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Old Posted Apr 8, 2015, 2:43 PM
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Related CEO Jeffrey Blau has an ambitious project at Hudson Yards, but he’s also overhauling CitiBike and taking on Willets Point

TERENCE CULLEN
4/08/2015

Quote:
Moving to another project now. The auto bodies at Willets Point have dropped their case against redevelopment in the area. What’s the next step forward now and what’s Related’s part in that?

We are 50-50 partners with the Wilpon family. Jeff [Wilpon] just left here actually. Basically there’s two phases to this. The first phase is about a million square feet of retail located on basically the site where the Shea Stadium used to be—the parking lot. Before we do that, we’re actually going to clean up the portion of the auto body sites that the city had purchased and we build enough parking spaces there to basically replace what the retail will replace in the future.

When that’s done, we’ll build a million feet of enclosed retail. And then phase two is a mix of every other [building type] that exists—basically office, retail, residential, affordable housing. I think there’s some convention space.

One thing that [then Mayor Michael] Bloomberg wanted to do was clean this whole thing out. He got halfway there and I think they ran out of money or time—probably both. So then they put out an RFP, which was basically to build on the area that we call phase two. It’s got some tough ground conditions. It’s really all fill.

The ability for people to compete on that and actually create a new value was impossible. I had known [Mr. Wilpon] for a long time and I called him. I knew he was going to bid. I said, “That is not the smart solution here, ’cause you have all this land over here. And if we can convince the city to basically let us build over here, they’ll get the same. Essentially we’ll pay them for land that you already own. But we’ll move the right to develop and just cap, at least in the short term, that site.”

I think because of that we were able to win. So we’re going through the process and getting all our approvals and I think we’ll be able to do a million feet. It’s a big deal.

Do you have any potential tenants for that area yet?

Not really. It’s too far out. We gotta get through a few more approvals. Retailers are focused on when they can open next year, or maybe two years. So people really have to focus. It’s too early.
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