While most of us were sprawled out on a couch in a tryptophan coma, the Wall Street Journal was sharing a few things about the future of the Long Island City waterfront. The list of developers competing to build Hunters Point South?the 5,000-unit middle-class utopia planned on the barren city-owned land next to all those glassy new Queens West towers?has been narrowed down to three: LIC veterans TF Cornerstone, Williamsburg waterfront conquistadors Douglaston Development, and a joint venture of Related, Phipps Houses and Monadnock Construction. AvalonBay, Durst and L+M have already been voted off the island. The tribe of mysterious city officials has spoken!
The developers are actually competing for just the first phase of the 30-acre project (which includes a stunning park), but that's no small job. We're talking two towers and 1,000 apartments, with big subsidies for the winning developer and 60% of the apartments reserved for households making between $63,000 and $130,000. Details of the proposals are still classified, but the Journal's Eliot Brown dug up a few tantalizing morsels.
Douglaston wouldn't give up any info, but TF Cornerstone said it intends to build both towers together, with the middle-income units owned and rented out by partners including the Settlement Housing Fund and Asian Americans for Equality. The Related-Phipps-Monadnock team let loose with the headline-grabbing architectural talent that will be recruited to design its towers if chosen: SHoP and Ismael Leyva. Maybe SHoP can recycle its never-gonna-happen South Street Seaport tower design, and Leyva can...hopefully not give us another one of these. Or this. The winning developer will be decided early next year. Place your bets on LIC's Stuy-Town-like future!
· Hunters Point Contest Narrows to 3 [WSJ]
· Hunters Point South coverage [Curbed]
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