38real estate WARMING UP TO JACKSON AVENUE The last time I wrote about the weather in November, I recall using words like “balmy,” referring to unusually warm fall temperatures. But, as the local real estate market keeps heating up like global warming, despite slightly higher interest rates, mother winter had different plans for New York. I’ve seen five degrees on my car’s dashboard, five degrees! Several snow storms and at least 30 days of sub-30 degree weather have taken toll on the roads and buildings. Reports of leaking roofs – unlike the rain, snow and ice melt slower, are heavier, and do more damage– have kept property managers, supers and BY DAVID DYNAK landlords busier than ever. They’ll take it, as long as values of their buildings keep going up, which they have, at incredible rates since January 2013. Locally, the prices of residential properties are now well above its peak prior to the recession. According to an esteemed residential broker, a 1,168-square- foot two-bedroom on mid-floor with a tiny balcony facing a railroad is going for $1.1 million, all cash offer. It wasn’t long ago that three bedrooms were listing for less and selling for $900,000. Despite prices of retail spaces going over $50 per square foot, a stretch of Jackson Avenue between Vernon Boulevard and the Pulaski Bridge – one lagging for years in retail appeal, rents and activity behind Vernon Boulevard and even side ARTS EVENTS Calendar Courtesy of Plaxall Long Island City 2014 MoMA PS1 Noguchi Museum 22-25 Jackson Ave., LIC, NY 11101 718.784.2084 MoMAPS1.org 9-01 33rd Road (at Vernon Blvd) Long Island City, NY 11106 718.204.7088 • www.noguchi.org Plaxall.com LICProperties.com Museum of the Moving Image 35 Ave. at 37 St., Astoria, NY 11106 718.777.6800 www.movingimage.us MARCH Maria Lassnig On view March 9–May 25, 2014 Maria Lassnig (Austrian, b. 1919) is one of the most important contemporary painters and can be seen as a pioneer in many areas of art today. Emphatically refusing to make “pictures,” she has long focused on ways of representing her internal world. Using the term “body awareness,” Lassnig has regularly tried to paint the way her body feels to her from the inside, rather than attempting to depict it from without. Christoph Schlingensief On view March 9–June 30, 2014 Christoph Schlingensief (1960– 2010) was involved with a range of disciplines—including installation, film, theater, opera, and television— and created provocative works that stirred controversy and challenged the status quo. His well-known “German trilogy” consisted of the feature films 100 Years of Adolf Hitler (1988–89), The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990), and Terror 2000—Intensive Care Unit Germany (1992). INSTALLATION The Reaction GIF: Moving Image as Gesture March 12–May 15 Computer-mediated communication increasingly informs the way we interact with friends and peers. Email, text message, chat, and any number of social websites and mobile apps focus conversation primarily into text, supplanting the many nonverbal cues like rhythm, intonation, volume, and gesture that humans have used to communicate for tens of thousands of years. Home Movies EXHIBITION Jim Campbell: Rhythms of Perception March 21–June 15 Jim Campbell: Rhythms of Perception is the first solo museum exhibition in New York of the San Francisco-based artist Jim Campbell (b.1956), who is best known for his evocative low resolution works. This career-spanning exhibition features over 20 works, ranging from early experimental film, interactive works, and low-resolution videos to large-scale installations. An innovator in the use of technology, Campbell integrates and manipulates computers and custom electronics into visually arresting artworks. EXHIBITION Behind the Screen Ongoing The core exhibition of the Museum, Behind the Screen is a one-of-a-kind experience that immerses visitors in the creative and technical process of producing, promoting, and presenting films, television shows, and digital entertainment. Occupying 15,000 square feet of the Museum’s second and third floors, the exhibition reveals the skills, material resources, and artistic decisions that go into making moving images. Behind the Screen also introduces visitors to the history of the moving image, from nineteenth-century optical toys to the present-day impact of digital tools on film editing and post-production. Highlights from the Collection: Noguchi Archaic/ Noguchi Modern Wednesday, March 5, 2014 - Sunday, August 31, 2014 The only thing Noguchi loved more than the promise of the future was the sense of belonging to the Earth he derived from working with million and billion year old pieces of rock. Noguchi Archaic/ Noguchi Modern explores a stylistic wormhole that seems to link the ancient past and the distant future in his work. Noguchi's Early Drawings: 1927-1932 Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - Sunday, May 25, 2014 Reflecting in 1973 on his formative years as an artist, Noguchi remarked "I seem to have lost my facility but I was facile at drawing. I could do anything. It was easy for me." Noguchi's Early Drawings bears out this confidence. Each of the drawings on view reveals a very different facet of his quest to form a unique artistic identity in the years following his apprenticeship with Brancusi. MARCH 2014 I LIC COURIER I www.queenscourier.com streets towards the water – is suddenly bursting with action. More than a year after a children’s store, pet shop, Subway and State Farm Insurance moved in, there are a few newcomers! At 10-37 Jackson Avenue, the mysterious corner building which was a bar where Tom Cruise’s protagonist from the movie “Cocktail” mixed drinks to the tune of 80s music, a new restaurant/bar named Station LIC is slated to open this summer. Then, 10-31 Jackson Avenue is said to have been leased a couple of weeks ago (to whom I am in no liberty to say), and across the street, left of the Irish Center, at 10-42 Jackson Avenue, a new medical office is rumored. Hop over one block north and pick up a menu from Hibino LIC, originally from Brooklyn, at 10-70 Jackson Avenue. With Manetta’s Italian restaurant, BANY food, a real estate office, dry cleaner, day care, and two banks also all on the same stretch, we’ve got ourselves a nice retail pocket. Retailers like being bunched up together so this is a good development for all of them. If only the folks in charge of 1 Vernon Jackson finally got the job done and rented their store – it has now been vacant since 2010. An $80 per square foot for low traffic area in Queens sure takes a while to get. It did not take long at all for our pop-up noodle shop friends of Mu Ramen to take off. Since I had mentioned them in January’s column, they have found a permanent location in Long Island City and have been written up in The New York Times on March 4th. No better way to warm up on a sub-zero day in New York than with a cup of steaming soup! David Dynak is a real estate broker at First Pioneer Properties and an LIC resident. He’s lived in Western Queens since 1993.
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