June 9, 2025

80's Giant Dreams Facing 90's Economic Realities

BY the middle of 1990, the complex set of approvals to map the streets and run the electricity and dig the sewers and build the parks were in place for a 10,000-apartment development, and Arverne - the name taken from the surrounding neighborhood - was ready to rise on the waterfront of the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens.
    But the recession hit, the developer backed out and for years, neighborhood residents assumed the 300-acre project was dead.
    Now plans for the development are alive again, although its scale will be vastly different, at least for now. With great caution, the city will shepherd the project through - one block at a time. Instead of 10,000 condominiums, developers last week submitted bids to build 350.
    In the raucously beady days of the mid to late 80's, when every fledgling developer had a dream and almost every big-time developer had a $100 million credit line, New York City real-estate watchers were treated to one "major announcement" after another, trumpeting the advent of one elaborate project after another.
    In Manhattan, construction was said to be a few months away on a 60-story office building atop a new Staten Island Ferry terminal, in a $160 million multitower complex to be known as the West Side Yards, near the Javits Convention Center, on Riverwalk on the East River, and Riverside South on the Hudson. There was Bridgemarket, a three-level, $30 million international food market and restaurant under the Queensboro Bridge. The abandoned gray shed on Pier A in Battery Park, which once serviced city fireboats, was to be magnificently restored, with a new visitor's center and restaurants.
    A few years later, when the old Staten Island Ferry terminal was ravaged by fire, the real estate market was beginning its downturn and thoughts of an office tower were already gone, a still-optimistic blue-ribbon panel chose an exuberant postmodern design that sported a 120foot-high clock on its water-facing facade that seemed to shout, "Hurry Up, You're Almost in Manhattan - Where Time Rules."
    In the boroughs outside of Manhattan, developers say, there grew up a competitive spirit: If the banks were so flush, why shouldn't they get in on it, too? Long Island City was to have its own multitowered metropolis clustered around a rising new Citicorp tower; the Bronx was to have Bronxchester Plaza, a shopping center in the South Bronx and Shorehaven, with a beach club and 1.000 condominium units; the Rockaways were to have Arverne.
   With the spin-out in the real estate market at beginning of this decade, many of these projects simply melted away, like cotton candy over a name.
    But now a substantial number of these projects are back, or are said to be coming back - sometimes in totally different guises. In many cases, they have been shrunk or in the word of several urban planners, "downsized." In several cases, private money has become public money; government officials have realized that without at least seed money, developers and their banks don't want to play.
    What happened?
    In the Bronx, William Procida, a veteran developer, is bringing back Shorehaven, a 47-acre site on a peninsula in Long Island Sound with the Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges on one side and the East River and the nighttime lights of New York City on the other.
    In an arrangement that is a paradigm for the mid-90's, Mr. Procida does not own the property - the bank that took it over from the last development group does - but he has been hired to build and market its redevelopment.
    He is currently building 84 two- and three-bedroom units, which will sell for $129,000 to $162,000 each. When the last developer, a partnership of World Wide Properties and a group of other investors, including William Zeckendorf Jr. pulled out, they had built 150 out of the 170 homes scheduled for Phase 1. Mr. Procida, criticizing these initial prefabricated units as poorly built, rehabilitated the existing units and completed the last 20 units. Now all 20 have been sold, for $135.000, he said, noting the original prices had been $165,000 to $170,000.
    The second phase, the group of 84 - not half completed - is being built of concrete blocks and wood planks, the developer said. Of the 84, he said, 69 have been sold and he is "about to build another 250 - all of them three--bedroom units."
    Mr. Procida said he was targeting the sales to black and Hispanic buyers who reflect the makeup of the community and are "the strongest middle market in the country."