Real Estate
LIC Summit
www.qns.com I LIC COURIER I JULY 2017 19
BY ANGELA MATUA
AMATUA@QNS.COM
Leaders in real estate, business and
government attended the fourth annual
LIC Summit on June 20 to discuss the
future of Long Island City’s growth.
Hosted by the LIC Partnership at
the Museum of the Moving Image, the
event brought together stakeholders to
discuss how to maintain the neighbor-hood’s
mixed-use identity.
Seth Pinsky, executive vice president
of RXR Realty, said Long Island City is
the “only truly mixed-use neighborhood
in New York City.”
Pinsky was joined on the panel by
Kathryn S. Wylde, president and CEO
of Partnership for New York City; James
Patchett, president and CEO of the NYC
Economic Development Corporation;
and Carlo A. Scissura, president and
CEO of New York Building Congress.
“I live in Brooklyn, and much of Brook-lyn
feels like a victim of its own success
and I think you got ahead of that more
than any other community in the city by
getting organized early, planning early,
paying attention to what was going on,”
Wylde said. “So I think we all owe you LIC
Partnership and residents a lot for that
because I think this is a model for how
we can support economic change and
growth in a constructive, positive way.”
The majority of the panel was fo-cused
on how the private sector and
government could work together to
foster the mixed-use character of Long
Island City. Most of the new buildings
cropping up in the neighborhood have
been apartments and condos. According
to a recent report, a record number of
rental units were built in Long Island
City from 2010 through 2016, eclipsing
other large cities nationwide that also
experienced a spike in development.
The incentives given to developers
who build residential units is partly to
blame for the record rise in residen-tial
units and lack of commercial or
retail space, the panel argued. Patchett
pointed out that two large, city-owned
developments will be leased out to
mostly commercial tenants.
A 1.5 million-square-foot, mixed-use
development at 1 Gotham Center will
attract commercial tenants, and two sites
on 44th Drive and Vernon Boulevard
that offer 1.4 million buildable square
feet will also attract developers looking
to bring in commercial office space.
“We’re putting our thumbs to the
scale to encourage more office devel-opment
particularly in places like Long
Island City, which are located so close
to the core of Manhattan,” Patchett said.
Developers on the panel also called
for a change in tax policies for those
looking to build commercial, retail or
manufacturing. The implementation of
421-a or Affordable New York grants
tax breaks to developers building afford-able
housing, but there aren’t equivalent
programs for buildings with other uses.
“I think we have to use all of these
tools together,” Patchett said. “If you are
bold enough to build a new office build-ing
in Long Island City, you do receive
a tax cut but we’re still not seeing a
lot of new commercial space without
specific city intervention.”
Pinsky argued that to make sure that
Long Island City remains a mixed-use
community, developers must build more,
and must also keep spaces zoned for
manufacturing.
“In a city where we have growing
inequality, something that the mayor
has underlined and emphasized, one of
the reasons we have growing inequality
is because we don’t have those path-ways
to the middle class that existed
in the past.”
He added that manufacturing jobs
provide good wages to people who may
not have a formal education. Pinsky also
said the industrial sector “is what allows
the city to function.”
“If we want to build skyscrapers,
the cement has to come from some-where,”
he said. “If we want to have
restaurants in Long Island City that
everyone from all over the world wants
to come to, the food has to come from
somewhere.”
In the “Retail as Placemaking” panel
business owners and developers spoke
about the dearth of retail in Long Island
City and how they expect that to evolve
in the next few years.
Donna Drimer, owner of the art gal-lery
and gift shop Matted LIC, moved
into the neighborhood eight years ago.
Though the growth in residential units
has helped her business, she said the
lack of retail stores near Matted LIC
have been disappointing.
Located at 46-36 Vernon Blvd.,
Drimer said two retail stores closed
on the block, which makes Matted the
only shop.
“I’m the only destination,” she said.
“There is no place else to go shopping, so
rather than coming to me, it’s a lot easier
to hop back on the 7 and go into Grand
Central and go wherever to go shopping.”
Aaron Fishbein, director of retail real
estate at Winick Realty Group, said he
is hopeful about retail in the neighbor-hood.
So far, many of the interested
clients have been fitness, medical and
education tenants.
He calls this the “first wave” of retail
tenants and predicts that as more resi-dential
buildings attract people to the
neighborhood, restaurants will move in,
followed by big box stores. He added
that the neighborhood “has everything
it needs for retail” including transporta-tion
options and a growing number of
families moving in.
“Retailers see the value; they see
the lack of competition,” Fishbein said.
“There’s a lot of interest.”
Photo by Angela Matua/QNS
