Miami native Rick Rosa stuffed a few bags with his belongings in 1999 and headed for New York City.
Though not the postcard image he envisioned, he stumbled upon the industrial waterfront neighborhood of Long Island City, where he found an affordable pad, close to Manhattan, with a yard for his dog, Benny.
“The neighborhood Read More
With a wealth of experience across industrial, retail and investment real estate, Sandy Zuckerbrot of Sholom & Zuckerbrot LLC has seen Long Island City and the rest of New York transform along with his own business. Boasting a portfolio of 1.5 million square feet occupied by tenants including Walmart, CVS, the United States government and Home Depot, the 76-year-old real estate veteran spoke with The Commercial Observer last week about the history of his 50-year-old, family-owned company, the transformation of Long Island City and a proposal to change its name to LIC.
The Commercial Observer: Give us some background on Sholom & Zuckerbrot?
Mr. Zuckerbrot: I am a co-founder of the company, which started 7/11/62, which is our good luck number. The company was initially started by two people, [myself] and Ronald Sholom, and we were partners for 33 years. We built up a company of six offices. We had offices in Long Island City, Garden City, N.Y., Manhattan at the Flatiron Building, in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J., Edison, N.J., and Parsippany, N.J. For many, many years we ran this very, very successfully, and we built up a staff of 150 sales reps and support staff.
What areas did you focus on early on?
The area of specialty, when we first started our business, was industrial real estate, and the first office we opened was in Long Island City—and in those days Long Island City was a very heavy-duty, smokestack-type industry city. So you had every conceivable type of operation.
In the early days, many, many companies in lower Manhattan were being pushed out because of the inadequate operations, terrible elevator facilities, and the difficulty moving inventory in and out. Because of the limited access they had, we were looking for more attractive facilities, and Long Island City offered the one-story building, high ceiling, easy loading. It was very costly for companies to operate in multistory buildings in Manhattan. Manhattan was a feeder to Long Island City.
As time went on, Long Island City was getting reasonably inundated with these operations, and soon we started to see New Jersey as being a feeder and started to bring companies from Manhattan to New Jersey and Long Island City.
Film and television prop rental company, Prop n Spoon, signed a 45,165-square-foot lease at 32-00 Skillman Avenue in Queens, a.k.a, the Swingline Building—the former headquarters of the Swingline Stapler Company. The ten-year contract – signed in early December – will give the firm a large area to house its prop and furniture products, as well Read More
With three dozen projects underway in Long Island City, the brothers behind Rockrose Development—two of whom split to form TF Cornerstone in 2009—are poised to compete against one another for prize renters and retailers in what is rapidly becoming Queens’s answer to Williamsburg and Dumbo. TF Cornerstone chairman Thomas Elghanayan spoke to The Commercial Observer about the EastCoast, his firm’s waterfront rental complex, the infamous Rockrose Development coin toss, and his tense relationship with brother Henry Elghanayan, chief executive of Rockrose Development. Read More
In 2009, the brothers behind the Rockrose Development Corporation—Henry, Thomas and Frederick Elghanayan—divided their four-decade business partnership in half, with Frederick and Thomas spinning off to form TF Cornerstone, and Henry staying put at Rockrose with his son, Justin Elghanayan, 33. Since that relatively amicable split, in which the company’s $3 billion empire was divided in half, Henry Elghanayan has rebuilt the portfolio and elevated his son, who has taken the reins as the project manager of Linc LIC, a development in Long Island City, Queens, scheduled to include two residential towers and a retail complex that, when finished in 2013, could breathe new life into the long-simmering neighborhood. Last week, Justin Elghanayan spoke to The Commercial Observer about his family’s recent split, the future of Rockrose and his Long Island City project, which includes what could be the tallest building in Queens. Read More
Condo sales might be super sluggish in Long Island City, but maybe the first indoor cycling studio will get things moving.
Crank Cycling Studio will occupy 800 square feet for 10 years at “The View” at 4630 Center Boulevard, which is distinguished from every other new building in the neighborhood only by its Read More
One of the largest development sites left in the city has attracted some serious interest from some serious players. The Journal is reporting that seven bids have been made for the first phase of Hunters Point South, a planned 6,000-unit housing complex in Queens that was originally to be the site of the Read More
The Commercial Observer:
Mr. Brause: Back in 2001 we net-leased the entire building, the Brewster building—400,000 square feet—to MetLife Insurance Company. Two years later, they exercised an option for us to build out another 300,000 square feet in the rear parcel Read More
Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof
