LICNYC

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — Sugar fiends and wine snobs, get ready to indulge in your favorite vices, because the LIC Flea and Food Market is bringing back its Wine Sweets Fest for round two this summer.

The Long Island City market of global eats, handmade crafts and vintage finds will transform into a wine and dessert wonderland for the second annual festival during the first weekend of August, organizers said.

“We have done the Queens Beer Fest for the last three seasons and that’s been a very successful event, so we felt it was time for wine to get its focus,” LIC Flea and Food spokeswoman Elizabeth Aloni told Patch.

“Wine tasting is so much fun and its become something local as well with the vineyards upstate, so we figured why not bring the wine tasting right to you.”

Patrons can expect to sip on unlimited whites, reds and rosés from a global selection of wines curated by an NYC “wine professional” while indulging on treats from more than 20 local sweet vendors, according to the LIC Flea and Food Market website.

This year’s wine selection includes Bridge Lane’s signature canned rosé, Riff Pinot Grigio, chilled Elsa Bianchi Malbec, Ponga Sauvignon Blanc and more, Aloni said.

“We’ll have about 20 different wines,” she said. “Some will be from New York and some will be from all over the world.”

As for desserts, LIC Flea and Food hasn’t been shy about advertising this year’s array of treat vendors by way of mouthwatering Instagram photos.

Delectable desserts coming to this year’s festival include churro empanadas from Empanada Papa, kosher bon bons and dulce de leche from Christtine Organic Confections, champagne-spiked ice cream from Scoops In Cahoots, gluten-free doughnuts from Foughnuts and more.

The festival will run Aug. 4 and 5 from noon to 6 p.m. each day at the market on 5-25 46th Ave. Admission itself is free, but you’ll need a ticket for unlimited wine tasting.

A general admission ticket costs $39 and will get you two hours of unlimited wine tasting and a souvenir glass to take home. You can also opt for an early admission ticket for $10 more, which entitles you to skip the line and an indulge in an extra half hour of wine tasting.

A “Wine Sweets” ticket comes with all those perks plus three “sweets credits” good at any of the festival’s treat vendors. That will set you back $59.

Get your ticket to this year’s Wine Sweets Fest here.

Lead photo courtesy of LIC Flea and Food

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An armored truck driver from Howard Beach is out of jail after being charged with allegedly trying to steal a bag containing $1.6 million in Long Island City, prosecutors announced on Thursday.

Riguerson Avril, 37, of 85th Street wound up in handcuffs on July 24 on first- and second-degree grand larceny charges, along with additional counts of criminal possession of stolen property.

According to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, Avril was allegedly seen on security camera removing the money bag from a pallet in the vicinity of Vernon Boulevard and 5th Street in Long Island City at 10 p.m. on July 23.

After removing the bag, police said, Avril allegedly kicked it underneath a delivery truck. He later told police that he “moved the money off the top, dropped it and kicked it under the truck. I wanted to see if anyone would notice.”

Law enforcement sources said that Avril, after initially shoving the bag under the truck, retrieved it, covered it with his rain jacket and then walked back to his personal vehicle. There he “ripped the bag and put the money into a suitcase” that he later provided to a friend for temporary safe-keeping, prosecutors said.

Avril showed up for work the next day, July 24, where police were waiting for him and took him into custody following questioning. Detectives later recovered all but $10,000 of the pilfered cash from a location in Philadelphia.

“The defendant allegedly took advantage of his access to enrich himself,” Brown said. “He returned to work the following day as if nothing was amiss. If the allegations are proven true, [Avril] will face a long term of incarceration as a result of his greed.”

Court records indicated that Avril was arraigned on July 25 in Queens Criminal Court, then released under supervision. He’s scheduled to return to court on Aug. 21. If convicted of all charges, he could spend up to 25 years in prison.

The INSITU Site-Specific Dance Festival returns to four parks on the Long Island City waterfront next month.

For the second year in a row, dance enthusiasts can enjoy this free, two-day exhibition, where dancers will be showcasing contemporary and urban dance choreography while advancing INSITU’s social mission.

On Aug. 4-5, the LIC waterfront will be transformed into a giant stage. Performances will take place at Hunters Point South Park, Gantry Plaza State Park, Queensbridge Park and Socrates Sculpture Park from 1 to 8 p.m. on both days.

This year, INSITU will feature 20 new commissioned works that have been created by regional, national and international choreographers. The works were chosen out of a pool of over 200 applicants and feature site-specific works by Douglas Dunn (NYC), Chantal Caron/Fleuve Espace danse (Canada), Sarah Elgart | Arrogant Elbow (Los Angeles) and Alice Gosti (Seattle).

Performances will be organized into four “performance rounds” per day, which will take place at 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. in each of the four parks. There will be a total of 144 performances during the festival, adding up to 32 hours of dance. Each performance will last approximately 75 minutes.

INSITU was inspired by the natural and urban landscapes of the four public parks and performers will maneuver through playgrounds, benches, piers, staircases and shorelines, while leading audiences through continuous and dynamic dance performances.

Audiences will also get the chance to participate in 20-minute workshops with choreographers from last year’s festival following the first three performance rounds. The participating choreographers are Melissa Riker/Kinesis Project dance theatre, JoAnna Mendl Shaw/The Equus Projects, Christopher Nunez, and Cecelia Fontanesi/Parcon NYC.

The festival was founded by Svea Schnider, a dance artist, choreographer and dance educator. According to her, the mission of the INSITU is to “activate public spaces through dance, spark dialogue and create community through the arts.”

In addition to that mission, Schnider said that an important goal for INSITU is to connect two LIC communities that have been separated by several new developments.

“An important goal of INSITU is to bridge the gap between two disparate LIC communities that are physically and often psychologically separated by the Queensboro Bridge, new developments like Hunter’s Point and Court Square on the south side of the bridge, and Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing community in North America, on the north side of the bridge,” Schnider said.

For more information on INSITU, visit insitudancefestival.com.

By Mark Hallum

TimesLedger Newspapers

Residents of the CityLights co-op in Long Island City are pressuring city and state officials to preserve the affordability of the tower with the tax abatement on the property scheduled to expire this year.

Many in the building at 4-74 48th Ave, who moved in up to two decades ago, are feeling the heat as their living expenses are set to spike by about $1,000 a month while the assessed value of the building has already gone up 87 percent.

State Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) held a rally on the step of City Hall Tuesday, calling on the de Blasio administration to approve renegotiations with Empire State Development, the owner of the land on which the tower sits.

“CityLights residents are the pioneers that helped make Long Island City so desirable. It would be an outrage to allow them to be priced out of the neighborhood they helped build. All levels of government must work together to find a solution to this crisis,” Gianaris said. “CityLights tenants are facing major increases in taxes as a 20-year abatement on their building expires. Monthly charges for some tenants may increase by $1,000 or more. The city must give consent for them to negotiate a new agreement with Empire State Development, the original signatory to their abatement deal.”

CityLights residents have been making their voices loud and clear in recent weeks with a group of co-op owners demonstrating along the waterfront as city and state elected officials cut the ribbon on the newly redeveloped Hunters Point South Waterfront Park June 27.

“When we moved out [to Long Island City] there was absolutely nothing here but old warehouses; actually the first question I asked the broker is ‘Is it safe?’ All of these people moved in and built a community and built a neighborho­od,” said Joann Rock, the president of CityLights’ board of directors. “So our tax bill went from $3 million to $5.8 million [per year]… Newer shareholders have big mortgages, so they’re going to be paying $7,000 a month to carry a two-bedroom in a co-op when they could rent one for less.”

Rock said the assessed value of CityLights co-ops is based on the surrounding buildings, which are luxury high-rises that have gone up in recent years.

“We don’t have the amenities they have and yet we’re being valued based on them,” Rock said. “What we’re trying to do is actually get the state to reopen the [the agreement with Empire State] and renegotiate it.”

The contract with the pilot is on state land, so it would have to be renegotiated with the state. The city, however, must sign off to allow the state to do that.

“Representa­tives from city and state agencies must come up with a solution to help the residents of Citylights. An 87 percent increase in the assessed value is simply unacceptab­le,” state Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan (D-Long Island City) said. “NYS and the Queens West Development Corporation have proposed a possible resolution, but New York City and the Department of Finance need to either support it or put forward their own proposal.”

Reach reporter Mark Hallum by e-mail at mhallum@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4564.

Posted 12:00 am, July 25, 2018

©2018 Community News Group

Related Companies unveiled the new lobby and courtyard at the reimagined Blanchard Building in Long Island City.

Located at 2110 51st Avenue, the seven-story, 220,000-square-foot Blanchard Building offers 35,000-square-foot floor plans and a social atmosphere featuring programming such as a current art exhibit curated by Samadhi Advisors, appealing to the creative and technology-focused companies who are drawing a millennial workforce to the neighborhood.

Samadhi Advisors has tapped artists Mauricio Arenas, Serkan Altinoz and Demetrius Manouselis to display their work in the Blanchard Building lobby.

The gallery selected artists with deep connections to Long Island City, illustrating how the neighborhood has long been a home for creatives and dreamers. The exhibit will run until July 20.

In addition to the art-filled lobby, the building’s amenity space includes an outdoor courtyard featuring a café where employees and their guests can work, host meetings, enjoy lunch and relax.

“Long Island City is a young and vibrant community, and quickly becoming one of New York’s most exciting places to live, work and play. Forward-thinking companies are looking at their real estate beyond just a space to house employees, but rather for employee attraction and retention. The Blanchard Building and its curated cultural programming is a response to the need for unique, modern office space that also offers an engaging social setting desired by the tech and creative companies who call the neighborhood home,” said Senior Vice President of Related Fund Management Patrick Sweeney.

Digital agency VaynerMedia’s production house currently occupies approximately 43,000 square feet in the Blanchard Building, one of the two marquee buildings that make up The Point, a new commercial and retail community in the heart of Long Island City.

The Point, which also includes The Paragon building, is owned by Related Fund Management and GreenOak Real Estate.

Both buildings are located in the Hunter’s Point corridor of Long Island City and are undergoing a significant capital improvement program.

Long Island City offers a central location and convenient access, as well as dozens of new boutiques, restaurants and numerous public green spaces and parks.

Quality of life needs for employees such as lifestyle amenities, health and wellness, and a world-class work environment have become essential tenant demands and are all available within the Long Island City market. It is already home to over 6,300 businesses and nearly 100,000 employees.

The neighborhood’s explosive growth has already attracted such tenants as JetBlue, Macy’s, Gwynnie Bee, Ralph Lauren, Madewell, Rolex, Bergdorf Goodman, J. Press and Brooks Brothers, affirming its place as a premier Live/Work/Play neighborhood in New York City for creative tenants.

Long Island City’s Chocolate Factory, a dance, theatre, and performance organization that recently acquired a new permanent home in the neighborhood, has unveiled its programming for the 2018–2019 season. The slate will feature new works by choreographers Miguel Gutierrez, Niall Jones, Melanie Maar, Jen Rosenblit, and Donna Uchizono, among others.

In October, the Chocolate Factory will present the next phase of Maar’s Line Death Dance performance series (October 3–6), followed by Julie Mayo’s dance piece Terrific Freight (October 25–November 3), and Neil Greenberg’s To The Things Themselves!, which manipulates movement, music materials, and physical objects in an exploration of performance (December 4–15).

The new year will kick off with An Afternoon with Donna Uchizono, which will feature a preview of a new work by the choreographer that will premiere at The Chocolate Factory in 2020.

Also slated for January will be Gutierrez’s This Bridge Called My Ass, in which six Latinx performers—Alvaro Gonzalez, John Gutierrez, Miguel Gutierrez, Xandra Ibarra, Nibia Pastrana Santiago, and Evelyn Sanchez Narvaez—explore an unstable terrain of bodies, materials, and sound (January 9–19, 2019).

Next up will be Rosenblit’s solo performance I’m gonna need another one (January 30–February 3), followed by a performance by Melbourne-based Philip Adams, a resident with The Chocolate Factory, as part of the organization’s multi-year creative exchange. The residency will culminate in a New York premiere at The Chocolate Factory in 2020.

In May, Jones will showcase Untitled Fantasies in Low Fade, a new work that will examine identity, in-betweeness, and intangible entanglements.

The spring programming will also feature Lauren Bakst’s More Problems With Forms (April) and Mariana Valencia’s Bouquet. For more information visit Chocolatefactorytheater.org.

By: Andrew Nelson 8:00 am on July 23, 2018

Renderings are out for a 74-story tower at 42-50 24th Street, in downtown Long Island City, Queens. If built, the structure would be a major addition to the borough’s vertical profile, with a speculative minimum height of 750 feet, based on double-height retail at the base. If it ends up being any higher, the structure would become the tallest structure in Queens. Its current competitor is 23-15 44th Drive, a condominium tower expected to rise 752 feet, and is located three blocks to the south. The tallest proposed building for the borough was formerly 29-37 41^st Avenue, though developer Durst downsized the project to just 710 feet.

42-50 24th Street site highlighted in Yellow, via Google Maps

Perkins Eastman is responsible for the design. The bulk of the exterior features curtain wall glass with narrow window frames, further emphasizing the verticality. The base of the building holds a lower profile, rising nine stories above street level, and creating room for outdoor terraces for the 10th floor.

Dynamic Hakim and Property Markets Group (PMG) purchased the site in 2015 for $69 million. Permits have not been filed yet for the tower, and the estimated start date for construction has not been announced. The lot is mostly vacant, occupied by parking and a few low-rise structures.

42-50 24th Street, via Google Maps

The building is expected to yield at least 1 million square feet, dedicated to mixed-use occupancy. Retail space is implied in the rendering, but no further details have been released.

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Taste dishes inspired by food from around the globe at a series of fun events coming to the Long Island City waterfront this fall.

The World’s Fare Passport Series will take place on Sept. 9 and 10, Sept. 22 and 23, and Oct. 20 and 21 at 5-25 46th Ave., along Anable Basin. Each weekend will focus on the food, drink and music of Europe, the Americas and Asia, respectively.

The series is a follow up to Festival Media’s “World’s Fare,” the massive food festival that drew more than 10,000 people to Citi Field who enjoyed food and drinks from over 100 vendors. The event was inspired by the iconic 1964-65 World’s Fair, which drew millions to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to dine and view innovative exhibits. 

At each event, attendees will be able to enjoy a curated selection of food, drink and live music from the region. A panel of food experts will also be on hand to discuss the culture and cuisine of the area.

Restaurants and vendors currently slated to serve at the events include Barano, Guantanamera, Empanada Papa and Cryo Cream.

The event was created by Joshua Schneps, founder of the LIC Flea Food and Astoria Flea  Food markets and co-publisher of QNS. Schneps said the Passport Series will serve as a bridge to the second annual World’s Fare event, which will take place in the spring of 2019.

“After the success of April’s event, we wanted to continue with the theme,” he said. “And because the overall theme of the World’s Fare is about embracing diversity, each one of those individual events will reflect a different region of the world.”

Each event will run from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets start at $7 each.

The event location is easily accessible from the 7, E, M, G and R trains, the Hunterspoint Avenue LIRR station and the NYC Ferry LIC and Hunters Point South stops. Parking is also available a garage across from the venue and on the street.

To buy tickets or for updates about the event, visit the World’s Fare website.

42-50 24th Street rendering via Dynamic Star

Long Island City has been fertile ground for new skyscrapers for over a decade–and the biggest additions are still yet to come. Despite concerns over an apartment glut, developers are racing to send 60- and 70- story towers skyward, including the Durst Organization’s Queens Plaza Park, United Construction’s Court Square City View Tower, and Stawksi Partners’ 43-30 24th Street. A newcomer to this party is a mixed-use tower from Dynamic-Hakim and Property Markets Group (PMG) set to rise at 42-50 24th Street, CityRealty reports.

42-50 24th Street rendering via Dynamic Star

The developers acquired the 33,982-square-foot lot in December 2015 for $69 million from taxi kingpin Ron Sherman, head of CMT. The development site currently holds a surface parking lot and is close to both the Queensboro Plaza and Court Square stations. In addition to three street frontages, the lot is bound to the west by the elevated 7 train and to the north by an elevated access road serving the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. PMG’s 1 QPS rental tower is one block north and two aforementioned towers are underway directly south.

The site looking to the northeast (Google streetview)

A rendering and details posted to Dynamic Worldwide Group show a sleek 70-story tower composed of three interlocking components. A square masonry base grounds the building which then transitions to sweeping glass tower with front-and-center views of Midtown Manhattan. Perkins Eastman Architects is listed as the architect; according to the site, the building will encompass a whopping one million square feet.

Via Terra Capital Markets

Mission Capital arranged the financing for the property purchase and Terra Capital Markets was the lender. Documents from Terra in regards to the acquisition financing explain the site is currently zoned for a 271,856 square foot, mixed-use tower but the purchase of air rights from an adjacent parcel owned by the Department of Transportation could increase the project’s square footage to 373,272. The Department of City Planning is currently evaluating the area for upzoning, which could potentially double the new building’s size.

[Via CityRealty]

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42-50 24th Street, LIC, Long Island City, new developments

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Long Island City

In recent years, Long Island City, Queens, has seen its fair share of adaptive reuse projects that have sought to convert the neighborhood’s plethora of former warehouse and industrial buildings into loft-like office spaces targeting creatively oriented, tech and media industry tenants.

At 30-10 41st Avenue near Sunnyside Yards, real estate investment firm LargaVista Companies is currently at work on the latest project that seeks to capitalize on this trend: the redevelopment of a four-story, roughly 60,000-square-foot former manufacturing building that it has dubbed the Gasteria Building.

While the name pays homage to LargaVista’s previous incarnation as Gaseteria—once the largest independent chain of gas stations in New York City—the 1920s building is actually a former stove manufacturing facility that in more recent years has housed a variety of industrial and light manufacturing tenants.

LargaVista acquired the property for just over $27 million in March 2017 and is now pouring another $10 million into its rehabilitation and repositioning. The developer tapped architecture and interior design firm Fogarty Finger to helm the project; the architecture firm has previously overseen similar adaptive reuse projects such as the Box Factory, Hornig Capital Partners’ redevelopment of a former manufacturing building in Ridgewood, Queens.

Marco Giardina, an associate at Fogarty Finger, pointed out that whereas the Box Factory is a predominantly brick and timber structure featuring wood joist ceilings and wood floors, the Gaseteria Building has different traits that provide it with its own unique character: concrete and brick elements, mushroom columns and, of course, high ceilings ranging from 12 to 15 feet.

“We tried to keep the building true to itself,” Giardina said of the design. That meant keeping the structural elements of the warehouse intact while overhauling the windows, elevators and electrical and mechanical systems.

The facade is being repointed and will feature a newly painted Gaseteria logo with “a distressed look,” according to LargaVista COO Adam Good, while the manufacturing building’s former loading docks are being transformed into a spacious lobby featuring stone floors and walls covered with a mural depicting blueprints of Sunnyside Yards. (Outside of the entrance, the building’s address will be displayed with lettering from old Gaseteria filling pumps.)

“The bones of the building are fantastic; our focus was bringing it into the 21st century,” Good told Commercial Observer. He added that LargaVista plans to ask around $45 per square foot for office space at the property, which is expected to be ready for occupancy by the first quarter of next year.

In addition to contemporarily minded workspaces with open layouts, natural lighting and views of the adjacent train yard, Good said the project also hopes to attract tenants drawn to Long Island City itself as a burgeoning residential and commercial destination.

“Long Island City has developed in a way where it’s now a real live-work community, and that [dynamic] is only getting greater,” he said, citing the neighborhood’s ample mass transit offerings as a particular draw. “It’s no longer just a cheaper [option]—it’s a fun place to work and live.”