http://www.qgazette.com/news/2010-05-26/Front_Page/LICBDCReal_Estate_Breakfast_Cites_New_Projects.html

LICBDC?Real Estate Breakfast Cites New Projects

by Thomas Cogan, Queens Gazette, May 26, 2010

The Long Island City Business Development Corporation’s fourth annual real estate breakfast, held in May at the Water’s Edge Restaurant, featured an executive of a construction trade group; a local real estate executive; a law school dean who is a year and a half away from relocating in Hunters Point; and a Manhattan-oriented restaurateur who “never thought of moving to Long Island City” before he gave it a try, succeeded with one restaurant and is now about to open another in the neighborhood. There were cautious predictions of coming prosperity and some recommendations about what could be done to help it along.

The first of the panelists was Richard T. Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress. He bade the large breakfast audience, “Welcome to the new economy of New York City,” which he said was “dramatically different” from a time not long ago when anyone in building and real estate was “busier than ever”. In 2008, he said, new building construction in the city was $34 billion strong, but with the economic crash there was no more demand profile. In 2009, the figure dropped to $26 billion and is expected to be at $25 billion for this year. Office and residential construction is slack, he said, but public building continues to be strong, being expected to amount to $15 billion of that $25 billion in 2010. He observed that the state dormitory authority is strong, but wondered if construction for student housing can remain that way when teachers are being laid off in force. But, he concluded, building is mainly dependent on private sector economic recovery and the jobs growing out of it.

Michelle J. Anderson, dean of the City University of New York Law School, located at present on Main Street in Flushing but due to be relocated by the fall of 2011 at 2 Court Square in Hunters Point, said that CUNY Law has a public service mission, turning out lawyers inclined to serve the public, rather than large corporations or other wealthy clients. She described the Main Street facility as “bursting at the seams”. The first six floors of 2 Court Square, up to now used as a Citibank training facility, will allow the school more room than it has in Flushing plus plenty of room for expansion, foreseen with the addition of an evening division. The Citibank building, opened in 2007, is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold Certified, and Anderson said that CUNY will be one of only three law schools in the country thus classified; the other two are both in Colorado. At 2 Court Square, the school will have an entrance separate from the building’s main entrance. Perhaps above all, Anderson said, Long Island City is in a better transportation zone; for although Main Street offers excellent subway and bus transportation, Long Island City offers as much of that and more, and additionally has closer proximity to Manhattan. When asked about a March article in the New York Times reporting complaints by students and faculty that the school had paid too much to move into the Citibank building, Anderson replied that there was an “overwhelmingly” greater response in favor of the relocation.

Shih Lee and his brother opened Shi, an Asian/fusion restaurant, at 47-20 Center Blvd. in September 2008 and got a favorable mention in this year’s Michelin Guide. This summer, the brothers will open Skinny’s Cantina, a Mexican restaurant, in the Rockrose building at 47-05 Center Blvd. Shih Lee told the breakfast audience that he was always inclined to Manhattan but looked at the prospects in Long Island City and found them favorable, particularly when considering the Manhattan atmosphere, which he described as “not cutthroat”, though intensely competitive. He was asked why his next restaurant is Mexican; his answer alluded to the cross-ethnic culinary entrepreneurialism occurring these days. However, he had a complaint as he also mentioned a vein of community resistance to expansion of restaurants in Long Island City.

John Maltz, president of Greiner-Maltz, a real estate company covering New York City and Long Island, called himself a veteran of four business cycles in the past 30 years. He said that the current economic situation could be exemplified by the presence of 105 available properties in Long Island City. He clarified that by saying they are available, not vacant, a term he said is more applicable to abandoned properties in Midwestern cities such as Detroit. He said he dealt mainly with local prospective buyers, not those from Europe or California, and plainly advertised his own available sites, some of which go for as little as $12 per square foot. He said office development in Long Island City in the main is flat. He looked for Wall Street to get itself back in order; if it did, buyers and sellers would eventually benefit.

During the question period, Anderson was asked about other choices that CUNY Law had before deciding on Long Island City. She said there were interesting sites in Jamaica too, but, again, Long Island City won on the issues of transportation and proximity to Manhattan. Perhaps inspired by Shih Lee’s presence, she said she also looked forward to  “food, food, food!” in the school’s new neighborhood. One audience inquirer asked David Brause, president of Brause Realty and moderator of the panel discussion, about residential development, anxious about its progress since, “As an industrial broker, I don’t want to see that happen.”  Brause tried to give the situation an “everybody wins” spin, citing the CUNY Law move, to which his inquirer replied, to laughter:  “Well, you’ll have a whole lot of lawyers walking around.” 

Asked about the residential/industrial conflict, Richard Anderson said simply, “Builders want to build.”  Right now, he added, there are “575 stalled projects” in New York City, and a mayoral task force to get a few of them going again would be helpful. He did, however, recognize difficulties, saying, “Nowhere in the U.S.—or the world—is there a regulatory system as complex as there is in New York City.”  And though he hailed public construction, he nevertheless deplored the practice by city agencies of “no damages for delay”, by which the agencies can stall building projects and never have to face penalties for the contractors’ lost time. In response to Brause’s enthusiasm about Long Island City’s big plans, he said that the health of the private economy is paramount.