IF WE BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME www.mainstreetradiology.com • 718.428.1500 BY DAVID DYNAK www.www.mainstreetradiology.of mainstreetradiology.www.mainstreetradiology. Neuroradiology Nuclear Medicine/PET Musculoskeletal Magnetic Resonance Imaging Mammography/Women's Imaging Interventional Radiology Cross Sectional/Body Imaging Neuroradiology Neuroradiology Musculoskeletal Mammography/Women's Imaging Cross Sectional/Body Imaging Downtown Flushing Office 136-25 37th Ave. Flushing, NY 11354 32nd Avenue Office 32-25 Francis Lewis Blvd. Bayside, NY 11358 Musculoskeletal Northern Blvd. Office 44-01 Francis Lewis Blvd. Bayside, NY 11361 Mammography/Women's Imaging Proud to be the Official Radiologist of The New York Cosmos Cross Sectional/Body Imaging Jackson Heights Office 72-06 Northern Blvd. Jackson Heights, NY 11372 Neuroradiology Musculoskeletal Mammography/Women's Imaging Cross Sectional/Body Imaging st the 2015 THE QUEENS QueensCourier.com Place ■REAL ESTATE I’ve waited seven years for the fireworks to return and it did not disappoint! Four barges parked right in full view of my rooftop. I’m not about to abandon my Amazon Prime for shopping but thank you Macy’s! Summer vacation is upon us but real estate sales and development activity are in full swing. In New York City we skipped any kind of progressive recovery and, as I had written before, we reflated the previously-burst real estate bubble pricing way past the pre-recession levels. Local developers who find dearth of reasonable residential deals are finally turning to commercially zoned lots and hope that retail and office rents keep going up, but also that quality businesses find western Queens attractive. If you build it, they will come, right? It worked with residential development from 2001 through present and, as a result, we have failed to add proportionate amount of commercial construction in the Astoria- LIC-Sunnyside corridor. It remains to be seen if the commercial “pre-construction” will succeed the same. Back then prices of condos and rentals in western Queens was less than half of any neighborhood in Manhattan. This isn’t necessarily the case with retail or office rents in best parts of LIC or Astoria today, so I have my doubts. We are getting a new dental office on Fifth Street in the new union building. More medical services should be coming as the neighborhood’s population grows. It is confirmed that luxury residential brokerage Brown Harris Stevens will open an office along Vernon Boulevard, marking their return for the first time since 2010. You can expect more of real estate and restaurants to open, as those appear to be the two kinds of businesses not scared by the price tags of retail stores in the area. Certain local success stories like the Food Cellar, or the SHI / Skinny’s Cantina / Kavala family love it here so much, they plan to keep opening new stores in the area, and they are followed by others, creating a network of local multi-location retail entrepreneurs similar to one that had developed in north Brooklyn 10 years ago. Never underestimate the power of local know-how, economies of scale and real estate connections when it comes to neighborhood retail. Following in the mold of the Standard Motors Building on Northern Boulevard, the Falchi Building and The Factory on 47th Avenue behind LaGuardia College, another large industrial loft property has undergone a total conversion to office, at 47-16 Austell Place. These aren’t small artsy lofts of 900-1500 square feet but quarter to full floors intended to look and feel like buildings in Chelsea or Tribeca at only $5-$10 below the most affordable office space of Manhattan. This means the smallest office division will cost around $130,000 per year and full floor over $500K per year. And, because these spaces need to be built by the landlord, the term of each lease will need to be long enough, and tenant’s creditworthiness good enough, for these leases to get signed. So far I have not had much success convincing companies from Manhattan to move, mostly because the difference in rent is not great enough, and the fear of moving out of the City is still an issue. “None of my clients would come to Queens” is still the default response. Give it a couple more years and many will have to make the hard choice: LIC or New Jersey/Long Island, or closing their business altogether. In a matter of a few months two seats have been vacated on my condominium building’s board. They purchased their apartments in 2008 pre-construction, rode out the recession, and are now selling at a good profit because they need a bigger or want their children to attend school somewhere more suburban. Sure, the trend of leaving for the suburbs has slowed down as more young families, especially with only one child, are staying in the city, but it seems like 20-30 percent of those who came here in the mid-to-late 2000s have now left. They will not be around when the next amazing brewery, or indoor organic market, or some cool tech company announce their opening, and more services like gyms and private schools come here, but they will always remember the times when our waterfront park was nice and quiet even on weekends and you could ride a bike hands-free in the middle of Vernon Boulevard at 7 p.m. on a weeknight, and when getting a garage spot was a luxury, not a necessity. 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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