All the Queens Coverage From Crain's This Weekend

This weekend Crain’s turned its gaze toward Queens, publishing two articles on the borough. On Friday, this article reported that the 315,000-square-foot office building at 37-18 Northern Boulevard — the old Standard Motor building — is up on the market. The sellers purchased the building in 2008 for roughly $40,000,000, invested $10,000,000 in refurbishing the property, and believe it could sell for over $100,000,000. (One of the building improvements included installing a farm on the roof.) The appeal, according to the article, is “the mix of steady income from the building’s almost fully leased offices with the prospect of a rising leasing market in Long Island City that will allow an owner to fill the space with even higher paying tenants in the future.”

And this article published on Sunday about Queens as the city’s next cultural destination. With the newly-expanded Queens Museum, MoMA PS1, the Noguchi Museum, the new cultural district, the coming Folk Museum annex, and Tom Finkelpearl’s appointment as the city’s Cultural Commissioner, Crain’s declares that “Queens is on a cultural roll.” (The article also calls Astoria “Actoria” because of all the theater professionals residing in the area — is that really a thing?) The appeal of Queens as an affordable destination extends to all the cultural offerings, and the art destinations are also attracting new hotels and restaurants nearby. Richard Mazda, Executive Director of LIC Arts Open, even believes that Queens has more artists’ studios than Brooklyn.

For Sale by Owner: LIC Building With Rooftop Farm [Crain’s]
Queens: NYC’s New Arts Nexus [Crain’s]

Photo via Loopnet