WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES AUGUST 1, 2019 3
Amazon eyes Maspeth for distribution
BY BILL PARRY
BPARRY@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
Nothing happens along Newtown
Creek without Mitch Waxman
knowing about it fi rst, so he
was not surprised to see Crain’s report
that Amazon was eyeing an industrial
property in Maspeth for a new
distribution facility.
As the historian for the Newtown
Creek Alliance, Waxman walks along
the Queens and Brooklyn shores
and updates his Newtown Pentacle
website with the daily chronicles of
western Queens as it transforms under
over-development.
He posted photos of his discovery
on his website July 24, nearly a week
before the Crain’s report.
“I was on my way to a meeting when
I came across heavy demolition going
on over on Grand Avenue,” Waxman
said. “I noticed the old Cascades
Containerboard factory was being torn
down by crews from Breeze Demolition
so I started asking questions.”
Waxman learned that 54-15, 55-15 and
56-19 Grand Ave. were recently acquired
by a California-based company called
LBA Realty for $72 million. The deal
involves a partnership with another
realty company, RXR, to build a fourstory
Amazon is eyeing a huge space in the shadows of the new K-Bridge in Maspeth.
warehouse large that would be
ideal for the “last mile” of logistics of
an e-commerce company.
“Yeah it’s only four stories tall but that
thing is going to be massive, massive,
massive,” Waxman said. “It’s going
to be large enough that heavy trucks
will be able to drive around inside the
facility, so that the fi rst fl oor would
have to be at least 30 feet tall. As an
environmentalist with the Newtown
Creek Alliance this set off all kinds of
alarm bells with me.”
QNS reached out to Amazon and
is awaiting a response. Amazon
scuttled its plan to build to build an
HQ2 campus in Long Island City, and
create more than 25,000 high-paying
jobs, in February.
Now the e-commerce giant is
reportedly scouting a million square
feet of space in Brooklyn’s Industry
City for a new storage and shipping
facility in Sunset Park. Amazon may
be looking to lease the entire Lord &
Taylor building in Midtown, according
to Crain’s.
Meanwhile, local City Councilman
Courtesy of Mitch Waxman/Newtown Pentacle
Robert Holden is taking a wait-and-see
approach, saying that he’ll keep an eye
on the site.
“If true, this building sounds
monstrous, and I fear that hundreds
of additional trucks would descend
on an already clogged area with
infrastrucutre than can nearly handle
it,” Holden said. “But we have to wait
to learn more details about how many
jobs something like this would bring to
the area, along with exactly how traffi c
would be dealt with, before assuming
the worst.”
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