TF Cornerstone Emphasizes Space and Character in New Malt Drive Retail

With its new mixed-use development Malt Drive, located on the Newtown Creek waterfront in the Hunter’s Point South area of Queens, TF Cornerstone is looking to bring a new and original level of retail excellence to the borough.

Malt Drive will include two luxury residential towers with around 25,000 square feet of storefront retail.

For the retail spaces, the developer, which has long-established roots in Long Island City development, sought a fresh perspective in designing neighborhood retail that had a distinct look and feel, and also catered to the specific wants and needs of retailers.

To achieve this, TF Cornerstone brought in architecture and design firm Lawrence Group, which provided an innovative take on retail design for the area.

“We looked at some very interesting neighborhoods in New York City for reference, including the Meatpacking District,” said Tom Lekometros, Managing Principal of the New York office of Lawrence Group. “Meatpacking has, throughout its history, had a lot of covered walkways, because that was the nature of the area when it was operating as an actual meatpacking district. So that becomes an interesting urban reference from a historic point of view while logistically also providing cover.

“Canopies are extremely desirable for food and beverage tenants, which are a focus of our retail search,” said Steve Gonzalez, Vice President of Retail Leasing at TF Cornerstone. “Things like architecturally-unique features, high ceilings, great signage, and wide frontages are all very appealing for retailers and their customers.”

Lawrence Group also proposed a sort of grandiosity in the retail space that is very out of character for New York’s outer boroughs.

“We pushed to have the retail spaces be quite significant in the spirit of Fifth Avenue or other upscale urban retail,” said Lekometros. “So the ceilings are very grand.”

Retailers on Malt Drive will enjoy ceiling heights up to 25’, impressive window frontage including, in many cases, skyline and waterfront views, distinctive 7-foot steel canopies for corner spaces, and accordion-style storefronts that open to the outdoors on others.

“We wanted to create something notable through the design of the retail and really place-make here through attention to detail” said Gonzalez. “People eating at restaurants along Malt Drive can be eating inside, but feel like they’re eating outside. We will also have beautiful outdoor seating areas people can take advantage of, and really wide sidewalks underneath these canopies. So retailers can install electric heaters and extend the outdoor eating season. We really focused on these little touches that developers often don’t focus on.”

Lekometros emphasizes that many of these touches were so finely considered that customers may not perceive all of them, but they will nevertheless have positive effects on the retail experience.

“One of the things that was fascinating throughout the process was the idea of the canopy,” said Lekometros. “The project has canopies at the corners to help identify them as special spaces, but it is also a scale mediator. You have a building that’s a huge super block, in a way. In the urban footprint, the idea of canopies helps bring a human scale to a project of this nature.”

Another key to the new development will be Malt Drive itself, a brand new one-way street TF Cornerstone built on the former site of a distribution facility. The two new towers surround the street, giving it a secluded, private feel, and yet Malt Drive is set back from the street enough to allow for the addition of greenspace alongside it, which expands into a pre-existing park along Newtown Creek.

And in addition to the new street, TF Cornerstone is expanding Hunter’s Point South Park by adding 150,000 square feet of landscaped greenery, plus a public walkway along the shore.

 “Considerations like wider sidewalks, meandering paths with seating, and using native plants contribute to the lasting social, economic, and physical impacts projects of this scale have,” said Gonzalez. “In addition to the enhanced greenspace – which includes a playground, a dog run, and a kayak launch on the edge of the South Tower right into Newtown Creek, which is pretty unique – TF Cornerstone has contributed to a more sustainable waterfront by installing micro-habitat stone and concrete beds in Newtown Creek. These beds help stabilize the shoreline from future erosion while also providing a habitat for marine life.”

Malt Drive’s retail will be centered within the development’s two towers. These will include 785-3,057-square-foot spaces at base of the 24-story North Tower, and two spaces at the base of the 36-story South Tower including one 4,969-square-foot space, and a water-facing 7,395-square-foot prime corner with exceptional frontage.

The location-specific character of Malt Drive’s retail will be reflected in the tenant base.

Gonzalez said that the developer’s current search for retailers will emphasize character over size.

“We have around 12,500 square feet of contiguous retail in the North Tower,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve been approached by a lot of single big-block tenants for that space, but we put them on the back burner because we’re looking for smaller-scale tenancies – anywhere between 700-800 square feet up to 3,000 or 4,000. We believe this will create some of the distinctive quality we’re looking for.”

While TF Cornerstone is just beginning its search for retailers, hoping to start bringing retail online next fall, Gonzalez did note that they are working to bring in a coffee shop to anchor the retail in the North Tower.

Once the retail is online, Gonzalez believes it will serve as the final piece of the puzzle in creating a desirable, one-of-a-kind development that will bring a sense of space and nature to its urban home.

“We have the park and Newtown Creek coming up along the south side of the property, so it’s really unique from that perspective,” said Gonzalez. “The views will be incredible from the restaurant spaces in the South Tower. If you stand in a particular spot, you can see the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and World Trade. It’s pretty amazing. So we envision someone sitting here, having a coffee or a glass of wine, and being able to look at these iconic landmarks in Manhattan.