New York City Region, Expansions and Contractions
November 2011 - November 2010
Expansions and Openings
After nearly a decade, a shiny, brand-new Aqueduct casino finally opened its doors on October 28th. Phase One of the new wagering hot-spot-to-be—dubbed Times Square Casino—boasts 2,280 video lottery terminals and 205 electronic table games. When the facility is fully completed, the proposal predicts that it will create more than 1,350 permanent jobs. Crucially, it is also expected to generate roughly a half-billion dollars annually in tax revenue for New York State.
On November 2nd, UnitedHealthcare opened an insurance superstore in Flushing, Queens. United's consumer support store has trained staff available to help Flushing residents identify and apply for more than 15 types of state and federal social service programs, including the Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Coverage program, Medicare Savings Program, New York State Food Stamps program, and heat and electric subsidies. The store is especially geared to Flushing's many Asian-American residents.
A Trader Joe's opened on SI over the Columbus Day weekend. There were heavy crowds and the store’s 256 parking spots all seemed occupied. The store will be open daily from 8am to 9pm and the employment is mostly local – 90% of the store’s “crew” live on Staten Island.
The red TJ Maxx flag went up yesterday on the Broad Street side of 14 Wall St., where it will open this fall in 32,000 square feet of lower- level space.
The Lower East Side is about to sprout a new hotel. A joint venture between Brack Capital Real Estate and IHG bought 180 Orchard St. for approximately $46 million and plans to turn the stalled development project into a 290-room hostelry with retail space and parking. The property will be a Hotel Indigo, a boutique brand that is part of a vast IHG stable, which includes InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts and Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts. The new property is scheduled to open in 2013.
On Sunday, May 22nd, fashion discounter T.J. Maxx finally opened between Fifth and Sixth avenues in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood — just one block from where Century 21 has been selling designer goods at low prices for decades.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market had extended its lease by three years. The deal will allow the city and the produce vendors to continue negotiating a long term contract that will include a $320 million renovation of the market. The current lease expired on May 31, and the negotiations—which began nearly a year ago—went down to the wire. As part of the temporary arrangement, the produce vendors agreed to cease their negotiations with officials from New Jersey, who had been aggressively wooing the market to relocate.
A new green affordable housing development opened at 323 East 198th Street in place of St. Mary's Hall Convent in the Bedford section of the Bronx. The convent shuttered almost 20 years ago. The 243-unit project, called Serviam Gardens, is the work of Ursuline Bedford Park Community, Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, and Enterprise Community Partners and will serve low- and moderate-income seniors.
Nearly five years after closing the infamous intake center for homeless families in the Bronx, a new center that is triple the size opened on the same site. The facility, still situated on East 151st Street in the South Bronx, has abundant natural light and an audio-visual notification system to help families navigate through the process. The new building will have more staffing to deal with the 120 families per day who come through its doors. The Department of Homeless Services, for example, will have 212 employees based at the center, compared with 168 at the former facility. Another city agency, the Human Resources Administration, will more than double its staff there.
Resorts World Casino New York recently announced a condensed opening schedule that will allow the new casino at Aqueduct Raceway to open its doors with far more components in place, months earlier than expected. Under the expedited schedule, 2,500 Video Lottery Terminals will be operational, rather than the 1,600 originally slated, when the casino opens in the late summer. Once fully operational, Resorts World Casino New York is expected to permanently employ about 1,000 workers in the entertainment, hospitality, security and food-service fields.
The yet-to-be-completed, 19-story, 128-guestroom hotel at 231 Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn was introduced as Hotel 718 and is set to open in November. The building was constructed by V3 Hotels, which has had a hand in construction at three other hotels along Duffield Street, including the Aloft Brooklyn which, is just across the street at 228 Duffield and opened in April.
Michael Kors is in an Empire State of mind. The designer, who began a full-on retail expansion in 2004, can soon claim some 175 free-standing stores. Two newest city locations are a 5,500-square-foot flagship at 790 Madison Ave. that opened in March, with another, smaller, store coming to 20th Street & Fifth Avenue in May.
By opening a store in Times Square, off-price retailer Daffy's is beginning its push for expansion. The New Jersey-based company is opening a 28,000-square-foot store on West 44th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, the former home of The New York Times. The new store will have a ground-floor entrance, but the bulk of the space will be on the basement level. An opening is scheduled for fall of 2011. Daffy's is also planning to open a store at Bay Plaza in the Bronx this spring, and plans to add a total of 14 New York-area stores before 2015.
Several new hotels opened in New York City in early 2011. First in line is the Nolitan, a boutique hotel at 30 Kenmare Street, which opened February 1. The Mondrian New York, at 9 Crosby Street, also opened its doors in early February. Debuting in the spring was the 125-room Sanctuary Hotel in Times Square, while the Dream Downtown on West 17th Street opened at the end of May on Memorial Day weekend.
Macy's Inc. is undertaking a series of organizational expansions, totaling approximately 725 new positions during the next two years, to support the growth of macys.com and bloomingdales.com. The company's fast-growing online businesses are being fueled by an omni-channel strategy that allows customers to shop seamlessly in stores, online and via mobile devices.
7-Eleven is taking Manhattan by storm. The Dallas-based convenience store operator recently opened two outposts in Murray Hill and has signed leases for another two locations elsewhere in the borough. The company, which has several additional leases out for negotiation in Manhattan, is also moving onto college campuses and airports. By the end of 2012, 7-Eleven plans to have between 15 and 20 Manhattan locations and in the next five years, the company aims to operate 100 outposts in the area.
Duane Reade is leading the charge in the Big Apple with their walk-in medical clinics. Soon, the company will be opening clinics in its two new mega-stores, one in Chelsea and one in Union Square (currently, the borough has seven such clinics). Also coming within the next two years are two new centers in Brooklyn and more than 35 throughout the city.
Whole Foods is officially coming to the Gowanus Canal. After years of false-starts, the high-end grocery chain announced that it will indeed open on its site at Third Avenue and Third Street. The new building will be a one-story, 52,000-square-foot megastore similar in size to the chain’s Upper West Side ocation.
Asset management giant BlackRock Inc. has formally committed to remain headquartered in New York City, to add 300 jobs by year's end, and to grow by another 200 positions by the end of 2015, according to a joint announcement by the firm and Gov. David Paterson. The added jobs would bring BlackRock's employment rolls in the city to at least 1,530 by the end of the year, and to at least 1,730 five years after that.
Over the next three years, Marriott International plans to open 13 budget hotels in Manhattan, representing 2,900 rooms or nearly double the number of properties it currently operates in the city, a company official said. The planned projects are in various stages of development, but the first of them, the SoHo Courtyard, opened in a new building Nov. 16 on Varick Street.
Fulton Mall took another big step toward a retail renaissance with the announcement that Filene’s Basement and SYMS would take the spacious ground floor of the old Strawberry building. The department store would open in early 2012. And for the first time since the days of A&S and Conway, it seems to be picking up steam — notoriously trendy clothing retailers H&M and Aeropostale are moving in next door to Filene’s Basement, and workers just started constructing City Point “first-class” retail mall at the former site of Albee Square shopping center.
City University of New York is expanding Downtown with a lease on a large space at the 16 Court St. tower. The university signed a two-year lease. The move suggests that the university has its eyes on Downtown for its future and it’s further evidence that Downtown has become the next big college hub, considering its proximity to the nearby Polytechnic University, St. Francis College, and Packer Collegiate Institute among others. Colleges are taking over the neighborhood, and the future looks bright for graduates: New York University is planning to build an addition to its NYU-Poly center in Metrotech — a plan that could include a 41-story high rise on Jay Street near Myrtle Avenue, though will likely be a smattering of smaller buildings.
N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center is set to open a 28,500-square-foot women's medical center on the Upper East Side. The hospital has leased space on the second, third and fourth floors of 1491 Third Avenue, a four-story building at the corner of 84th Street. The lease is for 15 years.
An initiative to develop a bioscience industry in New York City is starting to take root with the construction of two commercial laboratory complexes, one on the East Side of Manhattan and the other at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park. The Alexandria Center for Life Science-New York City is a $200 million tower complex that includes lab space, a conference center, and two floors of prebuilt lab space. Only one tenant has been formally announced for the 310,000-square-foot tower — Eli Lilly and Company has taken 90,000 square feet. The project’s developer, Joel Marcus, said most of the remaining space had been committed. The other complex, BioBAT in the Brooklyn Army Terminal is being developed by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Construction on the first phase, the conversion into lab space of as much as 60,000 square feet on the south side of a hulking 1.8-million-square-foot building, should begin early next year.
After two years of planning, including seven months of construction, the Disney Store officially opened in November 2010. The new 20,000-square-foot store is expected to generate 5% of the sales garnered by the brand's 220 U.S. and Canada-store fleet.
The largest Aeropostale store to date opened in Times Square in October 2010. The 19,000-square-foot flagship—which dwarfs the teen retailer's typical 3,500-square-foot store—boasts two levels, a 120-foot digital billboard, 18 cash registers and 500 employees.
Fairway market is setting up shop on the Upper East Side. Construction is already underway on the four-story space on East 86th Street where its owners say they will offer fresh food at a good price. When all is said and done, owners say the project will create between 300 and 400 jobs.
American Airlines announced that it is calling back 545 furloughed flight attendants to support its newly announced joint operating agreement with British Airways and Spain's Iberia. The Fort Worth-based carrier said that while base assignments had not yet been determined, the recalled flight attendants would most likely be from La Guardia Airport. American's recall involves 545 flight attendants and 250 pilots. American said that about 225 flight attendant recall notices were issued in October, with more to follow. “I would not rule out in the future further recalls stemming from our network activities,” Mr. Horton told Reuters.
Century 21, the off-price department store that was founded in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, five decades ago, has signed on for its second Manhattan store at 1972 Broadway, at West 66th Street. The retailer took over the 61,000-square-foot space in February and will open for business in the fall of 2011.
Nordstrom, the Seattle-based department store, is on the hunt for retail space in a bid to open its first full-priced New York City location. A possible location for the retailer is a brand new office tower at 250 West 55th Street. Nordstrom, whose spokesperson said the company is "still looking for the right opportunity," came close to opening a store on the opposite side of town three years ago, when it was in talks to lease space at the former Drake Hotel on Park Avenue and East 56th Street.
After exiting the Big Apple last year, high-end grocer Balducci's is now planning to make a comeback. The gourmet chain is eyeing several locations for small, quick-service stores, as well as for a 10,000-square-foot flagship. Starting this fall, it is planning to open as many as three small midtown locations, ranging from 1,000 square feet to 2,000 square feet in size.
Delta Air Lines is set to decamp from its squat, crowded and much-maligned terminal at Kennedy International Airport and take up residence in an adjacent space that will undergo a $1.2 billion renovation and expansion. The expansion of Terminal 4 would not be completed until 2013 at the earliest. Delta will pay the bulk of the costs for the renovation. The Port Authority estimates the plans would create more than 6,000 jobs.
In the business district of Flushing, one of the densest areas in New York City, Sky View Center, an 800,000-square-foot shopping mall, has started to open its doors. Sky View Center is already 75% leased with three big box stores—BJ's Wholesale Club, Best Buy and Bob's Discount Furniture Store—already open. Target was expected to open in October 2010. Also in the fall, Marshall's, Old Navy and Bed Bath & Beyond will open their doors.
Large development projects proposed for Queens and Brooklyn received final approval from the City Council. The council voted overwhelmingly to grant zoning changes needed by a mixed-use project called Flushing Commons and a residential development at the former Domino Sugar refinery. Flushing Commons will be built on the site of a five-acre parking lot on Union Street between 37th and 39th avenues. It will consist of 600 residential units, 235,000 square feet of retail and 185,000 square feet of office space, as well as 1,600 parking spots. The property is being developed by TDC Development and Construction Corp. in conjunction with The Rockefeller Group Development Corp. The $2 billion redevelopment of the Domino Sugar refinery site along 11 acres of the Williamsburg waterfront in Brooklyn calls for four acres of public open space, 143,000 square feet of community facility, office and retail space, and a quarter-mile waterfront esplanade.
After a year and a half in limbo, John F. Kennedy International Airport's medical center reopened in a newer, bigger facility. Called JFK Advanced Medical, the 5,000-square-foot office, located in Building 75 of the airport's cargo area, is open to the public but serves mainly as a health clinic for the airport. In addition to basic urgent care, the staff specializes in travel medicine such as immunizations, screenings, and drug and alcohol testing.
Shoppers were out in full force as Target officially opened its first store in Manhattan. The store brings 400 new jobs to the area.
Harlem H&M celebrated the reopening of its newly remodeled 125th Street store after five months of renovations kept major portions of the location closed.
The recently opened Soho Hudson Square hotel will have some competition. One new hotel is now open two blocks north at 179-181 Varick Street: the Courtyard New York Manhattan/SoHo from Marriott. Work on another nearby hotel project - the Viceroy Hotel - has resumed after months of inaction.
Discount supermarket chain, Aldi, plans to open its first New York City store at the Rego Park II shopping center at 61-35 Junction Blvd. in Queens. The company is gearing up to hire staff, though the store is not expected to open until sometime in 2011.
Downtown Brooklyn is getting its highest-end store yet. Upscale fashion mecca Barneys Co-Op opened on Atlantic Ave. and Court St. in September.
After more than two years, construction at the corner of 72nd and Broadway in Manhattan is now complete. The luxury rental tower has created quite a buzz in the area, particularly over what stores will occupy its more than 50,000 square feet of commercial space. A Trader Joe's also opened here late in 2010.
A new hotel, Andaz Fifth Avenue, is slated to be opened in spring 2011. Although there’s no official opening date, whenever the 184-room hotel near Bryant Park and the library does open, rooms are expected to start at $295 a night.
Research by The Real Deal and hospitality consulting firm HVS found at least 28 new hotels are slated to open this year or next. The largest is the more than 600-room Intercontinental Times Square, which is set to debut in July; the smallest is the boutique 56-room Habita Hotel on the High Line on the West Side. Meanwhile, another nine are in the works with unknown completion dates.
JetBlue Airways Corp. has decided to keep its headquarters in the Big Apple. It plans to relocate to Long Island City, Queens, from Forest Hills, Queens. The company will relocate 950 employees to the new office space by mid-2012. About 70 of those jobs will come from Connecticut, where JetBlue has been operating a satellite office. In addition, JetBlue announced that it will be hiring 130 new employees who will join the Long Island City office as well.
Nordstrom has plans to open one of its off-price Rack stores on Midtown's Fifth Avenue. The Seattle-based department-store chain -- which already has announced it will open a Nordstrom Rack in Union Square this spring -- is in talks to lease 521 Fifth Ave., a retail space at 43rd Street that was vacated last year by now-defunct Circuit City.
Layoffs and Closings
Manhattan Theatre Source, a nonprofit theater in Greenwich Village, is closing its doors in January. Officials at the off-off Broadway theater, said they could no longer afford the costs of operating their two-story space at 177 MacDougal St., which included a 65-seat theater, an art gallery and office space.
After just two and a half years, Walmart Stores Inc. is pulling the plug on its Manhattan-based apparel office. In an effort to return to fashion basics, rather than trendy offerings, the value-centered retailer will move its 278-person fashion team from its 46,000-square-foot garment center office back to the company's headquarters in Bentonville, AR.
Collective Brands Inc., the parent company of Payless and Stride Rite shoe stores, said it plans to close 475 lower-performing stores and will explore strategic options, which typically include the possible sale of the company. Collective Brands plans to close 400 Payless and 75 Stride Rite stores with weak sales in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico over the next three years, with about 300 stores shutting down in 2011. Collective Brands operates 4,844 stores, including 4,461 Payless stores.
Burke Supply, a distributor of janitorial and packaging supplies, is closing its Brooklyn location and has announced a plan to lay off all of its 156 employees. The effective date for the layoff is 11/30/11 and the workers belong to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters local #813.One of the city's biggest school bus companies filed for bankruptcy, amid a dispute over funding the benefits of nearly 1,200 unionized workers. Staten Island-based USA United Fleet Inc., which operates more than 400 buses under several affiliates, sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy relief as it hashes out a resolution of a disagreement with Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181. The local represents 1,122 drivers and escorts at the company and, according to bankruptcy court documents, claims that USA United Fleet owes significant contributions to various welfare funds on behalf of employees.
A dispute with a major coffee house chain is leaving a sour taste in the mouth of a Queens dairy. Jamaica-based Elmhurst Dairy has been supplying milk to Starbucks since 2003, but now the company's distributor, Bartlett Dairy, is looking to break its contract. The contract is set to expire in 2013, and Elmhurst representatives said hundreds of jobs will be lost if the deal is broken. In a statement, a regional vice president for Starbucks said it is not breaking any deals and that the matter is between Elmhurst Diary and Bartlett.
Maramont Corporation, a manufacturer of ready-to-eat meals and salads is shuttering its Sunset Park, Brooklyn location and moving to Pennsylvania. The company, which makes ready-to-eat meals and salads, filed a notice late last month with the state Department of Labor that it was closing its manufacturing unit in NYC (its warehouse and distribution units would not be affected). The factory employed 148 people.
The owners of the Plaza Hotel's Oak Room have decided to close the legendary restaurant amid a bitter dispute with their landlord. Oak Room owner Eli Gindi gave the Plaza a 90-day notice of departure, after landlord Elad Group said the Oak Room would have to either cancel its lucrative "Day and Night" Saturday afternoon parties or pay more than twice its current rent. That brought lease negotiations to a halt, prompting Elad to sue Gindi for $33.3 million over "numerous violations of the lease, unacceptable activities and significant financial arrears." The Oak Room's closing date has been set for July 31, and the Plaza said it is searching for new operators.
A long-time Bronx peanut plant that supplies peanuts to Yankee Stadium is packing up and heading for Pennsylvania. The A.L. Bazzini Company that has called the city home for 125 years and opened in Manhattan before moving to Hunts Point 13 years ago, is moving to Allentown, PA. The factory's departure will mean the loss of up to 57 jobs, though the company says its distribution, accounting, and customer service departments will stay behind. Company officials say tougher food safety laws are behind the move, noting the new location is larger and safer than the Bronx facility. The company's office and warehouse will remain in the Bronx, continuing to employ around 50 people. The company says it will also continue to ship its peanuts to Yankee Stadium.
After three years of explosive growth, a frozen yogurt retail shakeout has begun in the Big Apple. In the last 12 months, global chains Red Mango and Yogurberry, as well as local purveyors Yolato and Peaches Natural Yogurt Cafe, have shuttered one or more stores. Food experts say more closures are expected as shops contend with high rents, excessive space and a general oversaturation of the New York frozen treat market.
Queens' Aqueduct Racetrack may not survive to see the completion of the new 500,000-square-foot gaming parlor next door as its owner scrambles for cash in the wake of OTB bankruptcy. The New York Racing Association, which owns the 116-year-old track, is expected to lose $33 million in revenue next year as a result of this month's closure of 54 city OTB parlors. Trustee Bennett Liebman said that could ultimately lead to the closure of the Aqueduct and two other racetracks unless the association can find another revenue source to make up the difference.
The Cardiac Rehabilitation Center of Staten Island has closed, citing low reimbursement from insurance carriers and co-payments beyond clients’ means. The center, housed in the Villa Building at Richmond University Medical Center, West Brighton, shut down Dec. 24. The facility was the borough’s only cardiac rehabilitation center and saw around 650 patient visits a month.
Struggling brokerage Century 21 NY Metro merged with A.C. Lawrence. Century 21 NY Metro -- a Manhattan-based, independently owned franchise of the Century 21 brand -- has experienced cash flow problems recently and has been looking for new investors to inject fresh capital into the firm. Earlier in the year, Century 21 New York Metro had around 150 agents with plans to expand, but many agents have left in the intervening months.
NYC’s Off-Track Betting Corporation, which experienced numerous financial troubles in recent years, had shut down all operations at the 50 city offices. In response, Belmont racetrack opened the Belmont Café and the NY Racing Association is running a shuttle to Belmont and Aqueduct raceways. However, total wagering since OTB closed remains well below year-earlier levels.
Ideal Diamond Solutions filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November. The two-year-old company specialized in building customized websites for independent jewelers. The bankruptcy comes at the end of a challenging year for Ideal Diamond. In March 2010, Blue Nile filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the company, claiming it copied photographs, pages and features and used them on other jewelers' websites.
Credit Suisse took the first legal steps toward laying off as many as 250 New York employees. The bank reported a drastic plunge in third-quarter earnings.
The Wonder Bread plant - a fixture in Jamaica since the 1870s - closed in January 2011, leaving scores of employees without a job. Wonder Bread's parent company, Hostess, said the aging factory closed because modernizing would have been too "difficult and expensive." Factory workers may be offered jobs at other plants, but they likely won't be within commuting distance. The company is expected to hammer out severance packages with union officials before the end of the year.
The city's paratransit bus schedules are being disrupted with the closing of two companies that provide transportation for disabled passengers. By year's end, Maspeth, Queens-based Atlantic Paratrans of NYC Inc. laid off all of its 610 employees, and Progress Transit Inc. of Mill Basin, Brooklyn, did the same with its 244 workers. Both firms cited the loss of a contract with the MTA as the reason.
Barnes & Noble will follow in the footsteps of many an independent bookstore and close its four-story superstore on West 66th Street, opposite Lincoln Center. A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman blamed the closing on the neighborhood's high rents. The spokeswoman also noted that the company would be reassigning as many store clerks as possible to other Barnes & Noble locations in the region.
The financial troubles of edgy clothier American Apparel Inc. could extend to its multiple New York City retail locations. Brokers expect that the struggling chain could be forced to close or sublease as many as a third of its Big Apple stores. An American Apparel spokesman said that there are currently no plans to close any New York City locations, but the chain's financial difficulties have experts predicting the worst.
Acme Architectural, an architectural manufacturing firm, shut down, laying off all of its 270 employees.
Walt Disney Co. closed five of its seven ESPN Zone locations, including its Times Square location, on June 16, 2010 as the company found it increasingly challenging to operate the sports-themed restaurants.
International Filing Systems, a manufacturer of filing supplies, filed a WARN notice pursuant to a possible plant closing including 129 layoffs beginning May 14, 2010.
Sabra Dipping Co., left its Astoria home of more than two decades. The rapidly growing company traded in its 24,000-square-foot digs for a brand-new 110,000-square-foot factory outside of Richmond, Va. When it opens, the new factory will be staffed with 290 employees, including some who will relocate from Queens, company officials said. Company officials estimate that a total of 220 employees in New York State will be left jobless. Some of those workers will come from Sabra's facility in Farmingdale, L.I.
The Staten Island Hotel — an icon of the borough’s skyline, viewed by thousands of commuters every day from the Expressway — shut its doors, at least temporarily. The closure comes after a group of private lenders bought the 187-room Graniteville hotel on Friday at a “foreclosure by power of sale” auction for $24,000. The group had held more than $12 million in mortgages on the property. According to a spokesman for the hotel group representing Crowne Plaza, the hotel is slated to reopen as a franchise Oct.17, 2010.
After a long struggle to stay alive despite a crushing $700 million debt, New York's St. Vincent's Hospital pulled the plug on itself on April 6, 2010. About 3,000 workers were laid off on April 30, when St. Vincent's shut its doors. Like most NYC hospitals, St. Vincent's has a collective bargaining agreement under the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes of New York. The union has roughly 1,400-1,500 employees remaining at the hospital; some 1,200-1,300 lost their jobs with the closure of inpatient services. The 1,500 who are not 1199 SEIU workers include 400-500 full-time nurses, and a few hundred residents. There are about another 800 nonunion and managerial workers. The union's leaders asked that all league facilities hold any vacancies while the Job Security Fund organizes an effort to place St. Vincent's union workers.
NADAP, a local nonprofit that helps homeless or otherwise disadvantaged people with jobs, is closing down a major program and laying off 98 staffers. As of June 22, 2010, the agency discontinued its substance abuse assessment program as a result of budget cuts. The substance abuse program refers clients to treatment programs throughout the city and helps prepare those in recovery for the work force.