Tuesday, August 12, 2014

REPOST: TOUR AN ARCHITECT-DESIGNED COMMUNITY IN THE HUDSON VALLEY

The Hudson River Valley has always been a retreat for the East Coast’s upper-crust bohemian contingent. This article on Architectural Digest features a vacation development of 26 glass-and-wood homes set in the lush forests of the valley.

Image Source: architecturaldigest.com

New York’s Hudson River Valley has long been a haunt of the region’s creative types, from the River School painters to folk musicians. There is a quality to the land that runs thick with inspiration. It’s fitting then that New York City–based architect Drew Lang selected the quaint town of Kerhonkson as the home of his latest project, Hudson Woods, a vacation community for innovative, design-conscious New Yorkers.

“Hudson Woods is a realization of a set of fantasies,” explains Lang. “We’re directing this primarily toward urban dwellers, in particular New York City dwellers, who can, by having one of these homes, balance their life with a connection with nature and have a different kind of shared set of experiences with family and friends.”

The 131-acre development. located just 100 miles north of New York City, will comprise 26 customizable glass-and-timber homes, each nestled in its own sizable parcel of unadulterated forest. Prices start at $665,000. The project, which was conceived, developed, and designed by the eight-member team at Lang Architecture, maintains a deep connection to its surroundings.

The architects collaborated with local builders, craftsmen, and artisans on all elements of the homes, from the bathrooms’ wood mirrors by Materia Designs to the handblown-glass fixtures by Deborah Ehrlich, who is based in the nearby town of Accord. But perhaps most exciting was Lang’s fortuitous discovery of a massive stock of bluestone on the property, which has been used to form stacked walls around the pools and, crushed, as gravel for the community’s shared roads.

Hudson Woods began as an attempt to reenvision the exurban environment. “It has been a strong desire on my part to redefine housing and housing developments,” Lang explained. “This is a reaction against suburbia and what it has come to represent visually and in terms of a lifestyle that’s evolved around it.”

 And so far Lang’s vision has proven a great success. Although he can’t disclose the exact sales figures, he does confirm that interest has been strong—several contracts have been signed and the team has already started construction. While the buyers are diverse, Lang says that there are consistencies: “Namely, the people are keenly interested in design.”

Above all, Lang remains committed to enjoyment; on the list of customizations that buyers may select is a tree house designed by the architect himself. “It has to be fun,” Lang says. “Why else do it?”  

Construction company owner and real estate contractor Peter Forchetti keeps himself updated on complexes and buildings being built within and around New York City. For more on Mr. Forchetti and his business, subscribe to this Facebook page.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

REPOST: Brooklyn real estate investor turns a Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone into some serious green

Flipping properties in New York is always a high-risk undertaking for the inherent steepness of real estate price points. This article, however, showcases an investor who pulled off renovating a brownstone in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, pushing its value up by a million.  

The financier, who paid $1,200,500 for a 4-story Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone in February, has flipped the historic building for a whopping $2.1 million.

The historic home attracted tons of interest. 
Image Source: nydailynews.com

This is flippin’ incredible!

A real estate financier who paid $1,200,500 for a 4-story Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone in February has flipped the historic building for a whopping $2.1 million.

Eric Mann, 44, drew a tidy $1 million profit for the 3,600-square-foot Queen Anne-style building at 196 Hancock St. in gentrifying Bed-Stuy on Friday by making minor renovations. “It’s definitely a very good flip,” said Mann of the whirlwind 81-day turnaround deal.

The purchaser is an investor who likely plans to renovate the top floor and hold onto the historic property for a while, said a source familiar with the deal.

The sale was first reported by Brick Underground.

The renovations, which Mann spearheaded over the course of a week, cost less than $5,000 and unearthed 19th century moldings and mahogany wood panels.

Median sales prices for homes in Bed-Stuy have ranged from $1.5 million to $1.7 million over the past month, according to Zillow.com. The site predicts that home prices in the red-hot neighborhood will rise by 2.8% next year.

Mann said that at an open house earlier this year, interested people flocked from as far as New Jersey and Connecticut.

“The buzz was out there,” said Mann, who owns 40 buildings throughout Brooklyn, including 25 in Bed-Stuy alone. “The line was down the block.”

The prior owner of the  townhouse, Winston Smith, died in 2001. His family inherited the building but spent little time inside.

They rented out a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor to two female tenants. Mann paid them $5,000 to leave after their lease was up following the purchase.

Mann is experienced in the art of the rollover rodeo.

He owns 40 buildings throughout Brooklyn, including 25 in booming Bedford-Stuyvesant, an area that is gentrifying at sonic speed.

He noted that the successful sale after about half a year wasn’t his most profitable recent flip. “Things are changing really quick,” he said.

Construction company owner and contractor Peter Forchetti is a native New Yorker who is passionate about both historic and modern architecture, urban design, and real estate developments in the city and its many neighborhoods. More information about him and his business can be found on this Facebook page.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

REPOST: Obama's day: A bridge in New York

U.S. President Barack Obama travels to New York City to deliver his infrastructure speech and announce a new executive order intended to simplify the permitting process for federal infrastructure projects. Read more about his vision for a long-term infrastructure bill in the article below.
Image Source: usatoday.com
 
President Obama travels to New York on Wednesday to talk about infrastructure and to raise campaign cash.

In the early afternoon, Obama journeys to the Tappan Zee Bridge just north of New York City to make his case for new road and bridge construction across the country.

While ugring Congress to pass a new transportation plan, Obama will also announce a new executive order designed to streamline the permitting process for federal infrastructure projects.

In the late afternoon and evening, Obama will attend fundraising events for the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama will spend the night in New York City, where on Thursday they will help dedicate a 9/11 museum.

In his infrastructure speech, Obama will say that Congress needs to approve a new transportation plan before the Highway Trust Fund runs out of money in the fall.

"President Obama has laid out his vision for a long-term infrastructure bill that would provide certainty for our state and local partners, support millions of jobs, and position our economy for lasting growth," said a White House statement.

Peter Forchetti is an entrepreneur who currently heads Pleasant Village Estates Inc., a construction and development firm based in New York. Subscribe to this Facebook page for the latest news and interesting discussions on the building and construction industry.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

The New York Guggenheim: A triumph of artistic will and vision

When the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened in October 1959, its architect Frank Lloyd Wright had passed away six months prior, and founder Solomon Guggenheim had reposed for ten years. Still, the building, which took 16 years to complete, remains as much a design statement as a symbol of victory against overwhelming odds despite the demise of its two main proponents.

Image Source: nycgo.com
When Guggenheim and his art advisor Hilla Rebay commissioned Wright to design a building for their growing abstract art collection, Wright’s strong opposition to New York as site led to countless heated debates on location. In the end, Guggenheim’s wishes prevailed, and Wright settled on the Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets, flanked by the serenity of Central Park’s rolling greens.

Image Source: guggenheim.org
Because Wright constantly sought to express the fluidity of nature in his work, he conjured plans for the Guggenheim Museum as an inverted ziggurat of reinforced concrete, the inside an atrium topped by a glass dome, surrounded by a ramp that uncoils six stories upwards like a nautilus shell.

Though Wright devised the spiral so that the art could be viewed in a flowing, continuous manner, many artists picketed this plan during construction, arguing that the concavity of the walls made standard displays difficult, and that the superfluous design would compete with the art being displayed.

Image Source: archdaily.com
Furthermore, Manhattan’s building code administrators slung structural prohibitions in the project’s direction, requiring Wright to resize the glass dome crowning his ziggurat just to appease the city council.

Despite the roadblocks, Wright and Guggenheim ploughed through and defended their vision to the very end. Today, New York’s Guggenheim stands beautiful and proud, and both Wright’s and Guggenheim’s legacies continue to inspire.  

Contractor and businessman Peter Forchetti is an avid fan of architecture in New York. Give the history of New york buildings a quick scan by visiting this Facebook page.

Monday, March 24, 2014

REPOST: One World Trade Center: Up New York's 'Freedom Tower'

Katherine Rushton of The Telegraph shares her experience touring the new One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the Americas, prior to its opening.

World Trade Center, New York
One World Trade Centre, left, and the view from the top, right
Image Source: telegraph.co.uk

It is the coldest day Manhattan has seen for more than 70 years, but it is not the biting, whipping, whistling wind that brings tears to my eyes. All of New York is laid out before me.

The Empire State Building, once the tallest structure in the world, pokes up above the rest of Manhattan looking like one of the thousands of plastic replicas sold in the tourist shops below. The building I stand on, at the southern tip of the island, casts a dark shadow that stretches to the other side of Houston, two and a half miles north.

This is One World Trade Center, or the "Freedom Tower" as it used to be known, erected close to the site of the original World Trade Center complex which was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001.

It has taken 26,000 people eight years to build the new complex, which has gone over schedule and over budget several times. The tower itself was originally expected to cost around $3bn, but that figure now stands just shy of $4bn.

The building is close to completion, however. It was topped out in August 2012, and a “spire” was later attached, taking its overall height to 1776 feet –a good 400 feet more than the original Twin Towers.
Last year, it was officially recognised as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, following considerable controversy over whether the spire was an adornment or “integral” to the building.

The first tenants have now started to move into their offices. The mirrored, cubist edifice is expected to open later this year, finally restoring to the public a part of the city that has been out of bounds since 9/11.

“It’s a huge step — it’s no longer ground zero, it’s the World Trade Center now,” said Douglas Durst, whose company, the Durst Organization, has bought a stake in the building from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

“It’s been surrounded for 12 years by barricades, inaccessible. This is going to make a dramatic difference.”
Around 55pc of the building has been let so far, to tenants including Conde Nast, the publisher of magazines such as Vogue and Wired and Vantone Industrial, the Chinese property group.

Talks with finance and media companies are still ongoing, and Durst estimates it will reach around 70pc occupancy by the time the building opens.

Legends Hospitality Group has taken the observatory desk on the 101st and 102nd floors, around 1,300 feet above ground. The whole building promises to be a big business - the Empire State Building made $63m in profits last year.

But of course, One World Trade Center will attract tourists for more than just its spectacular view.

The building is inextricably linked with one of the most horrific acts of terrorism in the world, and is likely to become a place of pilgrimage for Americans who want to pay tribute to those that died in the atrocity.

There are delicate nods to the Twin Towers throughout the building. In the cavernous entrance hall, the walls are lined with white marble slabs from the same quarry used to decorate the first World Trade Center.

With the nostalgia, however, comes a fear that the new building could become a target once again. Its design has been through a number of revisions with this in mind.

The original architect, Daniel Libeskind, proposed dedicating the upper floors to a series of “sky gardens”, so that offices would be restricted to the lower floors. The eventual structure, adapted and designed by David Childs, includes a 57m concrete pedestal to ward off terrorist attacks from ground level.

Inside, the walls and floors are very thick: 14,000lbs of concrete per square inch, compared to the 900lbs that is standard for skyscrapers. There is a waterproof fire lift, and lifts and multiple stairways are housed in a reinforced column “like a bunker”.

Wall Street gossips claim there are missile launchers on the roof, although the building’s developers are quick to scotch that rumour.

“The safest place to be in any incident in New York will be One World Trade Center. It is the safest building on the planet,” says Mr Durst.

What about if another plane is hijacked? “There is no building safe from a plane,” he says, adding that tight security on aircrafts means the odds of anyone emulating the attack that destroyed the Twin Towers are very slim indeed.

Even so, the building’s developers are offering tenants an extra carrot. The rate for the lower two thirds of the building is $75 per square foot per year, but the city and state of New York are offering incentives that reduce that figure to $69.

Larry Silverstein, the property developer who owned the lease on the World Trade Center complex in 2001, has recouped his money from the insurers. It now falls to the publicly-funded Port Authority, which long ago gave up hope that this would be a money-spinner, even in the medium term.

If it was fully occupied, at market rate, One World Trade Center would garner around $120m a year, and take around 35 years to recoup the costs of construction.

But, as one of the workers on site says, that’s hardly the point. “This building wasn’t built to make money. It was built to demonstrate something to the world.”


Peter Forchetti heads Pleasant Village Estates Inc., a construction and development company headquartered in New York. Learn more about Mr. Forchetti and his firm here.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

REPOST: Affordability Will Be Focus for New Housing Leaders

The Big Apple's Mayor, Bill de Blasio, shows he is serious with his campaign to expand New York's affordable housing stock by appointing four people to assist with the task.  Read the full report in this article from The New York Times.
Image Source: www.nytimes.com
Mayor Bill de Blasio filled four leadership positions throughout his housing agencies on Saturday, putting in place the team he said would help fulfill his goal of significantly expanding New York City’s affordable housing stock.

The mayor appointed Shola Olatoye, a former executive of a nonprofit organization that invests in affordable housing, as chairwoman of the New York City Housing Authority, an agency that has struggled financially; and named Vicki L. Been, a housing scholar, to be the commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which enforces city codes and oversees programs to finance and develop affordable housing.

Mr. de Blasio also announced that Cecil House, who became the authority’s general manager under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, would remain in his post. The New York City Housing Development Corporation, the city’s vehicle for financing development through bonds, subsidies and low-cost loans, will be led by Gary D. Rodney, a former executive of Omni New York LLC, a developer of affordable housing in the state.

The announcements were made at Abraham Lincoln Houses in Harlem, where Mr. de Blasio and other Democratic candidates spent a night during the campaign for mayor. Residents in the complex of 1,282 apartments in 14 buildings showed the candidates their moldy walls and broken cabinets, offering them a firsthand look at the disrepair of public housing buildings.

Mr. de Blasio has long promised to create and preserve housing that is affordable to low- and middle-income residents, a crucial aspect of his larger pledges to address economic inequality in the city. He has stressed that he wants the housing and planning agencies to work together to increase the number of affordable units in the city.

Mr. Bloomberg invested heavily in affordable housing, but Mr. de Blasio won office promising to do more. He has said he would require major residential projects to include units for low- and moderate-income residents. He has also said he would invest $1 billion of city pension funds in creating lower-rent units; legalize some basement and cellar apartments; and close tax loopholes on vacant land to get more revenue to spur development.

Affordability advocates say the main challenge for the city will be to put into effect the details of these and other plans, and to allocate enough money to meet Mr. de Blasio’s target of preserving or building 200,000 affordable homes over 10 years. But the new housing officials themselves will face significant challenges, the advocates said, including a scarcity of city-owned land on which to build, and deep cuts in federal housing subsidies.

Finding new revenue for the authority’s current stock of some 178,000 units is also key to efforts to reduce the more than 50,000 people in the city’s homeless shelters. Mr. de Blasio has said he intends to restore a policy of giving preference to people in shelters for public housing apartments and federal rental vouchers. Mr. Bloomberg took the preference away, believing it drew more people to the shelters.

Ms. Been, the director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, a research center at New York University, is widely seen as expert on land use practices, urban policy and affordable housing.

Ms. Olatoye, who last worked as vice president at Enterprise Community Partners, which advocates affordable housing nationally, takes over an authority that, while covering more than 400,000 residents as the city’s largest landlord, faces crippling budget shortfalls. The previous head of the authority, John B. Rhea, an investment banker, was criticized for his lack of experience. His relationships with some tenant groups became contentious over the authority’s plan to lease to private developers land within eight housing projects for the construction of market-rate apartments.

On Saturday, Mr. de Blasio said that specific plan had been abandoned but that he would be open to a land-leasing plan if it had the support of public housing tenants. He and Ms. Olatoye, the daughter of a Nigerian immigrant whose last name Mr. de Blasio jovially enunciated, also spoke of the need to retrofit public housing buildings to make them energy-efficient. “It’s a total reset,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Some tenants and their advocates were guardedly hopeful.

Lisa Wilson, a resident in Lincoln Houses whose mother, Katherine, hosted Mr. de Blasio during the candidates’ sleepover, said: “I’m pretty optimistic. There are still neighbors trying to get painting and some repairs done.”

Denise Miranda, who works for the Urban Justice Center, which litigates on behalf of public housing tenants, said that the agency had been “plagued by disinvestment and government disinterest.”

“Mayor de Blasio and Ms. Olatoye have their work cut out for them,” she said.
Read this Peter Forchetti blog for more interesting news and information on construction and land development.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Six to Celebrate: An initiative to preserve New York's architectural diversity

Now on its third year, Six to Celebrate continues its commitment to save New York’s most treasured neighborhoods with the newest additions to its annual listing of preservation priorities. The chosen areas for 2014 are:

• The Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn
Image Source: www.shelf3d.com
• Forest Close, Queens
• Historic Cemeteries, Staten Island
• Madison Square North, Manhattan
Image Source: www.walter-samuels.com

• Park Avenue, Manhattan
• New York City’s Public Libraries
Image Source: www.rentenna.com

The Historic Districts Council (HDC), the proponent of the initiative, annually chooses the six neighborhoods based on the architectural and historic merit of the area, threat to the neighborhood, cooperation from local advocates, and where HDC’s citywide preservation program could be the most meaningful. HDC will work with the chosen communities to ensure the designation of their historic neighborhoods and to help them achieve their preservation goals through strategic planning, outreach programs, public awareness campaigns, and valuable tools, such as documentation, research, zoning, and land marking.

Simeon Bankoff, HDC’s executive director, said that the organization hopes to “focus New Yorkers’ attention on the very real threats that historic communities throughout the city are facing from indiscriminate and inappropriate development.” He keeps the momentum high, saying that the initiative will utilize all possible resources and alliances to help advance awareness of local efforts to save neighborhoods on a citywide level.

Read this Peter Forchetti blog for more interesting news and information on construction and land development.