Plaza Heeding Call for More Offices

By Alan S. Oser

With a leasing program nearing completion in downtown Flushing, the Muss Development Company of Queens is confirming the need for modern service-oriented office space in commercial centers outside Manhattan. And as Muss pursues other projects in Brooklyn and Queens, it is also demonstrating the virtues of patience in development work.

Remember Korvette's? It was the original high-volume discount department-store chain in the 1950's, but went out of business in the early 1980's. Among the disruptions the closing produced in comercial real estate was the vacancy of the 200,000 square-foot store on Kissena Boulevard in downtown Flushing, part of a large-scale mixed-use development that includes the high-rise Stanton apartment house, on Union Street.

Eventually, Muss took over the entire development. It converted the two-level Korvette's store to office use, with stores facing the entrance courtyard, and named it Flushing Plaza.

Now Muss has moved ahead with a development project that was foreseen when the store was designed but that was never executed - additional office space above a portion of the old Korvette's store and its 888 car parking garage. Two years ago Muss secured a lease from the State Labor Department and started construction of a 32,000 square-foot floor. The department is in half of it, entered from Barclay Avenue.

By Manhattan standards, the project is small...but it demonstrates the need in bustling commercial submarkets in New York City for modern service-oriented offices.

For larger projects, the preconstruction development process outside Manhattan often proceeds at a glacial pace, perhaps explaining why few companies undertake it. In downtown Brooklyn, it took Muss 13 years before it was able to start construction two years ago on the mixed-use Renaissance Plaza, in which a 376-room Marriott hotel opened this month.

"You've got to be patient, you've got to be lucky, and you've got to be able to keep paying for the process," said Joshua Muss, the principal in the company.

Now, the company is working on two other long-term projects, which may also test its patience. One is in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, where Mr. Muss has acquired the 14-acre waterfront site on which is cousin, Stephen Muss, president of the Miami-based Alexander Muss & Sons, tried in the late '80's to develop a large-scale project called Brighton by the Sea. The Brighton Beach Baths, a fixture on the site for decades, closed last year.

The Alexander Muss plan went through several incarnations before public approval was granted in 1992 for 1,600 apartments in 5 buildings of varying heights shaped in a wide V oriented towards the beach. By the time the plan was approved the residential market had collapsed. Now, Joshua Muss is hoping to revise the plan again, to a series of more modest buildings - about 16 or 18 of them, averaging 50 apartments each, and ranging in height from 4 to 12 stories. This less expensive development can be built and rented in phases, reducing developer risk.

If the City Planning Commission and City Council act favorably, Mr Muss said, construction could begin in October.

And in Flushing, Muss Development owns the 15-acre site on Roosevelt Avenue and College Point Boulevard.

The City Planning Department has proposed a broad commercial rezoning in Flushing, four years in the making, which embraces the Muss site and much of western Flushing near the Flushing River. If it is adopted by the city, Mr. Muss said, he will try to develop as much as 600,000 square feet of retail space and as many as 1,250 apartments on the Con Edison site.

"When interest rates are favorable, when the market is favorable, you have to have your approvals in hand, Mr. Muss said. "When a boom comes, you have to be ready. We hope we can catch this boom."