Lots of Clicks

The gist is that the Upper East and West Sides are still blazingly hot real estate markets, but you can’t miss the plugs for Forest Hills in this NY Post article.

Prospective home buyers are checking out Manhattan’s Upper East and West Sides more than all other New York City neighborhoods.

A Post analysis of data from the Real Estate Board of New York’s Web site also found that traditional middle-class neighborhoods, such as Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge and Forest Hills, Queens, are hot markets for potential buyers—even attracting greater interest than pricier areas like Brooklyn Heights.

A review of user searches on the board’s site, ResidentialNYC.com, since Jan. 1 reveals that…

• In Queens, Forest Hills is king, followed by Jackson Heights, Rego Park, Astoria, and Douglaston/Little Neck.

You Always Remember Your First

Thank to David Quintana of Lost in the Ozone, I heard about “A Small Town in a Big City,” a profile of Forest Hills Gardens. Actually, I’m a little surprised that the Queens Courier would run such a piece, because haven’t there already been something like 984 such articles on the Gardens? How many times can a reader lose his or her Gardens virginity? But it must be, simply, that people never tire of hearing about a good thing. Or, because I’ve lived here for so long, I’m oblivious to the fact that the rest of New York City is finally catching on.

Here’s an abbreviated list of discover-Forest-Hills-Gardens-as-if-it’s-the-first-time articles currently on the Web.

Queens Courier “A Small Town in a Big City”

About.com “Forest Hills—Neighborhood Profile

NY Sun “A Success in Community Planning”

NY Times “If You’re Thinking of Living In…”

NY Times “In a Pockets of Queens, ‘City’ Meets ‘Garden'”

Newsday “Forest Hills: Cosmopolitan Flair, Storybook Feel”

“Spirit of Communication”

That’s the name of the terra cotta relief that adorns the Forest Hills post office. Next time you walk in or walk by, look up above the doorway. It was fashioned in 1938 by Sten Jacobson, a WPA artist at the time whose livelihood depended on the government’s recognition that art has value and a prime place in society.

Since everything seems up for potential tear-down grabs around here, I’m drawing the line right here and now around this relief. It’s bad enough that all the development in the area is hodgepodged together (in large part because of “interesting” choices made by our local council members), with no sense of fitting in to the area’s original character. We lost the Trylon; we have to keep an eye out for whatever treasures remain.

Including our sorta-kinda version of the Little Mermaid.

Staubach Project in the News

The Daily News has an article on the Staubach development project by our guy Nicholas Hirshon that casts the whole thing in a positive light–

The landlord hired Staubach’s crew, hoping they can score major tenants for the project and boost the potential of nearby properties that the same landlord owns, said Patrick Smith, Staubach retail executive.

“We think Austin St. is a very vibrant retail marketplace and that this location is the best location on the whole street,” Smith said.

These 21,000 square feet of retail space are going to imprint the area in a big way and undoubtedly raise the real estate values, which to my mind have not peaked out (unlike RE prices in other, comparable areas, including some in Brooklyn if I may be so bold).

Worth a read, especially if you’re a fan of football trivia and football metaphors. Alas, no comment from Staubach included.

2007 Top 10 FoHi Moments

Wishing everyone health, happiness, and the realization of a few dreams for this upcoming year.

To conclude the year, I gave some thought to the what were the defining moments for Forest Hills this year. If you have more the add, please do! Comments are always welcome.

1. The malling of Austin Street continued, but the real development was blogs on which people spent a lot of time speculating on what would close next and what would replace it.

2. The closing of UJs. Like it or not, this was the end of an era.

3. Sale of the town houses on 72nd Ave. in July, signaling to Forest Hills’ concerned residents that everything around here is fair game (as if we didn’t know that already from the Cord Meyer tear downs). The start-up of local blogs, in turn, has given us a forum to let our opinions on such matters be heard. Keep it coming, people.

4. Novo 64. It will open in August ’08, but the Spring ’07 onset of construction of a luxury condo in a less-than-prime part of Forest Hills was enough to get us scratching our heads, wondering, what are they thinking? Or, what are they up to?

5. Bank robberies on Austin and Continental. Remains an unsolved problem.

6. Excellent report cards for some of our schools in early November–P.S. 196 and P.S. 101 brought home A’s. The C for 144 caught some of us off guard, our first clue that the standards for these “grades” are not the ones many of us use when evaluating a school. But does it matter if it pushes area real estate prices higher?

7. The end-October shooting of dentist Daniel Malakov in the Annadale Playground behind P.S. 175 while his 4-year-old daughter watched. A few weeks later, Mikhail Mallayev, a relative of Malakov’s questionably stable ex-wife, Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova, was identified as the killer and then indicted.

8. The seizure of bicycles in July near the Forest Hills train station as an early salvo in Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC. A few months later, Forest Hills would become one of the focal points in the congestion pricing debates.

9. Market Wars. Trader Joe’s opened in October, and the Natural upped its ante by swallowing the store formerly known as Baskin Robbins in November. Breakthrough is scheduled for sometime in January.

10. Our Man on the Beat. The rise of Nicholas Hirshon as a regular contributing reporter at the Daily News. Hirshon is a Forest Hills resident and has had recent articles about the Natural’s takeover of Baskin Robbins, the closing of UJs, and the book The Neighborhoods of Queens.

Like Flies

Garo’s Bootery has a Lost Our Lease sign on its window and Novo 64’s sales office will probably close up shop end February, which is when it expects to have a model unit completed. At that point, sales will resume on site at the building.

This coincides with the final closure of Viva Bimbi (March) and what may likely be the move moment for Kick Up. So it seems that March will see the Staubach largely vacated. We’re just waiting for GNC and the leather goods store to turn their signs.

The saga continues.

Novo 64 and Beyond?

There have been a lot of questions among Queens blogs about Novo 64, the swank new condo pushing its way up since this spring on Yellowstone and 64th Rd., and who will buy there, given that it’s a hike to the express subway. On the developer’s Web site, in the press release section, I found this quote from Florida’s St. Petersburg Times:

“Forest Hills is like a mecca for Russian here,” said Dubrovin [v.p. of Triumph Property Group]…. With the price of a three-bedroom penthouse penciled in at $1.5 million, the site is looking to cash in on the returning, enriched Russian community.

Maybe this will mean better days for the now-dismal commercial stretch along 108 Street.

What It All Boils Down To

It’s at the point where I don’t want to go out at night in my car because I’m afraid I won’t find a parking spot when I get home. While it has gotten harder to spot spots since 2000, there has been a noticeable increase in time and gas spent this year in particular.

Probably it’s all the new residents of Forest Hills who have cars. And why not? Living out here means that owning a car and parking it on the street are possibilities, which is not the case in Manhattan and somewhat more challenging in Brooklyn. But the more that come, the harder it gets.

This has been brewing for years. I used to live on 76th Ave., between Queens Blvd. and Austin, and could not imagine having a car there unless I was home all day, on call to move it as needed for alternate-side-of-the-street parking. On the other side of Queens Blvd., it was only slightly better, except as you got farther down 108th Street where there were fewer multi-unit dwellings. Less apartments = less competition for precious parking real estate. So it made good sense to own a car, at least in that part of Forest Hiills.

But now I’m hearing about how that, too, is changing, and not for the better. Who ever expected to be living a Tepper Isn’t Going Out existence in Forest Hills?

3-Day Weekend–Keeping It Local

With the kids
Catch the Bee Movie at the Midway (day showtimes 1:15, 2:40, 3:45, 5:00) and then chow down on Restaurant Row (70th Rd)–all of the restaurants there are very kid-friendly.

Hall of Science–there’s no better place in the area to keep the kids moving for a few hours. Especially the playroom, where the kids engage in survival of the fittest to see who can monopolize the conveyer belts.

Atlas Park is having its holiday lighting this Sat. night at 5 p.m. You could kill the better part of an afternoon there, between Borders, California Pizza, and now this.

No kids attached
The fifth annual Queens International Film Festival.

Evelyn Glennie, world famous percussionist (who is deaf), will be at the Kepferberger Center at Queens College. I saw her profiled on 60 Minutes a few years ago. She’s amazing.

Catch a movie at the Kew Gardens Cinema followed by pizza at Dani’s House of Pizza. The pizza is great, the atmosphere festive.

Go to Terrace Realty’s open house for a 1 bedroom at 25 Burns St., right off of Station Square (Sunday 2:30-4:30), and see why the asking price for 750 sq. ft. is $389k.

Invasion of the Suits?

We’re starting to hear a lot about disappointing bonuses for the financial sector in early 2008 (see today’s related front-page story in the NY Times, “Markets and Dollar Sink as Slowdown Fear Increases“). That’s going to take its toll across the country (and world) in innumerable ways. One obvious hit will be the real estate market. From Noah Rosenblatt of Urbandigs.com, whose tagline is “Tips on Profiting on NYC Real Estate:

I expect bonuses to come in, but not as widespread (in total bonuses handed out) and not as high (in size of bonus) as some may expect with stocks just off record highs. The financial sector has felt a lot of pain, and management knows the level of toxic waste still on their books. I would go far as to say that 2009’s bonus season looks to be the real problem, not this years, as we still have some time to get the full depth of losses off the books.

Most people on site, however, expect this year to be painful too, so we’re potentially looking at two paltry bonus years at a minimum. What could this possibly have to do with Forest Hills, which is not exactly known as a hub for financial types? Well, not every master of the universe is going to be able to live in 40 Bond, or even the Ikon in Williamsburg, once they hit the unpleasant wall of reality. But by now, most New Yorkers are committed to the idea (and ideal) of staying here. Add to that the sterling report card grades Forest Hills schools just received (whether we think they’re meaningful or not), and suddenly the Windsor and 108-Street pre-wars are looking pretty good.

It could be that the real estate price lag Forest Hills (and Jackson Heights, which is expecting its first Starbucks) has felt vis-a-vis our Brooklyn counterparts all these boom years is about to go bust. If you’ve been thinking about buying, you can still get an insider’s price.