Development is starting to pick up in Rego Park, a suburban piece of eastern Queens nestled between Forest Hills, Corona, and Elmhurst. Today, we have a look at a rental building under construction at 97-45 63rd Drive, at the corner of 98th Street.
Several multifamily homes were demolished to make way for the building last month, and now excavation is underway. The project is progressing pretty quickly, considering developer Kenny Liu filed the first round of permits in September.
When it’s complete, the mixed-use building will rise 75 feet and hold a combination of apartments and community facilities. There will be 50 units divided across 41,280 square feet of residential space, offering average units of 825 square feet.
The first two floors will have two apartments and 12,000 square feet of medical offices. Each of the remaining stories will host six to 10 units, topped by a penthouse duplex and a shared roof deck.
Many new buildings in eastern Queens end up looking brutally functional and too modern for their surroundings, but this design gets points for a glassy base and the varying black and white facade panels. The sunshades on the corner are another nice touch, because they keep the south-facing units with two walls of windows from heating up too quickly. Angelo & Anthony Ng’s Architects Studio are responsible for the design.
The development is replacing five homes, four of which sold for just under a million dollars each, and the fifth, largest home went for over $2 million. Liu snatched up the 12,000-square-foot site for a combined $6,149,200 in five separate sales last year.
There are few new rental projects in the area, and rents are definitely strong enough to support new construction. Vornado is wrapping up construction on its ambitious, 24-story tower on top of the Rego Center Mall just a few blocks away. Studios there start at $2,025, one-bedrooms at $2,360, and two-bedrooms at $3,180. We expect similar rents at 97-45 63rd Drive, which is even closer to the 63rd Drive-Rego Park stop on the M and R lines.
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For the record, Rego Park is a lot of things but suburban is not one of them.
Suburban. Clearly the writer has never been to Rego Park
Rego Park/Elmhurst are one of the densest neighborhoods in Queens
More like Western Central Queens, definitely not Eastern Queens