54 The QUEE NS Courier • october 16, 2014 for breaking news visit www.queenscourier.com Historic 124-year-old Woodhaven Wyckoff Building sells for nearly $3M BY LIAM LA GUERE lguerre@queenscourier.com @liamlaguerre A Woodhaven Village relic is trading hands after its owner went bankrupt. The historic 124-year-old Wyckoff Building, which is known for its old-style architecture, was sold for $2,801,188, according to city records filed Oct. 8. The Ozone Realty LLC, which bought the property on the corner of 95th Avenue and 93rd Street in 2007, filed for bankruptcy last year after failing to meet the mortgage on the building, which was held by New York Community Bank, according to city records. SDF30 93-02 Ozone Park LLC is the new owner of the building, records show. The building has six residential apartments and two commercial units throughout four floors and more than 13,000 square feet of space. Its architecture has characteristics of Queen Anne masonry and Romanesque Revival-style semi-arched windows — features found in few properties in the area. The former home of Woodhaven real estate firm Wyckoff & Co., according to published reports, it remains a representative of Woodhaven Village, although that part of the neighborhood is now Ozone Park. The Wyckoff Building also had a Moorish-style dome atop its roof as older pictures of the property show. The building was falling apart in the 1970s but later restored, according to Project Woodhaven, a blog that chronicles the neighborhood. Photo courtesy of Project Woodhaven Photo courtesy of Nicholas Strini/PropertyShark MASSIVE DOWNTOWN JAMAICA DEVELOPMENT SITE SELLS FOR $22 MILLION BY LIAM LA GUERE lguerre@queenscourier.com @liamlaguerre Downtown Jamaica’s development boom is expected by many sometime in the future, but one recent sale suggests developers may be springing into action already. The nearly 90,000-square-foot building and parking garage site at 163-05 and 163-25 Archer Ave. in the heart of the downtown area traded hands for $22 million, according to property records filed Tuesday. Gertz Plaza sold the site to Jamaica Tower, which has yet to file any building or demolition plans on the site, but it has tons of development potential, according to Massey Knakal Realty Services. “This sale signifies the return of the residential development market in downtown Jamaica,” said Massey Knakal’s Brian Sarath, who handled the transaction. “It is the largest site to trade since the downturn and will be a catalyst for the Jamaica development market moving forward.” The site currently has a one-story building with an accompanying seven story parking garage. The building, which has 10 units, currently only uses 32,471 square feet of the site and some units are vacant, while the garage is 280,000 square feet. It is a developer’s dream with 719,736 square feet of buildable space near a gigantic transportation hub of subways, LIRR, the AirTrain and dozens of buses. “We received numerous bids in a short period of time from developers that were priced out of other areas in the city and see tremendous value in the downtown Jamaica market,” Sarath said. Advocates and public officials have been trying to lure developers and business to Jamaica in recent years with incentives such as a 368-block rezoning of the downtown area and using York College as a tax-free haven for moving companies and start-ups. York College, which is located across from the site, also hopes to help usher in development and new businesses as a START-UP NY site, and is offering new businesses about 3.5 acres of land on-campus. Photo courtesy of Christopher Bride/ PropertyShark
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