Green Retrofits Pending for Long Island City’s Standard Motors Building

The 300,000-square-foot, six-story Standard Motors Building at 37-18 Northern Boulevard in Long Island City will soon be transformed into a $40.6 million mixed-use, commercial loft development that will also offer ground-floor retail space. Purchased by a JPMorgan Chase-backed pension fund, the project has been in the works for some time. Standard Motors Products, which has outsourced much of its manufacturing operations from the site, wanted to sell the building for the highest possible price, but also lease back 60,000 square feet and retain control over the incoming tenants. Greiner-Maltz handled the sale and negotiated with over 15 bidders. John Maltz told GlobeSt.com that the JPMorgan bid was “the most qualified financially, and we felt that they were the most qualified to fulfill their promise and select the right tenants.”

Those tenants will include a mix of industrial and retail companies that will lease between 10,000 and 25,000 square feet on each floor. According to Maltz, the rents will likely land in the range of $20 per square foot. The project will also implement a number of green retrofit initiatives, ranging from upgraded mechanical systems to new energy-efficient windows, as well as aesthetic improvements that will give the property a Class A facelift. Likely driven in part by the sky-high rents in Manhattan (the most recent statistics are an average of $93/sf for Class A in Midtown and $53/sf Downtown) Long Island City continues to be an attractive destination for green building practices. We’ll follow the Standard Motors project as more specific details become available.

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