Leonard Grunstein: Bill De Blasio Should Mandate Affordable Housing

Leonard Grunstein gives insight on Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio‘s plan to increase the amount affordable housing in NYC.  While de Blasio’s plan is praiseworthy, Grunstein points out the plan is also creating apprehension within the real estate industry.  Grunstein stresses there is a vital need for more more middle-income housing in NYC, but current efforts offer small incentive to developers to build affordable housing.

“More can be done in terms of zoning bonuses or overrides for these sites to foster the creation of middle-income affordable housing.”

Grunstein goes on to explain that under the Bloomberg administration, their is a lack of focus on the creation of middle-income units and as a result, the city is missing big opportunities:

“If similar requirements had been in place for the massive Hudson Yards development, there would be an additional 5,000 units of affordable housing constructed. The thousands of people who will eventually work in that new neighborhood could have filled these apartments rather than having to commute from long distances.”

That’s an unnecessary burden for those workers as well as a loss for the city’s economy”

Grunstein advises that de Blasio should foster his relationship with the real estate industry; show that he is willing to work with them.  Choosing to mandate construction of middle-income housing would add to the long-term sustainability and vitality of NYC.  Residents of all income levels will not to be forced leave, they can continue to thrive in the city.

“The city should not leave the decision to include affordable housing up to the developer. Instead, it should have required the construction of affordable housing as part of the RFP and guaranteed the creation of a place where middle-income New Yorkers could live.”

Read Leonard Grunstein’s full article on Gotham Gazette

RKO Albee Theater Becomes Albee Square Mall (Brooklyn Cultural Landmark)

The Albee Square Mall opened in 1980 on the Fulton Street pedestrian plaza, immediately becoming a prominent spot in Downtown Brooklyn. Construction on the project began three years earlier when its namesake, the RKO Albee Theater, was demolished to make way for the development.

Albee Theater Opened in 1925 | Photo Courtesy of Frank Tilelli & William Gabel

Albee Theater Lobby (Courtesy CinemaTreasures.org – User Tinseltoes

Albee Theater Seating (Courtesy CinemaTreasures.org – User Tinseltoes

Edward Franklin Albee, a promoter, impresario and father of the famous playwright, built the Albee Theater in 1925, during the peak of the vaudeville era. With a beaux-arts exterior and an interior that featured crystal chandeliers in the lobby, paintings from Albee’s private collection and seating for 2,000, the Albee Theater sought to rebrand vaudeville and attract more affluent audiences.

After the theater’s demolition in 1978, the vacant space was developed by the Urban Development Corp., a city agency that worked to provide financial aid for the acquisition, construction or improvement of industrial, commercial, public and cultural spaces. The mall was designed by Gruen Associates, a firm founded in 1951 by Austrian architect Victor Gruen. Based in Los Angeles, Gruen and his firm designed the first suburban open-air mall near Detroit in 1954. Two years later, Gruen completed his best-known work – the 800,000-square-foot Southdale Mall in Minnesota.

Gruen is largely credited with inventing the suburban shopping mall as we know it; writer Malcolm Gladwell once wrote that Gruen “may well have been the most influential architect of the twentieth century.”

Albee Square Mall (Courtesy Gowanus Lounge)

With an unassuming glass exterior, Albee Square Mall might pale in comparison to some of Gruen’s other projects. However, along with its companion, Fulton Mall, Albee Square became a cultural landmark that nurtured Brooklyn’s rising middle class, a burgeoning hip-hop culture and rejuvenated an important commercial district.

Leonard Grunstein, working as an Assistant Corporation Counsel, helped draft the land disposition agreement and ground lease structure that enabled the development of the Albee Square Mall in the late 1970s.

Leonard Grunstein Joins Historic CitySpire “Air Acquisition” Project

A 75-story tower in Midtown Manhattan, CitySpire Center is the tallest mixed-use skyscraper in New York City. The project began in the early 1980s when Bruce Eichner, a former lawyer turned real estate developer, bought a dilapidated parking garage on West 56th Street. Although he had been in the industry for little more than a decade, Eichner was intrigued by the possibility of assembling a column of air on which to build a much more profitable structure.

For the next two years, Eichner worked to assemble the air rights above City Center (the building behind his property) and eventually move them to his own lot. The process of moving such parcels of unused vertical space is often referred to as a “transfer of air rights.” Although successful, this legal maneuver was limited by New York law, which restricts the amount of space that can be occupied above each square foot of land. As a result, Eichner had to devise a way to stretch the 400 feet he was legally allowed to build to 815 feet in order to secure his envisioned 72 stories.

He decided to tap into a city bonus program that allows developers to add 20 percent to the size of a building as long as they provide amenities for public use. In this case, Eichner agreed to contribute to City Opera and the City Ballet and spend more than $5 million to renovate City Center.

The building, which when completed in 1987 became the second-tallest reinforced concrete tower in the country, was designed by Helmut Jahn. A German-born architect whose work was heavily influenced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Berlin Bauhaus, Jahn’s tower soars upward from a narrow base, and its stone and glass exterior echo his own passion for transparency, lightness and order.

In 1986, Leonard Grunstein worked on the acquisition and financing of the office tower condominium portion of the development. In addition, he led the charge to complete the work needed to comply with the city’s complicated zoning laws under the bonus program that enabled the construction of CitySpire.

Two Park Avenue | Leonard Grunstein

Two Park Avenue is a colorful 29-story tower located between 32^nd and 33^rd streets at the former site of the Park Avenue Hotel. Designed by Ely Jacques Kahn, a prolific twentieth-century architect whose career spanned nearly half a century, the building showcases that era’s signature Art Deco style.

Kahn earned his degree from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1911 and returned to New York where he became a partner in the firm Buchman & Fox (subsequently named Buchman & Kahn) six years later. He specialized in commercial and retail construction, striving to infuse the simplified functionality of loft buildings with classically derived ornamentation.

The loft style, defined by its mix of factory and office functions, was traditionally reserved for garment-related tenants and disparaged by the industry as a basic form of architecture. But Kahn was interested in broadening the market for this type of building so he approached companies that would value form as well as function.

In 1928, he partnered with the artist and ceramicist Leon Victor Solon to create Two Park Avenue. Because the section of the avenue was in a period of transition, the developers asked Kahn to design a building that could be used for either office or manufacturing purposes. So Kahn proposed a building with wide, open floor plans that could be adapted depending on the needs of the business. Inside, it consisted of one million square feet of rentable space to help maximize returns for the developers, while outside, Solon’s decorative terracotta blocks set the structure apart aesthetically from other nearby buildings.

For 25 years, Two Park Avenue was owned by a real estate partnership controlled by Sheldon L. Breitbart, an attorney with offices in the building. Following Mr. Breitbart’s removal as general partner in 1986, the property was put up for sale in a closed-bid auction. The winning bid – $151 million – came from Bernie Mendick, a prominent real estate developer and former chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York. Leonard Grunstein, who was at the time a partner at Herrick, Feinstein, was involved in resolving the matter as a prelude to the sale of the building.

Leonard Grunstein Represents the Paramount Building

The Paramount Building is a 33-story office tower located at 1501 Broadway, between West 43rd and 44th streets in Manhattan’s Times Square. The building was developed by Adolph Zuckor in 1926 as Paramount Pictures’ East Coast headquarters at a cost of more than $13.5 million.

Zuckor, who was the founder and chairman of the motion picture studio, hired Chicago-based architecture firm Rapp & Rapp to design the project. The firm, headed by brothers Cornelius and George Rapp, specialized in theater design and was credited with popularizing the “movie palace” style of the 1920s. When the Paramount was completed in 1927, it became the tallest structure on Broadway north of the Woolworth building, with its pyramidal shape echoing the studio’s mountain peak logo.

Rapp & Rapp, which had built several prominent theaters in the Midwest, was also hired to design Paramount’s flagship theater, which was located behind the tower. After almost three decades in operation, however, Paramount closed the theater’s doors in 1964 and subsequently removed its famous entrance arch and marquee in order to convert it into retail and office space. In 1988, the Paramount Building and former theater were both landmarked for their “significant contribution to the development of the world-famous theater and entertainment district.”

After being used as storage for newsprint by The New York Times in the 1990s, the former theater was finally leased in 2000, when a section of the office tower was acquired by the World Wrestling Federation, which sought develop the space into a WWF-themed restaurant. The WWF spent more than $7 million to rebuild the historic marquee and monumental arch that once marked the theater’s Broadway entrance, saying that it would “add to the entertainment value of the company.”

When the WWF (by then renamed the WWE) operation closed three years later, the Hard Rock Café, looking to relocate from its longtime home on 57th Street, began the process to take over the space. After two years of negotiations with the landlord and the WWE, the Hard Rock signed a lease in 2005.

Leonard Grunstein represented the Paramount Building in connection with the refinancing of its mortgage and the leasing of the WWE space to the Hard Rock Café. Mr. Grunstein, who was at the time a partner at Jenkens & Gilchrist, also led the charge to obtain approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission for the creation of four valuable blade signs.