Chris Xu’s Century Construction and Development Group is slowly transforming Queens with huge mixed-use projects. Last month he filed plans for a 79-story skyscraper next to One Court Square in Long Island City. Now, YIMBY has renderings for his ambitious 14-story tower at 134-03 35th Avenue in Flushing.
In 2014, King’s USA Group acquired the two-story, 100,000-square-foot commercial building – dubbed Assi Plaza and located at 131-01 39th Avenue, in Downtown Flushing – for $54.6 million. Now, the developer is filing applications for a new two-story, 165,337-square-foot building with 58,349 square feet of commercial space, a storage component, and staging areas for transporting goods. Perkins Eastman would design the 51-foot-tall structure, but the new filings come just before the area could get rezoned. Last fall, YIMBY brought you the latest details on the Flushing West Rezoning and the site in question, located between College Point Boulevard and Flushing Creek, is at the center of the proposal’s special waterfront district. In other words, the site could eventually accommodate mixed-use buildings of up to 10 or 14 stories. Plans for the site are probably not set in stone, and the rezoning’s public review process is expected to kick off this spring. Permits to demolish the existing commercial building were filed in February.
Back in November of 2013, YIMBY revealed renderings of Hudson Lights, a multi-building mixed-use development, in downtown Fort Lee, New Jersey. The three-block project is bound by Main Street, Lemoine Avenue, Bruce Reynolds Boulevard, and Park Avenue (formerly Martha Washington Way). Its first phase, which includes 140,000 square feet of commercial-retail and 276 rental apartments in the form of 12- and three-story buildings, is now wrapping up construction. NorthJersey.com reports 75 percent of the retail space is now leased. CycleBar, SeeSaw, Linwood Wine & Liquor, CVS, a Capital One bank, a Coldwell Banker office, multiple restaurants, and an eight-screen iPic movie theater have all leased space. Opening is expected this summer. The approved second phase of the project will include two taller buildings with an additional 201 residential units, a 175-key hotel, and 50,000 square feet of retail space. Illinois-based Tucker Development Corp. is the developer.
A 35-story mixed-use project in the Financial District can now go forward, thanks to approval from the Landmarks Preservation on Tuesday. The project is at 77 Greenwich Street (a.k.a. 42 Trinity Place) and needed LPC approval because it would cantilever over the Robert and Anne Dickey House, an individual landmark immediately to the south at 67 Greenwich Street (a.k.a. 28-30 Trinity Place). The changes to the design weren’t too dramatic and one of them was described as a “no-brainer” by the LPC chair.
A 150-year-old landmarked warehouse at 80 White Street in Chinatown is about to become offices, retail, and one apartment.
Alteration plans were filed with the Department of Buildings yesterday to convert the six-story loft building between Broadway and Lafayette Street. Construction tool manufacturing company General Tools has occupied the building for decades, and the firm’s former chairman, Gerald Weinstein, has owned the property for at least 40 years. Tax photos from the ’70s show the firm’s name emblazoned above the cast iron columns on the ground floor.
