New development rarely arrives in Forest Hills, Queens, thanks to restrictive zoning and a densely built landscape of co-op buildings and single-family homes. But the city upzoned a small piece of the picturesque neighborhood just south of Queens Boulevard in 2009.
Parkoff Organization has acquired the single-story, 12,200 square-foot retail building at 107-01 71st Avenue, near the LIRR stop in Forest Hills, for $28 million. The property has roughly 20,000 square feet of unused air rights, and the new owners plan to add multiple floors to the existing structure. Citibank currently leases out the building and is planning to operate on the ground floor after redevelopment.
The construction of brownstones and other handsome pre-war townhouses in the outer boroughs ended with World War II, but the development of similar single- and two-family homes in more modern styles did not. More austere red brick homes…
In 2009, a handful of blocks in Forest Hills – between Queens Boulevard and Austin Street, Yellowstone Boulevard and 72nd Road – were upzoned, to allow higher residential densities in the commercial core of one of…