Work Under Way on Massive Queens Multifamily Development

New York—The Durst Organization has broken ground on the massive Halletts Point project, in which it has a 90 percent stake. The first building of the development will open in 2018 and include 405 residential units, with at least 81 reserved as affordable housing.

The $1.5 billion development in Queens will eventually incorporate more than 2,400 rental apartments, including five waterfront multifamily high-rise residential buildings, plus two new multifamily residential buildings on the Astoria Houses campus. Twenty percent of the units will be reserved for affordable housing.

The community will also feature 65,000 square feet of retail and community facility space, including a supermarket and a K-8 public school, and will provide job training for residents. Dattner Architects is doing the design of the overall project, which might be complete in five years.

Lincoln Equities Group conceived and managed the six-year approval process, taking a seven-acre dilapidated waterfront site zoned for manufacturing and integrating the design of its master plan into the adjacent Astoria Houses New York City Housing Authority public housing campus. It also oversaw the addition of a new waterfront esplanade designed by the landscape architects of Manhattan’s High Line.

“This project is special because it’s not just a series of new buildings going up, it’s a neighborhood transformation,” said Joel Bergstein, president of LEG. “It was built from a grass roots effort and is about integrating the new development into the community.”