Nine years after the Bloomberg administration rezoned Jamaica, Queens, new construction is finally starting to appear in the neighborhood. The latest project to add to the list is coming to 148-36 89th Avenue, close to several train lines and the Long Island Rail Road stop at Jamaica.
Kaufman Astoria Studios, one of New York City’s largest TV and film production facilities, announced this summer that they hoped to add two more soundstages to their century-old campus. Now, they’ve filed plans for a sizable four-story building at 36-02 34th Avenue, at the corner of 36th Street and across the street from their two main studios.
New York City’s hospitals are struggling. St. Vincent’s Hospital in the West Village shut its doors in 2010 and sold most of its property to condo developers. Beth Israel Hospital is planning to close and sell off some of its buildings in the East Village, eventually demolishing the 825-bed hospital and developing a newer, smaller facility.
Last year, Related Companies chairman Stephen Ross promised New York Times reporter Charles Bagli that the firm would install an iconic sculpture at Hudson Yards that would rival the Eiffel Tower. Ross unveiled the design for the $150 million structure this morning, at an event hosted by Anderson Cooper next to the entrance to the year-old Hudson Yards 7 train station.
West Farms, in the central Bronx, has long been neglected and forgotten by the city. Robert Moses rammed the Cross Bronx Expressway through the area half a century ago, isolating a broad swath of working class communities from the rest of the borough. And the Bronx River, which splits the neighborhood in two, was contaminated by industrial runoff and filled with trash until community groups began cleaning it up the late ’90s. But developers are finally starting to look closely at the working class, black and Latino neighborhood. Mikjor Shllaku, who heads a plumbing company next door in Van Nest, hopes to build a seven-story apartment building at 2015 Vyse Avenue.
