Jan. 22, 2019 By Nathaly Pesantez
A large primary care practice will soon open in Long Island City, making it one of the first of its kind to open in the rapidly growing neighborhood.
NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine have signed a 15-year lease for a multispecialty practice at The Jacx, a two-tower development rising at 28-07 Jackson Ave. in Queens Plaza, and set to be completed this summer.
The 26-story towers—One Jackson and Three Jackson—are connected by a four-story base.
The state-of-the-art medical center will span 28,000 square feet at One Jackson, taking over the eastern half of the second base floor and leading to a street level entrance.
The practice will be served by Weill Cornell Medicine physicians, and marks one of the few health care service providers in southwest Queens.
Tishman Speyer, the firm behind The Jacx, said the facility will serve Long Island City’s growing residential and commercial populations.
The need for health service providers in the area has long been recognized, with Community Board 2 consistently ranking the lack of health care services as one of the most pressing issues facing the area.
“Southwest Queens lacks a primary care medical facility and outpatient clinics to serve the medical needs of Community Board 2’s increasing population,” reads part of the fiscal year 2019 district needs statement. “Queens residents travel to Manhattan or to Eastern Queens to receive specialized medical services.”
The board noted that a health care survey by the Floating Hospital of New York determined Long Island City to be one of the most critically underserved communities in the city.
The Hunters Point neighborhood and areas south of the Queensborough Bridge, where most of Long Island City’s newest development is happening, currently have a mix of urgent care centers and small medical practices. A Weill Cornell-affiliated practice is presently located at 50th Avenue, but only provides pediatrics and internal medicine care.
NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine did not respond to additional questions about the practice by press time.
The medical practice lease was among the final agreements that filled all of The Jacx’s 1.2 million square feet.
Macy’s, which was initially supposed to occupy 567,000 square feet at the development for its corporate and support teams, recently tacked on another 300,000 square feet as part of a 20-year lease.
The new agreement means the department store giant will occupy all 22 floors of One Jackson, as well as the third and fourth floor’s of the development’s base, each measuring 90,000 square feet.
Bloomingdale’s, which is owned by Macy’s, will occupy the top 11 floors at Three Jackson. WeWork, which announced four years ago that it would expand into The Jacx, will be taking up floors five through 15 at Three Jackson.
The development will also house more than 50,000 square feet of street-level retail that includes a boutique gym, a food hall and a gourmet market.
Tenants are expected to move into The Jacx in late 2019 and continue throughout the first half of 2020.
“Our ability to pre-lease most of The JACX prior to construction and all of the space prior to completion firmly demonstrates Long Island City’s viability as an office hub and a magnet for today’s creative workforce,” said Rob Speyer, president and CEO of Tishman Speyer.
The firm already has a significant imprint in Long Island City, especially in the Queens Plaza area. Jackson Park, a three-tower luxury development just across the street from The Jacx, was recently completed. Two Gotham Center, around the corner from The Jacx and home to the city’s Department of Health, was completed in 2011.
The two-tower development, according to Tishman Speyer, marks the single largest addition to Queens’ office inventory since 1990.
9 Comments
A hospitalmitself would be good. Elmhurst is overcrowded and trated as a charity ward by Mt. Sinai, in the opinion of several users. A police station annex and parks must be retrofitted, and made to squeeze in, just this outpatient facility was squeezed in. Planning and walkability, sense of community—all lacking. Baldfaced moneyed-class apartment building without a soul to the community means streets that are barren of life, espcially at night, or host to numerous bars for drinking to cover the lack of real city diversity and interesting gathering places. Suggestion: stop building; start planning.
Churches, synagogues?
Church is lame though, bars are more fund
Great News!!! The new school being developed and this health care facility by Cornell is excellent for the neighborhood. We also need the fire station to re open and the damn library to finish this century.
This is fantastic news. We need medical facilities such as this in our area, and Weill Cornell couldn’t be a better choice!
Agree, except for “couldn’t be a better choice” part. I personally dealt with Cornell hospital at the upper east side location and downtown and will tell you that there are better hospitals than Cornell. But at least some medical facility I guess wouldn’t hurt.
The added commercial traffic on top of all the other rentals will decimate this area. welcome Amazon, and it’s game over. They have done nothing to make an actual improvement on the infrastructure. oh boy (and girl)
Amazon will be by Vernon Blvd not in the plaza area.amazon will be in a less congested area. The plaza area will be mucho congested. Good place to have a coffee cart .
On the contrary, the argument can be made that the existing infrastructure (a hub of numerous transit lines and vehicular options) had for many years been vastly underutilized in this area of Long Island City, which had mainly been a sprawling low-rise industrial area with few residences until quite recently. As manufacturing left New York for supposedly greener pastures, that existing infrastructure and space options are exactly what attracted new uses and development. In fact the area could be described as “decimated” and desolate beforehand, rather than now, when it is becoming a thriving community of both commercial and residential usage – albeit one that is unfortunately unaffordable to many ordinary New Yorkers.
This is not to say that the newcomers should not be mandated into helping to improve that infrastructure thru taxes, incentives or other means as they further build up the area. And the affordable housing options in these new developments should be make truly affordable to consider the average incomes of ALL New Yorkers, rather than the trickery that is currently being utilized to set these so-called afforable rents, and which allow politicians to falsely boost about how many affordable new apartment they have added to the City’s housing stock.
I agree with the comments here that the transit infrastructure is what drew development and people to the area. I think when people talk about subway overcrowding in LIC they don’t think of the fact that the overcrowding if a result of the lack of transit infrastructure in Eastern Queens, thats where the improvements must be made. The fact that the 7 express is completely packed before it leaves Flushing is an issue, people can’t get on at Woodside, how do you expect people to get on at QBP or Court Square