Chris Xu is wasting no time revealing his plans for a Queens development site he scooped up last month from Steve Roth’s Vornado Realty Trust.
Xu’s United Construction and Development Group — best known for developing Queens’ tallest building, Skyline Tower in Long Island City — released renderings for a three-building mixed-use complex at 93-30 93rd Street in Rego Park, YIMBY reported.
The exact size of the project is unclear, and no plans appear to have been filed yet, but the 140,000-square-foot site is zoned for up to 670,000 square feet of development. According to the renderings, the complex will include up to 706 apartments, 200,000 square feet of commercial space and 806 parking spaces. The design shows a reflective glass curtain wall on each building, plus glass-enclosed balconies.
The renderings come only a couple of weeks after Xu purchased the site from Vornado for $70 million — 16 percent short of the $85 million Roth’s real estate investment trust sought when it put the development site up for sale two years ago.
When Vornado put the property on the market in 2021, it wanted to get a deal done quickly, enabling a potential buyer to develop a project that would qualify for the 421a tax break, which expired last summer. It’s not clear if Vornado received entitlements for the site, but no tax break — plus higher interest rates — likely weighed down its price. Xu’s firm has primarily developed condo buildings in Queens, as well as hotels.
Maxim Property Group provided United Construction with a $40 million loan to finance the deal, which was arranged by a JLL team led by Bob Knakal and Stephen Palmese. The Commercial Observer first reported the financing deal.
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In addition to the 67-story, 802-unit Skyline Tower in Long Island City, Xu has a few other projects unfolding in the borough; he bought a Flushing development site last year for $103 million and bought another for north of $100 million in 2016.
Xu’s latest site sits between Queens Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway, adjacent to Vornado’s Rego Center shopping mall and across the street from the 312-unit Alexander, an apartment building Vornado developed in 2015.
— Holden Walter-Warner