For the real estate mavens of LIC (and who isn't) there is the interesting dynamic these last 12 or 18 months that the US keeps getting gloomier, NY keeps getting nervouser but LIC keeps getting taller.
Well, NY itself has seen the market look very strong the last few months (since you usually just hear about the "national market" including silly property markets like Miami or...Houston of all places). Here is a recent bit to validate that: Real estate sales -- and property values -- are rising in New York so far in 2007, at a time when sales are sluggish in many other cities.
Sales activity is spiking in Manhattan and several Brooklyn neighborhoods, as New Yorkers step up the hunt for co-ops, condominiums and town houses, The New York Times reported.
Real estate firms say the activity -- which features well-attended open houses and even some bidding wars -- has occurred across all price ranges.
During the fourth quarter of 2006, the newspaper said, major real estate companies differed on which direction the market was taking. Now, however, the three largest real estate companies in New York agree that in January, there was a double-digit increase over the same month in 2006, both in prices and the number of signed contracts.
The increase is being attributed to factors including a strong regional economy, pent-up demand and higher year-end bonuses on Wall Street.
Then there is LIC itself. Which keeps attracting new and different kind of property builders (hotel room, anyone?). See the NYT piece.
On the hotel boom: The 23-room Q-Plaza Motel — the site of a 2002 protest against what demonstrators called prostitution in the area — is being converted and expanded into an upscale boutique hotel. To be called the Ravel Hotel, it is scheduled to open this spring with 78 rooms.
The architect Steven Kratchman has designed the expanded building so that all the rooms will have views of Manhattan, many through bay windows; some rooms will open onto French balconies or terraces. The three-level rooftop will be used for a bar and lounge area, along with a spot for local artists to display their work, according to Ravi Patel, who bought the property in 2005.
Mr. Patel said he chose Long Island City largely because Manhattan was too expensive. The total cost of redeveloping the former Q-Plaza will be about $4 million, he said, adding that he expects to attract an overflow of visitors from Manhattan. Rates will start at around $350 a night.
“A lot of hotels are going condo in Manhattan, so the supply of hotel rooms has been slowly diminishing in the city, and there was, and still is, huge demand,” he said.
Mr. Patel says he was first met with resistance from the local community. “It was very hard to convince people that we weren’t putting up a huge brothel here,” he said. “But we’re actually putting up something nice.”
Nearby, another boutique hotel is in the works. Developers plan to break ground this spring on the Z Hotel. Designed by the architect Andre Kikoski, who created Suba, a restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the hotel will have 11 stories with 100 rooms. Like the Ravel Hotel, the Z will have rooms facing Manhattan, along with colorful light-emitting diodes on a facade designed to evoke the United Nations building.
Henry Zilberman, the hotel’s developer, says he believes that there is a strong market for travelers seeking an alternative to Manhattan, where rates are often steep because of rising development costs.
Rooms will be around $200 a night, or roughly half the rate of comparable hotels in Manhattan.
“We’re going to see a couple thousand hotel rooms in Long Island City in the next three to four years,” said Sam Chang, one of largest hotel builders in New York City, who in 1999 constructed a Holiday Inn Express in Long Island City. “That’s just going to be too many.”
And a rundown on other big projects around here:
Completed last year was Court Square Place, a 16-story, 275,000-square-foot building owned and operated by the United Nations Federal Credit Union. Tishman Speyer Properties, which developed that building, is also constructing a 486,000-square-foot office tower for Citigroup, near that company’s 48-story tower that was, for years, Long Island City’s sole skyscraper. Tishman Speyer also has plans to redevelop the substantial Queens Plaza Garage site, located in the neighborhood.
And then there is Silvercup West, a planned 2.2 million-square-foot mixed-use development by Silvercup Studios along the East River. It will include 650,000 square feet of office space, 270,000 square feet of studio space and 150,000 square feet of retail space, along with about 1,000 apartments and parking for 1,400 vehicles. The company plans to break ground in about a year, according to Stuart Match Suna, the president of Silvercup.
