A new Queens development is expected to get the City Council’s final blessing today. The question now is: Even with the council’s approval, can the builder afford to build it?
Earlier this month, after the mayor’s team reached an agreement for the Astoria Cove development — which calls for 1,700 new apartments on the East River — we fretted that the hassles leading to the deal could wind up deterring other developers and make it harder for Mayor de Blasio to fulfill his promise of more low-cost housing.
Meanwhile, there’s also the question whether the economics still work. True, the developer, Alma Reality, wouldn’t have agreed to the plan if it didn’t think it could turn a profit in the long run.
But consider how much officials squeezed Alma. Start with the requirement that 27 percent of the apartments be rented out at below-market rates. Similar deals in the past have required only 20 percent of the units to be subsidized.
On top of this, the city also required Alma to use union labor — adding as much as 30 percent to labor costs, according to one estimate. That’s led some in the real industry to wonder if Alma, which hasn’t done a project of this size, gave away too much in its eagerness to get a deal.
The question is more than academic. Because if the project is uneconomical, it might not get built at all.
Mayor de Blasio touted the agreement as a “game-changer.” Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen bragged to Crain’s that the city was getting a quarter of the units “for free.”
We hope it all works out. But we’d feel better if the mayor recognized that, as with lunches, even in Progressive Land there’s no such thing as a free apartment.