Plans in the works for another multi-level building in East Hollywood

A developer wants to add to the growing roster of mid-rise apartment complexes sprouting in East Hollywood.

Kenneth Sauder on behalf of Wakeland Wilcox LLC has filed plans for a four-story, 62-unit building at 4904-4920 W. Santa Monica Boulevard, county records show. The building would have a substantial affordable component.

The entity acquired the property, now a 4,850-square-foot office building and adjacent parking lot, for $6.4 million in September.

The applicant is requesting special zoning considerations under Los Angeles Transit Oriented Communities initiative, which encourages the construction of affordable housing near transit stations.

The $35.4 million development to be called The Wilcox is slated for $13.4 million in No Place Like Home Funds state grant funding, awarded through L.A. County, according to Urbanize.

Some of the other East Hollywood mid-level housing developments in the works:

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Developer looks to add to East Hollywoods growing multifamily stock - The Real Deal

In OctoberDecember 2019, YIT started construction of two new apartment buildings in Russia. The projects are located in Yekaterinburg and Tyumen. The total value of the projects is approximately EUR 22 million, with nearly 500 apartments to be completed. The start-ups of the apartments are booked in the order backlog of the fourth quarter of 2019.

In Yekaterinburg, YIT started the construction of a new apartment building called Vektori. The 25-storey building will feature more than 270 apartments and a parking hall with business premises and a roof-top recreational area for residents. The building is located in central Yekaterinburg, in the vicinity of diverse services and good traffic connections. The building is set to be completed in late 2021.

In Tyumen, YIT started the construction of the second phase of the Finskiy zaliv residential area. The 9-storey building is planned to have more than 200 apartments, mainly with 23 rooms. Some of the apartments are Transformer apartments, in which the residents can easily make changes to the floor plan when their needs change. In addition, the building will feature business premises and teaching facilities for 40 preschool children. The park area located near Finskiy zaliv offers excellent opportunities for various outdoor activities. The second phase is due for completion in the last quarter of 2020.

In addition, YIT acquired a new plot near the city centre of St. Petersburg at the end of 2019, with the intention of constructing an apartment building with approximately 100 apartments. The future project is located near many universities and cultural landmarks, such as the Mariinsky Theatre.

Read more:
YIT starts with two new apartment buildings in Russia - Property Magazine International

An interview with Dru McAuley, Assistant Vice President, Commercial Financing, First National on site intensification.

Across Canada, governments at all levels have jumped on the site intensification solution to housing shortages and for good reason. As the countrys population grows, it is economically and environmentally preferable to increase the housing density of existing neighbourhoods than to allow more urban sprawl.

However, even though intensification is promoted as good public policy (and Ontarios recently enacted Bill 108 further entrenches such promotion in law) it does not mean owners proposing higher density redevelopments will always find clear sailing at city hall. Indeed, many times the opposite is true.

In this article, Dru McAuley, Assistant Vice President, Commercial Financing at First National and a lending expert who has financed many different types of intensification projects over the years, provides a practical guide to those who are contemplating land use densification.

The Dollars and Sense Benefits of Intensification

McAuleys first observation is that intensification has many clear benefits. When asked to list them, he starts with a basic one: higher density projects provide more housing per hectare. In large cities like Toronto and Vancouver where the shortage of housing options is acute, this is a necessity. Additionally, when an underused urban site is redeveloped, it increases public transit use and creates what city planners call a more complete community featuring healthier patterns of human activity.

For municipalities, intensification reduces the need to build new roads and other infrastructure and brings in sought-after development charges/new property taxes from an increase in the assessment base. For these reasons, provincial governments have given municipalities planning act tools to achieve more compact neighbourhoods. In Ontario, the provinces Growth Plan requires all municipalities to accommodate a minimum of 40 percent of forecast population growth through residential intensification within their urban areas.

Beyond the social benefits, McAuley says there is a compelling economic case in favour of intensification for property owners as higher-density additions yield new sources of cash flow from otherwise underutilized or vacant properties.

The Risks

With seemingly easy, abundant opportunities for intensification present in most urban areas, its a wonder why it doesnt happen more often. A key factor is NYMBYism (Not In My Backyard), which is a general opposition to change for a variety of reasons. NIMBY protests are a common risk factor facing intensification projects.

Another challenge is parkland dedications that generally fall under Section 37 of Ontarios Planning Act. It authorizes municipalities to grant increases in height and density of development in exchange for the provision of facilities, services or matters by the property owner, which are essentially classified as community benefits and commonly referred to as parkland dedications. Toronto has used this to wrest over $300 million in community cash benefits and $212 million in payments and accrued interest from developers since the city was amalgamated in 1998. This is complicated by the fact that there is no commonly applied standard to determine the value of a Section 37 contribution. This makes the cost of the contribution difficult to calculate and can lead to lengthy and substantial project delays.

In Ontario, Bill 108 passed in June seeks to remedy this situation by declaring an upper limit on the charge that can be applied in percentage terms, prescribing a date that valuation takes place (the day before the building permit is issued) and installing a dispute resolution mechanism. Time will tell if these changes make a meaningful difference.

Drus Advice

McAuleys first recommendation to property owners is to informally ask the elected municipal representative in whose ward your project will take place if he/she will support the intensification development as envisioned. You might find the local rep will support the plan, something slightly different or indicate which type of Section 37 benefits will be required to garner support. If there is no support, then it is prudent for an investor to be aware of this from the outset. McAuley said that while gaining councillor backing is not an iron-clad guarantee that the project will make it through the approval process, it is a valuable indicator of how much friction it may encounter.

McAuleys second suggestion is to align yourself with experienced planning consultants, lawyers, architects and builders. A team approach is necessary. Navigating the municipal, provincial and conservation authority approval system takes skilled hands. This might seem obvious, but many investors attempt to go through the process with limited input. For example, a very useful exercise is to engage property tax experts early in the process who will liaise with the local tax authority or MPAC in order to have the increase in property taxes largely agreed upon prior to completion. This simple approach helps avoid tax shock when the reassessment occurs. Generally speaking, a non-fully professional team will not succeed in a site intensification project.

Recommendation three is to seek advice from a mortgage partner early, often and well before building project plans are set in stone. McAuley says First National is regularly invited by clients to run predictive analyses of potential financing strategies using different assumptions. Proactive engagements with an empowered lender like First National lead to better financing decisions, lower risks and lower costs. The benefit here is that financing surprises are avoided, or at least minimized. McAuley has often seen well planned projects fail at the final hurdle because the investors financing assumptions cannot be satisfied. When more equity or debt is required than originally envisioned, it naturally affects investment returns and even the viability of the project.

Recommendation four is to have sufficient contingency funds set aside in a financing to cover extra costs that may arise because of planning and building delays and construction inflation. Lately, First National has seen several project budgets that have had to be revised due to quickly escalating labour and material costs. Contingency amounts in budgets should be realistic. An often used 3% for both hard and soft costs would be considered too low in the current market. Instead, 5% is more realistic. A challenging construction market where booking reliable trades and other service providers is difficult complicates matters because of limited resource availability. Accordingly, investors without sufficient capital to meet cost overruns or supply shortages can get into trouble quickly.

While not a recommendation, McAuley also notes it can pay to be creative about how to achieve intensification. One First National client decided to add three storeys to an existing three-storey, 30-unit apartment building. To make the project work, the owner first approached the city for a soft approval and then worked with a builder, engineering consultants and material suppliers to find a way to construct the addition without asking existing tenants to vacate. The solution was the use of pre-fabricated materials, which reduced the construction window substantially and created much less disruption for existing tenants. There was an obvious concern that if something went wrong with the structure of the existing building during construction, the owner would suffer cash-flow shortages on the existing 30 units. This risk was partly mitigated through proper insurance, thorough investigative work, sound engineering advice and forward planning with regard to adding the necessary additional parking.

Recommendation five is to carefully consider parking. In many communities, particularly suburban centres, providing sufficient parking spaces is a pre-requisite for municipal approval of an intensification project. In the case of the project noted above, the owner had to acquire a vacant lot for surface parking across the street from the apartment building at extra cost. However, for some intensification projects, underground parking is the only acceptable solution and building it can substantially inflate construction costs beyond the point of recovery or reduce the level of density that can be achieved if the owner opts to limit parking capacity. The cost of underground parking in urban areas often a necessity adds tremendously to project costs and should be considered very early in the process. This also underscores the requirement of engaging proper consultants early a parking surprise is one to be avoided.

Overall, site intensification can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding. McAuley noted that First National recently closed a financing for a redevelopment project in north Toronto that was originally conceived six years ago. At first, the property owners proposed building a second apartment tower on a contiguous parcel of vacant land that they owned, which seemed obvious. After lengthy negotiations with city officials, the owner was instead permitted to construct a much smaller rental townhouse complex. The final goal was achieved site intensification and new, high-quality accommodation for local residents even though the preliminary plan could not be realized.

First Nationals Lending Parameters

In determining whether to fund an intensification project, First National applies straightforward thinking. The primary consideration is an obvious one: does the project make economic sense? It does when there is no equity gap. An equity gap exists when an owner asks for a loan of, say, $9 million when the cash flow after development will only support a $6 million financing. As noted above, this might seem obvious. But the importance of engaging a lending partner at the earliest stages of the development planning cannot be emphasized enough.

First National also strives to align itself with owners and developers who have a good level of experience and a proven track record. A borrower who has no high-rise experience, for example, will find limited financing available due to the lack of a track record with this type of asset.

The third consideration is deal size and type. First National typically engages in development or construction financings conventional and CMHC insured of $5 million and up but there are exceptions where smaller loans can be accommodated. The Company also focuses on financing site redevelopments, multi-residential building extensions/additions and new developments, rather than housing infills. An infill occurs when an owner redevelops a site by knocking down an existing structure and puts another building(s) or a larger structure in its place) on an under-used site within an already developed area.

In summary, it pays to recognize when you have a good case for intensification, either because you have excess land that was bought and paid for years ago (as in the case of many Toronto-area apartment sites) or because your existing property has low density. Transforming such properties into multi-unit residential developments that generate new cash flows will take skilled negotiation and committed capital, but is beneficial to you as the owner, your local municipality and the many Canadians whose need for housing is currently unmet.

Should you wish to consult First National on financing your residential intensification project, you can contact Dru McAuley atdru.mcauley@firstnational.caor any member of our Commercial Financingteam.

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Have an intensification project on the books? Read this first. - Real Estate News EXchange

SUPPLIED

Two people were injured at the apartment construction site on Thursday.

A construction worker was crushedunder a concrete slab while working on an apartment complex in Auckland, an eyewitness said.

St John said two people were injured in the accident and hospitalised on Thursday morning.

The eyewitness told Stuff workerswere lowering a slabnear the intersection ofPaora and Tautari Streets,in Orakei,when another slab already in place seeminglyfell and collapsed.

"There was stillpanickingthere and there's an ambulance there now. It was pretty rough."

READ MORE:Four workplace accidents in four days: 'Be more aware of risks', WorkSafe says

He said scaffolding at the Eastern Bays construction site might have stopped the slab causing even more damage.

SUPPLIED

The construction company says the site will be "untouched" and it will investigate, as will a subcontractor and WorkSafe.

"I only saw one person but think it might havecollapsedonto another.

"Some of the scaffolding stopped it from falling all the way down," he said shortly before 11am.

Southbase Constructionchief executive Quin Hendersonsaid a 12sq m precast concrete slab was dislodged as another slab was being moved at the Paora Apartments site.

Henderson said first aid was carried out immediately and an ambulance called as a precaution.

SUPPLIED

The Fire Service and St John were alerted after the 6x2 metre precast concrete slab fell.

He said it appeared all required health and safety measures were in place at the site but Southbase and the subcontractor involved would co-operate fully with WorkSafe.

The site and any affected area "would remain untouched" until WorkSafe arrived.

"Southbase and the subcontracting party will be conducting their own investigation."

ST JOHN/SUPPLIED

An ambulance was sent to the construction site on Thursday morning (File photo).

Henderson said Southbase's "immediate concern" was for the two workers' welfare.

They were fine and would be returning to work soon, Henderson said.

He said investigations typically took "a couple of days".

WorkSafe confirmed it was notified of the Orakei construction site incident.

"We are working to establish details of the incident and what our next steps might be," a WorkSafe spokeswoman said.

St John was called to a workplace incident on Paora Street at 9.58am, an ambulance service spokeswoman said.

One ambulance crew, a rapid response unit and a St John manager were deployed.

"We have treated and transported two patients to Auckland City Hospital. One is in a moderate condition and one is in a minor condition."

Fire and Emergency NZ was alerted to reports at 10.05am of a person trapped underneath a concrete slab but firefighters were stood down soon afterwards.

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'Panic' after concrete slab reportedly falls on worker in Orakei construction site - Stuff.co.nz

Chinese state-owned media and at least one party official are spreading disinformation to convince foreigners of the success of Beijings response to the growing public health emergency of the coronavirus.

Peoples Daily, owned by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the most-circulated newspaper in China, and Lijian Zhao, a deputy director of information with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tweeted an image Monday morning of a building they claimed was a hospital in Wuhan, China, the center of the recent coronavirus outbreak. The publication and the bureaucrat said enterprising workers in Wuhan had constructed the hospital in just 16 hours. In reality, the picture showed an apartment building more than 600 miles away. BuzzFeed News first reported the fakes.

Chinese speed. Infrastructure maniac. The 1st building of #Wuhans #Coronavirus hospital, Huoshenshan hospital, completed construction in 16 hours, Zhao wrote.

The Global Times, another party outlet, published a story Monday about the purported construction: Amazing! Huoshenshan Hospitals 1st building completed in 16 hours! A screenshot in BuzzFeeds story showed that the Global Times used the same picture as Zhao and Peoples Daily. The picture no longer appeared in the article Monday afternoon.

Yaqiu Wang, a researcher with the Human Rights Watch who studies Chinese censorship, said the boast was not surprising, given that the Chinese government has long prided itself on quick construction.

The government wants to use the new hospital to show it is on top of things, but apparently it is not. Even the picture of the hospital is fake, Wang said.

The coronavirus outbreak has killed 82 people in China and infected 2,800, according to Chinese authorities. More than 50 million people in China are under quarantine, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning against any travel to China. Five people in the United States have been confirmed as infected, and more than 100 are under quarantine for investigation.

Misinformation hyping certain aspects of the governments response will undermine the entirety of it, Wang said. The memory of the partys failure to report the severity of the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which public health experts say worsened the diseases impact and death toll, is still fresh, she added. The New York Times reported Monday that Chinese social media sitesWechat, Weibo, TikToks counterpart Duoyinhave exploded in an uncharacteristic display of rage directed at the government, which maintains strict internet censorship.

Being able to build things quickly is certainly impressive, but the key to epidemic control is trust and transparency. However, these things are currently urgently lacking in China, a problem that is very much of the governments own making, Wang said.

Because Twitter is banned in China, Zhaos charm offensive and the false claims from state media will only reach foreigners who do have access to the social network or Chinese citizens using virtual private networks. The ministers tweets often praise China and disparage the United States.

The government had shared videos days earlier of a fleet of backhoes breaking ground on the same new hospital to deal with the growing outbreak, though the origin of that footage is unclear. Bloomberg reported that the goal for the hospitals completion was one week, though its unclear when construction began.

Coronavirus is starting to cause political friction in the U.S. Former Vice President Joe Biden published an op-ed in USA Today on Monday calling President Donald Trump the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health challenge.

More here:
Coronavirus Disinformation Being Spread by Chinese Government to Convince Foreigners It's Doing a Good Job - The Daily Beast

Developers of the $1.8 billion Frisco Station project are ready to roll with a third office building.

VanTrust Real Estate is ready to start construction of The Offices Three at Frisco Station, a 210,000-square-foot speculative office building.

Its part of the 242-acre mixed-use project near the northwest corner of the Dallas North Tollway and Warren Parkway.

Work on the six-story building will start before the end of the month with a completion set for late next year.

Frisco is the hottest market in North Texas and was Americas fastest-growing city in 2018, Bill Baumgardner, VanTrust executive vice president, said in a statement. With the job growth and office demand in North Texas, the projections for leasing are excellent.

Also, wellness and technology amenities in new, collaborative office spaces are key to companies talent acquisition and retention strategies, and this site will offer a premier environment for a healthy, smart and engaging work experience.

The first office building in Frisco Station was completed in 2018 and sold last year to a partnership representing a unit of MetLife.

MetLife also has an option to buy the second Frisco Station office project, which VanTrust just completed and is also significantly leased.

With the success of the first two buildings, the developer is pushing ahead with phase three.

Dallas architect HKS will design the project. Manhattan Construction is the general contractor.

The new office building will include a fitness center, conference center and tenant lounge.

Commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield is marketing the building to tenants.

Frisco Station is a development of VanTrust Real Estate, Hillwood and the Rudman Partnership.

It wraps around the Dallas Cowboys Star in Frisco development.

Along with the offices, Frisco Station includes apartments, retail, hotel and other uses.

Hillwood has already opened its first, 300-unit apartment development in the project called Station House. And construction is underway on a second 322-unit rental community called Cadence.

Atlanta-developer Novare Group has opened its 25-story SkyHouse Frisco Station apartment tower on the west side of the Dallas North Tollway. Its the tallest building in Frisco.

Lewisville-based NewcrestImage Hotels has opened the doors on two new hotels in Frisco Station. The Marriott AC Hotel and the Residence Inn are the first of four hotels planned in the project.

Together the new hotels have 300 rooms plus meeting space.

The overall Frisco Station project will have more than 4 million square feet of office space, 2,400 apartments, shops, restaurants and civic facilities. A large greenbelt and park will cut through the middle of the community.

See the rest here:
Third office building ready to start in $1.8 billion Frisco Station - The Dallas Morning News

A high-floor apartment in Miami Beach, Florida, that offers unobstructed, 270-degree views of the ocean and city skyline, is coming onto the market Tuesday for $16.95 million, Mansion Global has learned.

Located on the 20th floor at Apogee, a luxury condo tower developed by Argentine- American billionaire Jorge M. Prez, the 4,154-square-foot apartment has four bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, a home theater and open entertaining spaces enhanced with floor-to-ceiling glass walls. It also comes with an 11-foot-deep, 2,446-square-foot terrace with a built-in summer kitchen.

The view, the space, and the architecture of the home, combined, is what makes it so valuable, said Bryan Sereny, who is handling the sale with Bill Hernandez at Douglas Elliman.

Since the building, which stands at 24-stories, is located on the southwestern-most tip of the island, the high-floor residence enjoys views of the Atlantic Ocean, the Biscayne Bay and downtown Miami Beach skyline.

With that beautiful backdrop, the sunset is incredible, Mr. Sereny said.

From PentaThe BMW M850i Gran Coupe is Exceptional, and so Is the Price

The current owner is a Swiss entrepreneur, per the listing agents, who bought the apartment when the building was under construction. He closed on it in July 2008 for $7.3 million via a limited liability company, property records show.

He hired French architect and interior designer Michel Gamard to design the unit. The homes art-deco interior includes 19 different colors that speak to South Beach style, Mr. Hernandez said.

For the past few years, the family used the apartment as a vacation home and decorated it with some unique pieces of furniture, including a glass dining table from Carlo Santambrogio, who is known for the see-through glass home in Milan, Italy; an original couch of the late Zaha Hadid worth $13,000; and original Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs.

The furniture is not included in the asking price, but can be negotiated separately, the listing duo said.

The home also comes with a two-car, air-conditioned garage, which can also be used as storage rooms, they said.The 67-residence Apogee, has a 34-foot lobby, a full-time concierge, a pool, a gym with massage rooms.

The large penthouse of the building was once the most-expensive apartment listed in Florida, when it was listed for $65 million in January 2017. The listing was taken off the market in May 2018.

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Miami Beach Apartment With 270-Degree Views to List for $16.95M - Mansion Global

Grizzly Station was demolished last week, leaving only memories of midday snack runs and cheap gas stops.

Built in the mid-1900s, the gas station would host groups of 20-30 high school students every day at its pinnacle of popularity. However, Grizzly Station was left vacant for several years before being torn down last week and for a while was in the running to be the new library location.

In September 2019, the Logan Municipal Planning Commission approved a plan to construct a 75-unit apartment complex with one and two bedroom units in the gas stations place. According to the site plan, there will be four levels of living and two levels of parking on the .94 acres located at 100 West and 100 South. The plan was proposed by Jared Nielson of Mill Creek of Logan LLC.

With Logan High School just across the street, the gas station was often utilized during lunch breaks as a place to grab a hot dog, a slice of pizza or something from the aisle of snacks.

While the new apartments might not have the same appeal for teens, they are part of the citys focus on bringing more housing options downtown.

This is evidence of that, said Russ Holley, the citys senior planner. This is the first apartment building in downtown in many years.

Story continues below video

He said the apartments are to be named Mill Creek and because there is a height transition requirement around the high school, the apartment complex will vary between three and six stories above ground.

The project developers did not immediately respond to questions about the timeline of construction for the apartments.

Read the original here:
Grizzly Station gone to make way for apartment complex - The Herald Journal

Jake Adkins took ownership of Bartlett Construction at the beginning of the year

Bartlett Construction has a new face at the helm.

Jake Adkins took the reins of the company as of Jan. 1. Adkins has been in the construction industry for approximately eight years. He previously worked for another Central Oregon company as a chief estimator.

"I looked at the numbers, I looked at where I was headed and then decided it was better that I go out on my own," Adkins said.

He was a partner in another bedrock construction business venture in 2011 in North Dakota. Primarily, he has been doing site preparation and paving for most of his career. He has been away from Central Oregon for several years, and he was drawn back to Crook County to raise his children.

"Coming back to Crook County and being able to run a business in Crook County is a blessing," Adkins said. "We are growing by leaps and bounds, but that same core is still there. I can still walk into the city office and shake hands with everybody there or walk into the court, and within 15 minutes be sitting in front of any official that we have."

"When something happens in the community, we all come together," he added.

He really enjoys supporting sports events and youth in the community.

"Those are the things that I enjoy putting my money into, because it is still that small town we are still close knit," he said. "Without that closeness of a community, it's not the same as it would be in a city and there are five schools and nobody knows anybody. And here everyone knows everybody."

When previous owner Brad Bartlett decided to retire, Adkins decided to take the opportunity.

"It seemed logical," he said.

It made sense to keep the name Bartlett Construction because Bartlett owned and operated the business for 33 years, Adkins said.

"Everything just kind of fell into place," he said.

Business operations include site preparation which includes all underground infrastructure such as storm systems, as well as public and private utilities. Currently, Adkins and his business are doing all the infrastructure for Prineville Apartment Complex, a new 135-unit complex being constructed off Peters Road north of Secure Storage.

"We are the general contractor for all of the site prep up there," Adkins said.

In addition to larger jobs like the complex, his business does a variety of work for ranchers, such as cleaning ditches, removing dams, building roads and installing and maintaining septic systems. He will be soon be expanding to add asphalt maintenance.

"It's something that I have funded and am going into in the springtime," Adkins said.

Although the scope of the business is vast, his focus is on the smaller local businesses.

"I still want to take care of those guys," Adkins emphasized. "Really the focus is the ranchers and Prineville, primarily. We branch out and we go everywhere in Central Oregon."

He has added different types of work and has expanded the payroll from three to nine employees; he anticipates being up to 15 employees by spring.

Adkins brought Rod Fulton on as a field superintendent; he was public works superintendent for the city of Madras for 25 years.

"When I took this on, I looked for somebody that was going to know the ins and outs and kind of run the field," Adkins explained. "Not that I can't, but it just gets to be too much."

Adkins stressed that Bartlett had the business for 33 years, and he has built a lot of good relationships.

"Those relationships are going to continue," he said, "and I will do my best to cater and facilitate those relationships. I will do my due diligence to make sure those contacts are met. The customers in this are the primary."

He wants to make sure that he takes care of all customers not just the larger general contractors.

"I also have this community to take care of in little ways, also," he pointed out. "I want to be able to treat that $200 job the same as the $200,000 job. That is kind of my main focus here to be able to sustain just like Brad did for that amount of time."

He explained that it will be a family-owned and operated business where his door is always open. Adkins prides himself on being a hands-on business owner, and is often on the job site.

"There is not anything that I won't ask my guys to do that I won't do," Adkins concluded.

Sidebar

Bartlett Construction

Owner: Jake Adkins

Address: 1248 NW Madras Highway, Prineville, OR 97754

Business phone: 541-447-3301

Business Hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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Bartlett Construction has a new owner - Beaverton Valley Times News

Dunn Development has racked up a lot of firsts with its redevelopment of the former Triboro Hospital for Tuberculosis in Jamaica, Queens, into about 200 affordable and supportive apartment units.

The Brooklyn-based firm, which is a prolific owner and operator of affordable housing in the city, is tackling its first project in Queens, its largest single-building development, and its first adaptive reuse of a historic property.

Logistically, its the most complex thing weve ever done by far, said Martin Dunn, president of Dunn.

Surveying the vast swaths of vacant patient wards, decaying office labs, and cavernous kitchens, that appears to be an understatement.

The 10-story property, just north of the Grand Central Parkway at 82-41 Parsons Boulevard, originally opened in the early 1940s as the Triboro Hospital under the watch of Mayor LaGuardia. Decades later, the building transitioned into part of the Queens Hospital system, where it was known as the T Building and began to slowly deteriorate.

The hulking, 243,000-square-foot property has experienced a bumpy road going into its third act. Earlier plans for senior housing were derailed by the financial crisis, and preservation groups had to lobby to save the property from the brink of demolition. The city eventually selected Dunn to lead the project a task that involved collaborating with community groups, preservationists and NYC Health + Hospitals (NYC H+H), which controls the city-owned property and, last June, Dunn secured a 99-year ground lease at the site.

We spent years working to build community support, Dunn said. Its a big building in a neighborhood with low-rise homeownership. We brought people to the building, and our other buildings, to show them what we do and the quality of our design and operations, to get them comfortable that were going to be good neighbors.

The final plans call for 124 affordable units, ranging from studios to three-bedrooms and reserved for low to moderate incomes, and 75 supportive units catering to tenants coming from NYC H+H.

Since kicking off construction last August, Dunn has been busy with things like restoring the marble lobby, which features original bronze radiator screens and grilles and double-hung steel windows that hint at the architectural gems upstairs. On the ninth floor, an auditorium with a stage and projection room, where visiting thespians would put on plays for sick patients, will be restored with a plaster ceiling and a rounded wood proscenium. The building also houses a solarium ward with historic bed partitions, an eerie and dazzling space that looks like it was yanked straight off the set of Sleep No More.

Agreements with preservation groups, plus the use of historic tax credits, require Dunn to retain a number of original elements within the building, such as certain 10-foot wide hallways, fixtures and certain structural elements. (Though, notably, the team has been busy undoing the work from the Batman-inspired series Gotham, which filmed there; set designers took the liberty of adding things like doors, walls and even a few sea-green archways.)

Elements that are being restored across the property include its glazed terra cotta wall tiles, terrazzo corridor flooring, oval-shaped teak exterior handrails, copper skylights, slate stairways, and brick facade.

There are so many things that we wanted to restore, said Maggie Poxon, senior project manager at Dunn, pointed to an oversized glass partition that was too bulky to save. I had some big heartbreaks.

When completed in the summer of 2021, the property will also include 12,000 square feet of office space, occupied by NYC H+H; an 8,000-square-foot community center repurposed from the propertys industrial kitchen space; an attended lobby; on-site social services; a restored library and computer room; childrens play area; roof terraces; and community, exercise, laundry and bike storage rooms.

Monthly rents on the affordable units range from $856, on the low end, for a low-income tenant in a roughly 419-square-foot studio, to $2,143, on the high end, for a middle-income tenant in a roughly 1,156-square-foot three-bedroom. The lottery for the units is expected to open in early 2021.

Dunn has even embraced the propertys past association as a tuberculosis hospital. The building, after all, is orientated to the southwest, so patients could receive a blast of afternoon sunlight through the oversized windows and cantilevered balconies.

As a tuberculosis hospital, it was all about getting light, air, and getting sun into the lungs of the people and keeping them happy, Poxon said.

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A Blast of Sunlight at the T Building in Queens - Commercial Observer