A recent leadership shakeup at the top of the Sky View Parc development has fueled speculation about the project’s future, but new owner/developer Michael Dana, President/CEO of Onex Real Estate, stressed that the entire project is moving forward.
Onex Real Estate, one of the project’s original chief investors, took over the reins of the project from Queens-based Muss Development earlier this year. Dana quickly brought on Related, one of the city’s largest real estate companies, on as a consultant to “help us finish the project,” Dana said.
Currently, Related is helping to finish the leasing of the retail component, Sky View Center. The 800,000-square-foot shopping center at Sky View Parc is over 75 percent leased, with stores including Target, Bed Bath and Beyond and Marshall’s scheduled to open later this year.
On the residential side, the Related sales team took over the marketing of the condos.
“It gives us the capability to do one-stop shopping with one firm that has unique expertise in these markets to helps us bring a high level of expertise and professionalism to get the project finished,” Dana said.
Sky View Parc is the residential portion of the project that will consist of six luxury condominium towers and an amenity-laden rooftop park. Residences at Sky View Parc range from studios to three bedroom homes and start at $385,000.
The first phase of the development includes towers one through three. Currently, developers have gotten contracts for 105 of the 169 units in tower 3 and 50 of the 140 units in tower 1. Units in tower two have not hit the market yet, according to Dana.
“There’s nothing in this area that competes with it in terms of quality of units, amenity packages, the fact that the shopping is right there; we’re extremely confident and excited about the sale of the rest of the units,” Dana said.
While most of the construction is already completed on the first phase of the residential component, the second phase, which includes three additional towers and 660 units, has not begun yet. Dana said that company is “very committed” to the second phase of the project, but construction on phase two would not begin until towers one and three are sold out and sales at tower two are well along. Construction on the second phase of the project is expected to take two years.
Sky View Parc could have some competition with other development projects in the pipeline including Flushing Commons and even Willets Point. However, Dana, is not worried.
“We’re very bullish on the Flushing marketplace, and we think there’s going to be plenty of demand for all of us to do extremely well,” Dana said.
