"When I moved here, an attorney I know who is very involved in real estate called me and said, 'You are in the right place because you are going to see amazing things happen,'" Mitrotti says. "So the big money knew what was going to happen.
"But no one else did. All the people I knew in Manhattan would just say, 'Long Island City? What a dump.'"
Now, however, he says, those same people visit him across the river, look at his city views and go home wishing they had gotten into the neighborhood when he did.
Mitrotti admits L.I.C. still has a way to go. New bars and boutiques and restaurants are popping up along Vernon Avenue and throughout the neighborhood. Still, no one is going to mistake the place for SoHo. But the process has started, and the momentum is there.
"It's happening. It's unavoidable," Mitrotti says. "You have to be a little patient, but you can get something very special in Long Island City."
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