Development

From The Real Deal: "There were just three new building permit applications filed for Manhattan construction projects in September -- the lowest number since September 2001, when only a single application was filed. The three applications -- which represent an 87 percent drop from the 23 filed in the same month last year -- were for buildings in Chelsea, the East Village and Harlem. In August there were eight applications for buildings in Manhattan, according to Department of Buildings records."

Over the last few years, something like conventional wisdom cohered around northern Staten Island: New development and new arrivals would make it the New Williamsburg.

Art galleries, bars and cafés opened near the ferry to Manhattan. The first annual Rock the Harbor music festival took place last June. A graffiti artist scrawled "Williamsburg II" on construction fences. The New York Times a year ago dubbed the North Shore "Bohemia by the Bay." Condominium towers with city views sprouted along Bay Street Landing, luring Wall Streeters across the water. Creative types and Brooklyn refugees trickled in.

But in this market, can the gentrification continue? Although home sales are up annually by close to 30 percent in St.  read more »

It's been over three years since the city passed a contextual rezoning of Bay Ridge to limit "out-of-character development" in the low-rise neighborhood, but tensions between nostalgic residents and developers who continue to squeeze three- and four-story apartment buildings into plots once occupied by single-family homes show no signs of abating.

The "Green Church" looks like it is slated for demolition despite the last ditch-effort of local activists; a seven-story apartment building will soon rise from the site of the Bay Ridge Funeral Parlor; and the board of the Bay Ridge Jewish Center is shopping for a buyer.

To Bay Ridge lifers like Steven Diahy, these developments and the squat, tightly packed generic brick buildings scattered among the rowhouses off Third and Fourth avenues signal the neighborhood's transition from a sleepy, suburban community into a mini-Manhattan, and, equally important, make finding a parking spot nearly impossible.  read more »

Today there's word that our two forthcoming ballparks, the Mets' Citi Field and the new Yankee Stadium, will open within a couple of days of each other this coming spring. The Mets stadium will host its first game April 14th, while the inaugural game at the House that Ruth Did Not Build will happen April 16th.

A couple blogs have been giving blow-by-blow updates on the construction of the facilities: The shots above come from Stadium Page, which has been documenting the Citi Field build, and Yankee site Sliding Into Home.

The cost of the new Yankee Stadium is $1.3 billion, making it the most expensive stadium ever built in the U.S. and the third most expensive in the world. Citi Field is costing a comparatively cheap $800 million. Both have reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies.

Queens Crap scored a copy of the letter Council members opposed to the Willets Point redevelopment plan sent to City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden yesterday afternoon. The missive says, in part:

We write to share with you our absolute opposition to the current Willets Point Development Plan. The project that comes before the Department of City Planning on August 13th is far from the best our city can offer for a long-term plan that will affect hundreds of thousands of residents for decades to come…Since the first community meetings of the Flushing redevelopment process, when community residents expressed a desire to include the Iron Triangle in any long-term development plans, the details of this plan have been determined not by residents, but by the Economic Development Corporation.

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I was on my way to work recently when I noticed Park Place in Prospect Heights totally shut down to cars. Only one remained: a purple mini cooper on the block between Flatbush and Vanderbilt. A tow truck scooped it up and made way for huge trucks to rip up the pavement. For a few weeks, it was difficult to cross the street. Small pebbles would wedge themselves into the soles of my shoes. Wind kicked up dust on Vanderbilt. I held my breath.

A lot of people have been holding their breath in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights lately, waiting for the potential onslaught of new residents.  read more »

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has proposed legislation to cut the wait time for developers who submit plans for new co-op and condo projects.

The legislation would increase funding for the Real Estate Finance Bureau (REFB), the group in the attorney general's office responsible for approving encyclopedic offering plans detailing everything from floor plans to certificates from architects before a developer can start advertising or pre-selling any apartments. In the past five years, the REFB has been inundated with 300 percent more condo and co-op conversion applications, according to the press release issued by Mr. Cuomo's office Thursday.

The legislation, which is currently in committee in both chambers of the New YorkLegislature, would also increase the cap from $20,000 to $30,000 on filing fees for projects over $5 million for the first time since 1989 to cover the cost of additional REFB staff.

Construction spending in New York City should hit a record $25.6 billion in 2007, according to a new report from the New York Building Congress. Total construction spending in the city reached $24.6 billion in 2006--yes, a record--up 18 percent from 2005. The amounts, including the 2007 projection, take account of both publicly funded and privately funded construction. So, you have everyting from roads and tunnels to luxury condos and top-flight office space factored in here.

Non-residential construction has been especially hot as of late. Spending on it rose from $4.1 billion in 2005 to $7.9 billion in 2006, according to the Building Congress, an increase of 93 percent. That amount should be $8.6 billion in 2007.

The hearty spending projections shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with the commercial and residential markets in the city. Residential sales remain strong, and demand for office space remains high. Also, the city, the state, the federal government, and hybrids of any and all of them (such as the Port Authority), are spending a lot lately on construction and maintenance projects. The Building Congress expects public construction spending will reach $12.3 billion in 2007, up from $11.9 billion in 2006.

Full release after the jump.

 

 

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A considerable chunk of Manhattan’s condominium projects proposed for 2007—nearly half—will be constructed above 86th Street, and many of them will be built by first-time or little-known developers.As reported in this week’s Observer, some 30 of the 65 planned condominium projects submitted to the State Attorney General’s office, between Jan. 1 and May 7, are above 86th Street. And a vast majority of those will be above 110th Street.

But instead of having backers with names like Zeckendorf, Trump or even Padeh, these $20 million new-construction and conversion projects—like the one going up at Seventh Avenue and 127th Street—are being built by outfits like NYC Designs Inc., the Poko Partners and Mann Realty. A $27 million conversion at 1890 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard at 114th Street, for example, is slated to be built by something called Tahl Propp Equities.  read more »

Marc Altheim, one of the partners behind the controversial affordable apartment towers on Manhattan's East Side, wrote in to us with a rebuttal.

Chief among them: that even though the apartments are expensive to build (a function of high construction costs and land prices, Atlantic has said), they are not taking money away from other low-income projects since they would use tax-exempt bonds--not grants--that the developers would pay back with interest.

We should remember that this subsidy is not entirely free to the U.S. taxpayer, however: the investors are paying no taxes on proceeds from the bonds, which means the I.R.S. has to go begging elsewhere--to ordinary folks, perhaps--to keep the federal budget balanced (or not balanced, as may be the case these days). But we've checked and the city's Housing Development Corporation backs up Atlantic's claim that there are plenty of tax-exempt bonds--authorized by Congress and doled out by the state--to finance qualified projects in New York.

Outright grants, administered by the city Housing Preservation and Development, may be another story.  read more »

His full response, which was posted as a comment to a previous post with some of the back story, is after the jump.

-Matthew Schuerman