A former 19th-century cigar factory in Long Island City has been reimagined as mixed-use office space fit for creative companies. The four-story loft building on 35th Avenue offers tenants super high ceilings, exposed beams, and arched windows. Aptly dubbed “The Cigar Factory,” the over 120,000-square-foot building also boasts a private landscaped courtyard.

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New rendering by ODA Architects for TF Cornerstone

Developer TF Cornerstone officially broke ground Friday on its mixed-use, affordable housing development in Long Island City, a plan that began nearly six years prior. The project, which consists of 1,194 new apartments across two buildings on Center Boulevard, falls under the city’s redevelopment of Hunter’s Point South, a proposal with the goal of bringing 5,000 units of new housing to the area first backed by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In addition to the residences, the project includes construction of a community center, local retail, a new public park designed by Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects, and a K-8 school. A pair of new renderings highlights the open space planned between the new towers.

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1964 US Olympic Trials at Kissena Velodrome. From page 47 of “30 years of progress, 1934-1964 : Department of Parks : 300th anniversary of the City of New York : New York World’s Fair.” (1964). Via Internet Archive Book Images on Flickr

From the late 1890s through the 1920s, tens of thousands of New Yorkers turned out to witness the high drama of competitive bicycle speed racing. In New York, there were Velodromes (cycling tracks) at Coney Island, in the Bronx, and even at the original Madison Square Garden, where grueling six-day races called “Madisons” pushed riders to their limits. The sport fell prey to the Depression, and today there are just 26 Velodromes in the United States, including one in New York City, the Kissena Velodrome in Flushing’s Kissena Park, known to Velodrome enthusiasts as “the Track of Dreams.”

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Via The Collective

London-based communal living company The Collective has purchased a hotel in Long Island City with plans to convert the building into a space for co-living. The Paper Factory Hotel, located at 37-06 36th Street near the Astoria border, will be transformed into a space for “short-stay” co-living, which the company says will give members more flexibility in the length of their stay. The first phase of the conversion adds cultural and educational space to the building’s ground floor; the second phase adds 100 more bedrooms to the hotel’s existing 125 rooms. More this way

Image via NYCEDC

According to a new poll conducted by the Siena College Research Institute, nearly two-thirds of New York state registered voters think Amazon’s decision to cancel its plans for a second headquarters in Queens was bad for New York. Sixty-one percent of the people who were polled say they would approve of the deal—in which Amazon would receive up to $3 billion in state and city incentives and create up to 25,000 jobs—if the company were to reconsider. The results are clear: “While some may have celebrated Amazon’s announcement to pull the plug, the vast majority of New Yorkers of every stripe thought it was bad for the Empire State,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg.

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Courtesy of Curtis + Ginsberg Architects

A lottery launched this week for 113 mixed-income apartments in Edgemere, a beach-front neighborhood just outside of Far Rockaway in Queens. Designed by Curtis + Ginsburg, the eight-story building meets passive house certification by utilizing a geo-thermal cooling and heating system with a resilient, flood-proof design. Qualifying New Yorkers earning 30, 40, 50, 60 and 100 percent of the area median income can apply for the available units at 45-19 Rockaway Beach Boulevard, which range from a $331/month studio to a $1,910/month three-bedroom.

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Image courtesy of MCR and Morse Development

Guests of the TWA Flight Center Hotel—set to open on May 15—will be able to experience the Jet Age through exhibitions of Trans World Airlines artifacts curated by the New-York Historical Society. Flight attendant’s logs, vintage furniture from TWA headquarters, in-flight amenities—like gilded playing cards and custom matchbooks—are some of the types of objects that will be on view in a rotating series of exhibitions dedicated to the former TWA terminal, a historic landmark designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen and opened in 1962.

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Hórama Rama by Pedro & Juana, winner of the 2019 Young Architects Program. Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo & Mecky Reuss. Mexico City, Mexico

Serving as the light at the end of winter’s tunnel, MoMA PS1 unveiled this week the winning design for its popular summer outdoor music series Warm Up. The installation “Hórama Rama” by Pedro & Juana (a Mexico City-based studio founded by Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss) will bring an immersive “junglescape” with a cyclorama that sits on top of the concrete courtyard walls. “Hórama Rama” will feature a 40-foot-tall, 90-foot-wide structure that floats over the courtyard space, with hammocks and a functioning, two-story waterfall contributing to the wilderness vibe. The temporary exhibit accompanies the outdoor music series that runs from June to September.

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Photo via Flickr cc

Last summer, 11 blocks of Rockaway Beach were closed due to safety issues from erosion. The decision to shutter the half-mile stretch came just days before the city’s beaches were set to open on Memorial Day weekend. Though the city said at the time that it might take years to get it reopened, a press release this week announces that the beach will reopen in time for this summer season, thanks to a $13.4 million beach replenishment project in which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will dredge 300,000 cubic yards of sand.

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Image via CityRealty

Update 3/1/19, 1:10pm: According to Crain’s, Governor Cuomo said today on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, “They have given no indication that they would reconsider. I have no reason to believe that Amazon is reconsidering. Would I like them to? Certainly. But I have no reason to believe that.”

Amazon’s Valentine’s Day breakup with New York City has been rough on Governor Andrew Cuomo; the New York Times reports that Cuomo has continued to beseech the retail giant to build one of its two new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, as it had announced plans to do last November. According to the Times, Cuomo has privately assured Amazon officials that he would ease the company’s path to any needed approvals and is “working intensely behind the scenes”–including a personal pitch to founder Jeff Bezos–to get Amazon to reconsider.

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