George Xu’s Century Development is transforming Flushing with big mixed-use projects, and YIMBY has a look at their latest development, a 14-story condo-hotel hybrid planned at 134-37 35th Avenue, on the corner of Farrington Street.
Dubbed the Farrington, the building will have 89 condos, eight retail spaces, 176 hotel rooms, a restaurant, meeting rooms and a “community club.” The plans are incredibly similar to 134-03 35th Avenue, another residential-retail-community project the developers filed for the lot next door last December. Xu first tried to develop that property, a construction supply company he’d owned since 1999. But he ended up winning approval for plans he filed on the adjacent plot at No. 134-37. The developer picked up the 38,775-square-foot plot for just $4,300,000 in 2003.
Xu first tried to get the through-block site rezoned back in 2003, and the city finally rezoned the two industrial lots to allow mixed-use commercial development in 2010.
The condos will be relatively large by Flushing standards, averaging about 1,175 square feet a piece, with a total area of 101,084 square feet. The restaurant, conference rooms, and pool will take up the cellar levels, followed by parking on the ground floor and hotel rooms on the second through seventh floors. Then the top half of the tower will host 13 apartments per floor.
Overall, the building will have 16,774 square feet of community facilities and nearly 84,000 square feet of commercial space. Back in 2010, Xu and his brother were trying to find space for the SelfHelp Prince Street Senior Center, but a different non-profit will likely fill the community space now.
There will also be 186 parking spaces between the cellar and ground floor—far more than zoning would typically require. But unlike most parts of the city, Flushing developers typically include much more parking than they have to, because the area’s Chinese and Korean community often drives to downtown Flushing from further flung parts of Queens.
Century first filed these plans in September 2013, and then they demolished a large, two-story warehouse on the corner of 35th Avenue and Harrington Street last year. The DOB approved work permits in July, so construction will hopefully begin soon.
Raymond Chan Architect will design the building, as with all of Century’s projects.
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Beautiful design and concept. Architect Chan is a master of the craft.