38real estate FROM TH IS ANGLE What was at the time one of the most impressive purchase transactions in Queens has now become a very newsworthy return on investment brag, adding to the mystery of the increasing prices in real estate. Lloyd Goldman’s BLDG Management purchased a three-story, 322,390-square-foot industrialcommercial building located at 47-25 34th St. in February 2013, for what at the time was a gamble of a high price—$40.73 million. Sure, its rent comes from commercial tenants a notch better, on average, than your average Long Island City industrial property – Ralph Lauren, TEC System, BY DAVID DYNAK Gander and White, REMCO, and Eleni’s Bakery – all on stable, long-term, practically guaranteed leases. But even by LIC standards, this isn’t a sexy spot. No residential development possibilities in a foreseeable future, no way to add floors, and almost two full blocks from the 7 train. So, what do you make of this? On March 14, barely a year since that purchase, the building was sold again, this time for $60 million. That’s right, 50 percent higher in one year and a half. The buyer, a real estate fund managed by the Midtownbased 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 APRIL 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. APRIL 2014 I LIC COURIER I www.queenscourier.com Brickman, believes that the property offers business tenants “relatively inexpensive rental options compared to Manhattan,” with asking rents ranging from $13 to $19 per square foot on mostly larger spaces. This makes it the second most expensive sale since the end of the recession, after the acquisition of the Falchi Building behind LaGuardia Community College and five blocks to the west, for $81.2 million, to the firm that also runs the Chelsea Market in Manhattan. Smart investors tell me there must be an angle not yet visible to all that the new owners see. Even with the impressive roster of tenant and rent, the price of $186 per square foot on an industrial property this large does not make sense, unless you have additional angle. Speaking of an angle, a retail client who operates a business on Vernon Boulevard has been looking to open a new concept gourmet store/bar for a while after observing similar businesses thrive in Manhattan, Astoria and Brooklyn. The client has finally landed a new retail space on one of the blocks between Vernon Boulevard and 5th Street – $48 per square foot annually with hefty annual increases – and he did not flinch. More than 30 percent of his current customers “ask for this every time they come in” so the concept looks solid from the start. With the Blend on the Water restaurant boasting fully booked reservations almost every evening, the dining crowds are finally starting to notice western Queens as a destination. From this angle, it sure looks like no matter how much prospective new business tenants complain of unrealistically high rents and, no matter the lack of good retail or office space along the western Queens waterfront, the small business owners, developers and investors are stubbornly finding ways to keep coming. 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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