38real estate Queens size rebound It’s quite incredible how quickly things turned around. At the end of 2012 we were writing about the toll that the long recession, housing market bubble, terrorist threats and hurricane might have taken on our city. We weren’t out of the water yet and with all this rain who would have thought we could be? And yet, with Long Island City condominium prices fast approaching $1,000 per square foot (and demand not quite as high as Williamsburg or DUMBO, which are said to be harder to get into than Manhattan) and inventory of properties being absorbed quickly, it’s the go-go days again! Bidding wars are very common and a contract issued on Friday can be replaced by two others, at higher price, by Tuesday. Commercial leasing isn’t quite as hot, but the pessimism and concern from landlords a year ago has been replaced with either positive disbelief or outright confident optimism. A wellknown long-time LIC resident and prominent local business owner, now also the developer of the new condo building at 5-29 51st Avenue, across from Ale Wife, is leaving the neighborhood after he has sold his last property and vacated the last office - after 40 years on the same block! Right next door a number of interesting commercial tenants are negotiating on spaces that hopefully BY DAVID DYNAK will turn the block into a nice retail pocket. Soon this block, that will connect the new Hunters Point South developments and the new school with Vernon Boulevard, will start seeing significantly more foot traffic, therefore rising rent value of commercial storefronts. A NYSC and another gym are rumored to be looking for something along the waterfront near Gantry Park, and we are starting to see more of certain Manhattan businesses (eyewear manufacturer, chocolate factory, more non-profits) slowly turn to Queens for cheaper rents and more space. This can influence property owners to improve their properties to suit these new higher quality tenants. Our borough’s own St. John’s University has just sold a building in downtown Manhattan for more than $200 million and while their school of accounting and taxation will remain in the City in a new, yet-to-be-found, leased building, Courtesy of Plaxall Long Island City JUNE ARTS EVENTS Calendar Plaxall.com LICProperties.com 2013 MoMA PS1 Noguchi Museum 22-25 Jackson Ave., LIC, NY 11101 718.784.2084 MoMAPS1.org 9-01 33rd Rd. (at Vernon Boulevard) JUNE 2013 I LIC COURIER I www.queenscourier.com Long Island City, NY 11106 718.204.7088 • www.noguchi.org Sculpture Center April 22 - July 22, 2013 Better Homes Jonathas de Andrade, Neïl Beloufa, Keith Edmier, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Robert Gober, Tamar Guimarães, Anthea Hamilton, E’wao Kagoshima, Yuki Kimura, KwieKulik, Paulina Olowska, Kirsten Pieroth, Josephine Pryde, Carissa Rodriguez, Martha Rosler, and Günes Terkol You will express yourself in your house, whether you want to or not....” - Elsie de Wolfe, The House in Good Taste, 1913. Better Homes brings together a group of artists who examine the construction of the interior through design and homemaking from critical perspectives. As the notion of home shifted in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and interior space was being redefined and redecorated according to the aspirations of modernity, the interior became integral to the construction of the subject. Interiors were an extension of identity, representing gender, fashion, and class, and re-establishing what constituted the private and the public. Now, in the 21st century, interior design has been professionalized and packaged for the mass market. With the proliferation of department stores and publications instructing consumers on how to make the best dinners, living rooms, and lifestyles, how has the notion of domestic space, and all it encapsulates, been redefined in contemporary culture? What are the impacts of shifting ideas of family, identity, politics and consumerism in the private realm? Touching on the history of the interior to its present iterations, the artists in the exhibition examine displays of domesticity, as constructed through spaces and things. Better Homes is curated by Ruba Katrib, SculptureCenter Curator. The exhibition is accompanied by a full color publication with a text by Katrib and a contribution by poet Ariana Reines. 44-19 Purves St. LIC, NY 11101 718.937.0727 • www.sculpture-center.org MAY 12–SEP 2 EXPO 1: New York The concept of EXPO 1: New York was developed by Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator-at-Large, MoMA, with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of the Serpentine Gallery; and advised by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design and Director of Research and Development, MoMA; Peter Eleey, Curator, MoMA PS1; Pedro Gadanho, Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA; Laura Hoptman, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA; and Jenny Schlenzka, Associate Curator, MoMA PS1. EXPO 1: New York is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator-at-Large, MoMA with Christopher Y. Lew, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1; and Lizzie Gorfaine, Curatorial Assistant, MoMA PS1; with specific curators for several of the modules and exhibitions, assisted by Eliza Ryan, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1; Jocelyn Miller, Curatorial Assistant, MoMA PS1; and Margaret Aldredge, Curatorial Assistant, MoMA PS1. The 2012-13 Volkswagen Fellows are Sophie Diehl, Alhena Katsof, Lynn Maliszewksi, Alex Sloane, and Nick Yarbrough. Highlights from the Collection: Reworked Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - Sunday, September 1, 2013 This summer’s installation of highlights from the collection is organized around four instances in which Noguchi returned to an earlier body of work to rethink, redevelop, reproduce or restore it. The first example includes two groups of objects Noguchi made inspired by Constantin Brancusi in the 1930s, following his apprenticeship in Brancusi’s studio, when he was still very much under the Romanian’s influence and two decades later, in homage to his mentor, following Brancusi’s death in 1957. Highlights from the Collection: Recent Acquisitions Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - Sunday, September 1, 2013 These pieces come from two major Japanese collections. Highlighted by the stunning “Love of Two Boards” is a major gift of works from Noguchi’s friend and collaborator, Tsutomu Hiroi, a famous kite-maker who helped Noguchi develop his Akari light sculptures. The other group comes from the family of an assistant of Noguchi’s and features a small centipede which relates to his “Even the Centipede,” the great masterpiece of his work in clay, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Area 5: Cut and Fold Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - Sunday, September 1, 2013 Noguchi’s spatial intelligence (his ability to visualize in three dimensions) was extraordinary. He was capable not only of constructing an object composed of many elements in his mind, but rotating it on three axes and placing it in an environment. We live in an age when the wide availability of sophisticated imaging programs has made this ability seem somewhat less exceptional - making it hard to appreciate the difficulties involved in moving an idea from the mind’s eye to realization at full scale with graph paper, hand tools and the occasional help of a friend or assistant this sale will add a nice chuck of change to the university’s endowment. It pays to invest in real estate! And NY State has designated LIC as “high demand” area for schools, therefore opening its wallet to help private education developers locate and build out new facilities. Finally, as one more proof that the County of Queens is not only catching up to Brooklyn’s international cool image but aspires to carve its own brand identity, Queens Brewery has officially launched and released the first 70,000 bottles and cans to the market. That’s right, a beer named after not a Civil War patriot or some little (Blue Point) piece of land on Long Island but one bearing a name of a swath of land occupied by 2.2 million folks. On my recent vacation to Jamaica (the Caribbean island, not a neighborhood near St. John’s University) I have noticed how the island’s locally made beer, Red Stripe Lager, is a source of local pride, in addition to significant export income. Known by virtually every beer drinker by now, Red Stripe can be purchased everywhere in New York and in the U.S. There are only 2.8 million people living in Jamaica and their brand of beer has been brewed since 1938, so Queens Brewery seems long past due here. Let’s hope it tastes and sells as well as its older and, at least for now, more famous brother from Brooklyn. 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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