NEW YORK CITY — Tishman Speyer, in partnership with Qatar Diar, is moving ahead with the construction of a 1.1 million-square-foot office and retail project in Long Island City. The project concludes Tishman Speyer’s purchase of 1.8 million square feet of development rights from New York City, which included a 700,000-square-foot office building that the company completed in 2011.
Designed by MdeAS Architects, the new commercial project will comprise two 27-story towers connected by a four-story podium featuring a mix of retail, food hall, restaurant and parking garage space. Construction is slated to begin in early 2017, with completion scheduled for 2019. More than 800,000 square feet of the available office space in the development has been preleased, including 250,000 square feet to WeWork, a shared office space provider.
Fried Frank acted as counsel to Tishman Speyer in the closing of the company’s $770 million transaction to develop the two towers. The transaction included the acquisition of the site from the New York City Economic Development Corp., an equity investment by Qatari Diar, construction financing and tax benefits from the New York City Industrial Development Agency. The Fried Frank team included Jonathan Mechanic, Tal Golomb, Michael Barker, Michael Werner, Janice Mac Avoy, Lee Parks, Steven Rudgayzer, Richard Wolfe, Andrew Falevich, Holly Chen, Alexander Sutherland, Diana Smirnov, Michael Hofer, Melanie Taylor, Tam Ho, Joseph Bueche and Elliot Samuels.
HFF arranged the construction financing, which was provided by The Bank of the Ozarks.