Long Island City Comes Into Its Own
By JEFF VANDAM NY TIMES
IT’S got sushi bars. A teahouse. An upscale grocery store. A cocktail lounge where the word “mixologist” could reasonably be uttered. Multiple options for doggy day care. It’s one stop from Manhattan, the views are fabulous, and, joy to the world, there are no alternate-side parking rules.
With all that and more, has Long Island City, 30 years after it was first labeled “hot,” finally become a self-sustaining neighborhood?
The evidence that this semi-industrial section of Queens is approaching some kind of critical mass is growing. More than a dozen new and converted condominium developments have opened in recent years, and several are sold out. And while thousands of housing units have appeared, a huge number of others — 5,000 or more — are due to be delivered by both public and private enterprises in the coming years.
Prices are rising, too, having mostly recovered from a dip during the Lehman Brothers slump. Though values for condos have not approached the levels of those in sister neighborhoods across the river in Manhattan, it’s not uncommon to pay more than $700 a square foot in Long Island City. Rentals in new buildings aren’t cheap, either; monthly lease rates in some ascend to heights of $3,000 and beyond (but come with unfettered vistas of Midtown, of course).
Perhaps more important for the new residents paying those prices, the list of local amenities is far longer than it was five years ago. Psychic changes are afoot, too.
Consider the great McDonald’s scare of 2010, wherein the blog liQcity.com posted an item about the Golden Arches’ landing a spot on Vernon Boulevard, the main drag. The response was swift and, tellingly, of the type you might expect in a place like Park Slope or Northside Williamsburg.
“Be prepared for fat lazy people discarding their burger wrappers on the street as they leave the restaurant,” one commenter wrote.
“Please let this be a joke,” said another, repeating the thought three times for emphasis.
It was indeed a joke — the blogger, Nancy Verma, quickly informed her readers that they were all April fools. But back in 1980, when New York magazine labeled Long Island City the city’s “next hot neighborhood,” it would have been impossible to conceive of coordinated neighborhood scorn for fast food. Heavy industry was the rule then, with residents mostly living in town houses and small apartment buildings.
Longtimers like the Cerbone family, which runs the well-known Italian restaurant Manducatis on Jackson Avenue, now share the neighborhood with the still-growing crop of condos. It’s difficult to turn a corner without seeing a new building like the Solarium on 48th Avenue or the Murano on Borden Avenue.
The Citylights co-op tower, which sat alone on the waterfront for years, now has a cadre of sleek, glassy neighbors. At the base of one of those buildings, you can buy $13.79 teriyaki swordfish kabobs and truffled Gouda for $25.99 a pound at Foodcellar & Company, a Whole Foods-like grocer that opened in August 2008. (It was followed by a Duane Reade next door, with $23 shampoos and Belgian ales on display.)
“Five years ago when we moved here, all around us it was just, like, warehouses and fields,” said Yulia Oleinik, who lives in the Arris Lofts building with her husband, Logi Bragason, and works for Unicef across the river. “Now there is all this variety of buildings and the infrastructure is coming big time. I just feel that the neighborhood is very much alive, and growing.”
Ms. Oleinik has tapped into the active artistic community that predates the condos, often taking in plays at underground theaters and shows at small art galleries. She and Mr. Bragason sample cuisine at the annual Taste of Long Island City event and loll by the waterfront in Gantry Plaza State Park, which continues to expand northward along the East River.
Yet like others in L.I.C., Ms. Oleinik is worried about the events of the past two years. Around the time of the Lehman Brothers crash, businesses along Vernon Boulevard started to close, prompting residents to wonder whether they were living in a bubble that was about to burst.
“We go through major amenity cycles,” said Ms. Verma, who has lived in the area several years. “The fall is always an upswing for retail, but in the winter there’s always a little decline. The year before last, I feel like 10 businesses went under.”
Today, an empty retail space at the foot of a new residential building is a common sight, as are “coming soon” signs, like the one on the waterfront advertising a library that remains a vacant lot for lack of financing. Other basic services are missing, as well.
“The most mandatory thing we need here on the boulevard more than anything is a butcher, and a hardware store,” said Gianna Cerbone-Teoli, who grew up in the neighborhood and owns the restaurant Manducatis Rustica on Vernon. “And a good bread man, a bakery,” she added.
Still, as some lights go out, others go on. A space on Jackson Avenue at 11th Street is to become Natural Frontier Market, a health food store. Over on Center Boulevard, the brothers who run the Michelin-anointed restaurant Shi are planning a Mexican place called Skinny’s Cantina across the street.
“It’s not a neighborhood to move to if you like the status quo,” said Jake Atwood, a charter resident of the Citylights building who runs the Web site QueensWest.com. “It is constantly evolving, in fits and starts. There are times when it looks like buildings are being built every five minutes.”
The price of entry has come up some, but not quite back to the highs of the pre-Lehman era. Eric Benaim, the president of the real estate firm Modern Spaces and a partner in the new comfort-food restaurant El Ay Si, said that prices began to rise around March 2009, when they had a starting point of around $500 per square foot. Today they have moved into the $600s and $700s.
What is more, the concessions and incentives that buildings were offering to new buyers in late 2008 and early 2009 have been scaled back.
“Before, they were really throwing everything at you,” Mr. Benaim said. “Now it’s not as many as last year. People are out there now. We do have a lot of real buyers, and it’s busy.”
In terms of actual prices, listings with Nest Seekers International for the Vere condominium, farther from the waterfront on Jackson, range from $389,000, for a junior one-bedroom, to $1.199 million for a two-bedroom penthouse with two terraces. Units at the Powerhouse, a converted factory on Fifth Street, range from $475,000, for a studio, to $1.325 million for a two-bedroom two-bath corner apartment.
The finishes there, as in other buildings, tend toward the luxurious.
“It was like, ‘Oh, was there a fire sale on Bosch washers and dryers?’ ” said Todd Smith, who was impressed by the amenities at the buildings he surveyed with his partner, Ethan Jones. They settled on the Powerhouse and moved there from Riverdale in the Bronx earlier this spring.
Some of the newer buildings have sold out completely, like 5th Street Lofts, a Toll Brothers development that sold the last of 118 units in winter 2009. Prices started in the upper $300,000 range for a studio; a unit with 1,600 square feet of space went for around $1.5 million, according to Scott Avram, a senior project manager at the company. Sales started in February 2007. And at the Arris Lofts, where sales have been completed, Hanifa Scully of Corcoran Realty closed a deal for a three-bedroom in March for $1,275,000.
“I’ve never been so busy,” said Ms. Scully, who also lives at the Arris and said she had seen some prices pass $800 a square foot. “Since last September, I’ve seen a tremendous change. It’s very hot.”
There are plenty of new rentals, too, with prices to match. At 47-05 Center Boulevard, built and marketed by the Rockrose Development Corporation, one-bedroom units start at $2,600 per month; a studio with 490 square feet of space across the street at 47-20 Center, marketed by TF Cornerstone, rents for $1,925.
Brian Hennessey, who moved into the 5th Street Lofts in 2008 with his wife, Verena Arnabal, and their new daughter, Maya, made the jump to Long Island City from Murray Hill and hasn’t looked back. The couple shop at the Queens Costco when Foodcellar gets too pricey, and on weekends they hang out with a laptop at the teahouse, Communitea, on Vernon Boulevard.
“They just have the right recipe for success here,” he said. “It’s very easy to get to Manhattan. It’s at the right price point. It’s got all the luxury amenities that people want in the yuppie crowd, and it’s got a good community feel to it.”
Still, Mr. Hennessey is clear-eyed about what the neighborhood needs. Parking is a problem: when friends come to dinner, he has to help them find spots. The service interruptions on the No. 7 train are annoying. He wonders if facilities for dogs will ever come to be, as they aren’t allowed in most of Gantry Plaza State Park and there are few other places to take them.
Those issues may intensify in the coming years. The city’s Economic Development Corporation plans to develop up to 5,000 waterfront units at Hunters Point South, 60 percent of them as middle-income housing; construction should begin next year, said Gayle Baron, the president of the Long Island City Business Development Corporation. And Rockrose, which has already built several waterfront towers, has the rights and plans to build several more.
“I can only imagine that we’re going to wish these days would never end,” Mr. Hennessey said. “When the people come, I can imagine this becoming a very busy part of town.”
Standing over a cappuccino at her restaurant’s counter, Ms. Cerbone-Teoli is circumspect. Some of her regulars are old-timers, but some are new arrivals, and business is good.
As the neighborhood continues to find its way, she hopes that some kind of centralized planning will prevent overdevelopment and disorganized growth. But leaving all that aside, she’s tired of hearing that her home is becoming a happening place to be.
“People think it was just discovered,” she said reprovingly. “But Long Island City was always a great community. It didn’t just now become great.”
IT’S got sushi bars. A teahouse. An upscale grocery store. A cocktail lounge where the word “mixologist” could reasonably be uttered. Multiple options for doggy day care. It’s one stop from Manhattan, the views are fabulous, and, joy to the world, there are no alternate-side parking rules.
With all that and more, has Long Island City, 30 years after it was first labeled “hot,” finally become a self-sustaining neighborhood?
The evidence that this semi-industrial section of Queens is approaching some kind of critical mass is growing. More than a dozen new and converted condominium developments have opened in recent years, and several are sold out. And while thousands of housing units have appeared, a huge number of others — 5,000 or more — are due to be delivered by both public and private enterprises in the coming years.
Prices are rising, too, having mostly recovered from a dip during the Lehman Brothers slump. Though values for condos have not approached the levels of those in sister neighborhoods across the river in Manhattan, it’s not uncommon to pay more than $700 a square foot in Long Island City. Rentals in new buildings aren’t cheap, either; monthly lease rates in some ascend to heights of $3,000 and beyond (but come with unfettered vistas of Midtown, of course).
Perhaps more important for the new residents paying those prices, the list of local amenities is far longer than it was five years ago. Psychic changes are afoot, too.
Consider the great McDonald’s scare of 2010, wherein the blog liQcity.com posted an item about the Golden Arches’ landing a spot on Vernon Boulevard, the main drag. The response was swift and, tellingly, of the type you might expect in a place like Park Slope or Northside Williamsburg.
“Be prepared for fat lazy people discarding their burger wrappers on the street as they leave the restaurant,” one commenter wrote.
“Please let this be a joke,” said another, repeating the thought three times for emphasis.
It was indeed a joke — the blogger, Nancy Verma, quickly informed her readers that they were all April fools. But back in 1980, when New York magazine labeled Long Island City the city’s “next hot neighborhood,” it would have been impossible to conceive of coordinated neighborhood scorn for fast food. Heavy industry was the rule then, with residents mostly living in town houses and small apartment buildings.
Longtimers like the Cerbone family, which runs the well-known Italian restaurant Manducatis on Jackson Avenue, now share the neighborhood with the still-growing crop of condos. It’s difficult to turn a corner without seeing a new building like the Solarium on 48th Avenue or the Murano on Borden Avenue.
The Citylights co-op tower, which sat alone on the waterfront for years, now has a cadre of sleek, glassy neighbors. At the base of one of those buildings, you can buy $13.79 teriyaki swordfish kabobs and truffled Gouda for $25.99 a pound at Foodcellar & Company, a Whole Foods-like grocer that opened in August 2008. (It was followed by a Duane Reade next door, with $23 shampoos and Belgian ales on display.)
“Five years ago when we moved here, all around us it was just, like, warehouses and fields,” said Yulia Oleinik, who lives in the Arris Lofts building with her husband, Logi Bragason, and works for Unicef across the river. “Now there is all this variety of buildings and the infrastructure is coming big time. I just feel that the neighborhood is very much alive, and growing.”
Ms. Oleinik has tapped into the active artistic community that predates the condos, often taking in plays at underground theaters and shows at small art galleries. She and Mr. Bragason sample cuisine at the annual Taste of Long Island City event and loll by the waterfront in Gantry Plaza State Park, which continues to expand northward along the East River.
Yet like others in L.I.C., Ms. Oleinik is worried about the events of the past two years. Around the time of the Lehman Brothers crash, businesses along Vernon Boulevard started to close, prompting residents to wonder whether they were living in a bubble that was about to burst.
“We go through major amenity cycles,” said Ms. Verma, who has lived in the area several years. “The fall is always an upswing for retail, but in the winter there’s always a little decline. The year before last, I feel like 10 businesses went under.”
Today, an empty retail space at the foot of a new residential building is a common sight, as are “coming soon” signs, like the one on the waterfront advertising a library that remains a vacant lot for lack of financing. Other basic services are missing, as well.
“The most mandatory thing we need here on the boulevard more than anything is a butcher, and a hardware store,” said Gianna Cerbone-Teoli, who grew up in the neighborhood and owns the restaurant Manducatis Rustica on Vernon. “And a good bread man, a bakery,” she added.
Still, as some lights go out, others go on. A space on Jackson Avenue at 11th Street is to become Natural Frontier Market, a health food store. Over on Center Boulevard, the brothers who run the Michelin-anointed restaurant Shi are planning a Mexican place called Skinny’s Cantina across the street.
“It’s not a neighborhood to move to if you like the status quo,” said Jake Atwood, a charter resident of the Citylights building who runs the Web site QueensWest.com. “It is constantly evolving, in fits and starts. There are times when it looks like buildings are being built every five minutes.”
The price of entry has come up some, but not quite back to the highs of the pre-Lehman era. Eric Benaim, the president of the real estate firm Modern Spaces and a partner in the new comfort-food restaurant El Ay Si, said that prices began to rise around March 2009, when they had a starting point of around $500 per square foot. Today they have moved into the $600s and $700s.
What is more, the concessions and incentives that buildings were offering to new buyers in late 2008 and early 2009 have been scaled back.
“Before, they were really throwing everything at you,” Mr. Benaim said. “Now it’s not as many as last year. People are out there now. We do have a lot of real buyers, and it’s busy.”
In terms of actual prices, listings with Nest Seekers International for the Vere condominium, farther from the waterfront on Jackson, range from $389,000, for a junior one-bedroom, to $1.199 million for a two-bedroom penthouse with two terraces. Units at the Powerhouse, a converted factory on Fifth Street, range from $475,000, for a studio, to $1.325 million for a two-bedroom two-bath corner apartment.
The finishes there, as in other buildings, tend toward the luxurious.
“It was like, ‘Oh, was there a fire sale on Bosch washers and dryers?’ ” said Todd Smith, who was impressed by the amenities at the buildings he surveyed with his partner, Ethan Jones. They settled on the Powerhouse and moved there from Riverdale in the Bronx earlier this spring.
Some of the newer buildings have sold out completely, like 5th Street Lofts, a Toll Brothers development that sold the last of 118 units in winter 2009. Prices started in the upper $300,000 range for a studio; a unit with 1,600 square feet of space went for around $1.5 million, according to Scott Avram, a senior project manager at the company. Sales started in February 2007. And at the Arris Lofts, where sales have been completed, Hanifa Scully of Corcoran Realty closed a deal for a three-bedroom in March for $1,275,000.
“I’ve never been so busy,” said Ms. Scully, who also lives at the Arris and said she had seen some prices pass $800 a square foot. “Since last September, I’ve seen a tremendous change. It’s very hot.”
There are plenty of new rentals, too, with prices to match. At 47-05 Center Boulevard, built and marketed by the Rockrose Development Corporation, one-bedroom units start at $2,600 per month; a studio with 490 square feet of space across the street at 47-20 Center, marketed by TF Cornerstone, rents for $1,925.
Brian Hennessey, who moved into the 5th Street Lofts in 2008 with his wife, Verena Arnabal, and their new daughter, Maya, made the jump to Long Island City from Murray Hill and hasn’t looked back. The couple shop at the Queens Costco when Foodcellar gets too pricey, and on weekends they hang out with a laptop at the teahouse, Communitea, on Vernon Boulevard.
“They just have the right recipe for success here,” he said. “It’s very easy to get to Manhattan. It’s at the right price point. It’s got all the luxury amenities that people want in the yuppie crowd, and it’s got a good community feel to it.”
Still, Mr. Hennessey is clear-eyed about what the neighborhood needs. Parking is a problem: when friends come to dinner, he has to help them find spots. The service interruptions on the No. 7 train are annoying. He wonders if facilities for dogs will ever come to be, as they aren’t allowed in most of Gantry Plaza State Park and there are few other places to take them.
Those issues may intensify in the coming years. The city’s Economic Development Corporation plans to develop up to 5,000 waterfront units at Hunters Point South, 60 percent of them as middle-income housing; construction should begin next year, said Gayle Baron, the president of the Long Island City Business Development Corporation. And Rockrose, which has already built several waterfront towers, has the rights and plans to build several more.
“I can only imagine that we’re going to wish these days would never end,” Mr. Hennessey said. “When the people come, I can imagine this becoming a very busy part of town.”
Standing over a cappuccino at her restaurant’s counter, Ms. Cerbone-Teoli is circumspect. Some of her regulars are old-timers, but some are new arrivals, and business is good.
As the neighborhood continues to find its way, she hopes that some kind of centralized planning will prevent overdevelopment and disorganized growth. But leaving all that aside, she’s tired of hearing that her home is becoming a happening place to be.
“People think it was just discovered,” she said reprovingly. “But Long Island City was always a great community. It didn’t just now become great.”
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