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  Manhattan Views From a Less Expensive Perch Meanwhile, here in New York, the developers Alex and Andrew Silverman are betting that apartment shoppers who can’t afford to live on the east side of Manhattan will pay to look at it from across the river. In January, they paid $52.5 million for the 485,000-square-foot Eagle Electric building in Long Island City, Queens, and they have embarked on a $75 million project to turn it into 238 luxury apartments. The eight-story building has wide-open shop floors punctuated by hefty concrete columns. The ceilings are as high as 18 feet. But what sold the brothers on the building were the views of the Manhattan skyline. The apartments will be relatively large, many with walk-in closets, and several will have terraces. The building will have a gym and swimming pool and a parking garage. There will also be 17 work spaces for artists, which will be sold, like the residences, as condos. The apartments will go on sale in the fall through the real estate marketer The Sunshine Group, and work on the building should be finished by the middle of next year. Prices have not been set, but the brothers aim to attract buyers priced out of Manhattan. “Given what’s going on in Manhattan, we’re a real value play,” said Andrew Silverman, 29. He said the apartments will go for “about half the price of Manhattan, with the same finishes.” The project is the first begun by the brothers, who grew up watching their father buy and sell office buildings and shopping centers and now work with him in the company that he started and named for them, the Andalex Group. It is also the family’s first venture into residential real estate in New York. The building, at 45-31 Court Square, used to house a company that made switches and other electrical devices. It is opposite the Queens Supreme Court, where the famous bank robber Willie Sutton once stood trial and across Court Square Park from the Citibank buildings, the borough’s tallest. |
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