If City’s Olympic Bid Fails, Developers Are Ready

If New York loses its bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, a feeding frenzy could erupt among developers jostling to build on a prime piece of riverfront real estate in Long Island City, where the Olympic Village is now planned.The $1.6 billion Olympic Village is to be developed on a 61-acre site with a view of the Manhattan skyline, but the plan would be scrapped if the International Olympic Committee does not pick New York when it votes for a host city on July 6.The state, city, and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey jointly own Queens West, as the land is known. The property covers 74 acres at Hunters Point, where a total of 7,500 apartments are eventually planned. Located across the East River from the United Nations, it is near the no. 7 subway line and is also accessible via the Midtown Tunnel and the 59th Street Bridge.If the Olympic plan falls through, the southern portion of Queens West, where the Olympic Village is to be built, would be put up for development bids. Rockrose Development Corp. and AvalonBay are already developing the northern portion of the site. The $1 billion Rockrose development includes 3,000 luxury condominiums in seven buildings, and AvalonBay is building three luxury rentals.“This is one of the most attractive areas in New York, just really prime,” a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, Julia Vitullo-Martin, said. “It has riverfront views and great transportation into Manhattan.”The managing partner at development advising firm Washington Square, Paul Travis, said the land’s development value, already high, is likely to grow.“The land at Queens West is extremely valuable for residential development,” said Mr. Travis, who has advised a number of developers with property in Long Island City. “It is going to grow like Battery Park City, where the more people who move there, the more valuable it becomes, even though it has had a relatively slow start.”Mr. Travis also believes retail will be a lucrative market because of its close proximity to Manhattan and the availability of large parcels of developable land.“It is possible to assemble larger sites for big-box retail here,” said Mr. Travis, who advised developers of the Costco store on nearby Vernon Boulevard.“I continue not to see office or office related development because of the lack of mass-transit access to the waterfront,” he added. While a single subway line is sufficient for residential development, office development is more likely where there are a number of transit lines.“The office hub will be around the Jackson Boulevard and Queens Boulevard corridor,” Mr. Travis predicted.This Olympic Village plan, with 4,500 units of housing in a long ribbon of low-rise buildings with two high-rises overlooking the East River, is the result of an international competition held after the International Olympic Committee panned NYC2012’s original plan.A private developer will pay for the $1.6 billion plan, which NYC2012 will lease from the developer for 11 months during the Games. After that, the developer will transform the area into 18,000 market-rate apartments, including some affordable units. The number of affordable units has yet to be determined, according to officials at NYC2012.The Olympic Village plan by Morphosis, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based architecture company, was chosen by an eight-member design review panel that evaluated 132 entries from 20 countries. The Morphosis plan reduced the number of high rises in the Olympic Village by a ratio of 10-to-4, and created 43 acres of new parkland for more access to the riverbanks surrounding the village on three sides. The plan also increased the living space for each of the 17,000 athletes, coaches, and team officials to 314 square feet of space, compared to the IOC minimum of 130 square feet.More parkland allowed for more training sites near the village, with several multisport fields, a full-size Olympic track around a soccer pitch, tennis courts, and smaller fields for personalized workouts just a short walk from the athletes’ residences.“It takes pioneers to go into a site and build critical mass, but this is what is happening in Long Island City,” said the director of planning and design for NYC2012, Andrew Winters. “We are optimistic that any development there would be snatched up by developers.”

If City’s Olympic Bid Fails, Developers Are Ready

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