Gotham-Led Venture Scores $445M for Queens Project
The developer has teamed up with RiseBoro Community Partnership to build a massive two-tower property in Long Island City.
The project in Hunters Point South. Image courtesy of Handel Architects
The developers of a two-tower community that will offer more than 1,100 residential units in Queens, N.Y., have scored more than $445 million in city financing for the massive waterfront project.
A joint venture between the Gotham Organization and RiseBoro Community Partnership is developing the project within the larger Hunter’s Point South, a 30-acre mixed-use neighborhood in Long Island City that is slated to deliver seven residential buildings with more than 5,000 apartments.
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The city’s Housing Development Corp. (HDC) provided the venture with a $311 million construction loan, of which $229 million is a participation loan with Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, while the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) chipped in another $134.4 million in financing. An HPD representative confirmed the new financing to Multi-Housing News after it was first reported by The Real Deal.
Designed by Handel Architects, the project will consist of a 33-story tower at 57-28 Second St. and an adjacent 56-story tower at 1-15 57th Ave. Seventy-five percent of the project’s roughly 1,130 units will be permanently affordable to families earning in the range of 30 to 125 percent of the area median income, Gotham revealed, while the remaining residences will be market-rate.
“From our perspective, the fact that this project leads with affordability is really exciting to us,” Emily Kurtz, RiseBoro’s vice president of housing, told Multi-Housing News. “It’s a strong statement from the city that they are committed to ensuring this community is available to New Yorkers at a wide range of incomes.”
Waterfront Neighborhood Moves Forward
The project in Hunters Point South. Image courtesy of Handel Architects
The shorter building will provide about 450 residential units and community space on the ground floor, while the loftier skyscraper will offer approximately 680 units, including 90 independent living units for seniors within an 11-story special purpose wing.
The tower will also feature ground-floor retail, an underground garage and community space. City permits indicate that the towers will measure 335,000 square feet and 700,000 square feet, respectively, including 640,000 square feet of residential space in the tower at 57th Avenue.
New York City tapped Gotham and Brooklyn-based nonprofit Riseboro to develop the project on Parcels A and B, at the tip of Hunter’s Point South in November 2017. Permits for the glass towers were filed in March of last year.
Hunter’s Point South, which has been in the works for more than a decade, is the city’s largest affordable housing complex to be developed since the 1970s. Related Cos., Phipps Houses and Monadnock Construction completed the first phase in 2015 with two affordable residential buildings on Parcels A and B of the site along the East River.
Last April, developer TF Cornerstone broke ground on the second phase of the neighborhood, which will bring 1,194 apartment units to the site, 60 percent of them affordable. The two-tower, high-rise property is located on Parcel C.
