Lots of new projects advertising or offering for sale lately.

First up is "Casalino", an all rental building across from the firehouse. Look closely - the bricks, the awning, the wall-through air conditioning. To their credit, however, they built the thing in only 18 months. It's a little bit of no-class, low-end construction right amidst the LIC blossoming. The best indication that these guys are clueless: Cresthaven Realty's banner out the front. LICNYC has seen no less competent broker anywhere than Cresthaven. Shame what they did with a rather nice site.

Up Vernon towards 45th road is the old DHL site. A huge facility that is being gut renovated. Looks like it will be a medical testing lab (not condos...phew). Interesting addition to the street. There have been few office/commercial users coming to Vernon so far.

The march continues at the Queens West site of course

This building at the end of Jackson is done too - but looks like it might be rentals. They would have been offering it for sale by now if it were condos. Somebody has rented the ground floor commercial, since they are fixing that up quite nicely. Pause for a moment and look at that horrible top 2 floors -- what happened? They had the base few stories approved, and found out that the zoning would permit them to add a few floors. Since the foundation was already in, they had to use lightweight construction. So they put this lousy Dry-vit addition on. Yellow! Who's idea was that?

Echelon is what they are calling this project on 47th road and Jackson Ave. It's big, that's for sure.

Arris lofts went "to market" this past week. Apparently good demand - they'll need it. They are selling something like 200 units. The average price of the units offered this week was $660 per square foot. No real difference in price by the direction the units face. Perhaps the views aren't too big in any of the directions.

These two buildings that were sold last year seem to be on the market now as a combo. It's a great location - corner of Vernon and 50th, three exposed sides facing the city.

Silver Star auto on Jackson Avenue and 11th street (next to the Jackson Steakhouse etc) has relocated. The site looks like it has been sold. Meaning...construction crews coming soon?