Home (http://www.labor.ny.gov) Labor Statistics (/stats) New York City Region, Expansions and Contractions New York City Region, Expansions and Contractions Last Updated 01/18/2018 Expansions and Openings March 2018 Bronx County Gilbane Development Company, along with Hudson Companies and Mutual Housing Association of New York, was selected by New York City Economic Development Corporation and Department of Housing Preservation and Development to transform the former Spofford Juvenile Detention Center in the Bronx’s Hunts Point community into a 5-acre campus featuring affordable housing and recreational space. The $300 million project will create 740 units of affordable housing; 52,000 sq. ft. of publicly accessible open space; 50,000 sq. ft. of light industrial space; 53,500 sq. ft. of community facility space; and 15,000 sq. ft. of commercial space. Called “The Peninsula”, the project’s development will occur in three phases. The first phase is expected to be completed in 2021, the second phase in 2022, and the third phase in 2024. The Peninsula is comprised of a five building that will provide 100% affordable housing for a diverse range of New Yorkers; from students to seniors to families. The expansive campus includes a mix of commercial and industrial businesses that will anchor The Peninsula, as well as a health and wellness center and educational and job training programs. The project is expected to create 177 permanent jobs and more than 1,600 temporary construction jobs. Kings County None New York County A Business software company founded in Bucharest in 2005 by a former Microsoft engineer has just raised $153 million on the eve of its move into a new Manhattan headquarters. UiPath, which specializes in the fast-growing sector known as robotic process automation, will use the money to fuel global expansion. It will also add machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to its digital “robots,” which perform back-office tasks. UiPath’s software, utilizing “computer vision,” can read and process everything from invoices to insurance claims. The company moved to New York in April and settled its marketing, sales and global administration staff in a Midtown WeWork space. In May, topping off a year and a half of rapid growth, UiPath expects to move its 100 New York employees into a 26,000-square-foot space across two floors at 90 Park Ave., in Midtown. The company is also opening offices in Washington, D.C.; Houston; Munich; Amsterdam; and Seoul. It expects to have more than 1,000 employees by this summer Founded in San Francisco in 2013, Flexport opened a New York office in August 2016. But since then, the freight-logistics tech startup has blown past its expectations for its Northeast business and has signed a lease for a new office that’s more than double the size of its current one. The company expects to move into its new, 23,000-square-foot location at 111 W. 19th St. in July. San Francisco is still the company’s largest office, with about 300 staffers, but New York is expected to eventually take the lead. In the past two years the New York offices head count jumped to 70 from just three. The new office will have room for 200 employees, though the current plan is to expand to around 175. Flexport handles shipping, customs and tracking logistics for a wide variety of companies. Queens County None Richmond County Construction of the $180 million Boulevard shopping center that will replace the former Hylan Plaza is on track to be complete in fall 2019, according to its developer, the Long Islandbased Kimco Realty. The demolition of the former Hylan Plaza shopping center is complete. The new shopping center will be anchored by ShopRite and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema will offer a 41,000-square-foot dine-in movie theater with about 1,000 seats and nine or 10 screens, according to Kimco. When the new ShopRite of Hylan Boulevard opens it will be much more than a supermarket. An in-house pizzeria run by Staten Island restaurant operator Reggiano's Brick Oven Pizza, and a sit-down cafe with seating for 50 people will be included in the layout of the new 80,000 square foot supermarket. Leases already signed include Ulta Beauty, PetSmart and Chase. Modell's, which currently exists in a free-standing location on the property, will take up space in the new multi-level shopping center. Mandee's and GameStop, which were located in a portion of Hylan Plaza that was knocked down, will have stores in the new shopping center. Party City will also be moving from its current location at 2189 Hylan Blvd. to a 13,000-square-foot store in The Boulevard, according to the developer. The fourth Staten Island-based LA Fitness will open in The Boulevard. Shoe brand Crocs has become the latest retailer to sign on for space at a soon-to-be-open discount mall in St. George, Staten Island. The company, famous for its molded-foam clogs, has leased 2,000 square feet at Empire Outlets, a 350,000-square-foot outlet center being developed by BFC Partners and scheduled to be finished in the fall. The store is one of several major brands that have taken space at the complex, a collection of retail buildings interspersed with 3 acres of outdoor space. February 2018 Bronx County None Kings County None New York County Kallyope, a medical start-up based in NYC, aims to develop new drugs by studying the way the brain and the digestive tract communicate through hormones and specialized cells with plans to focus on metabolic issues, including obesity and diabetes, and central nervous system disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Kallyope is based on East 29th Street at the Alexandria Center for Life Sciences, a privately developed, 728,000-square-foot campus that houses Big Pharma tenants Eli Lilly & Co., Pfizer and Roche. Kallyope plans to expand from 44 to 60 scientists by the end of the year, with plans to hire more as the results of their research are revealed. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has reached an agreement to acquire Chelsea Market, an office and retail building across the street from the tech giant’s New York City headquarters, for $2.4 billion. Google already occupies at least 400,000 square feet in the roughly 1.2 million-square-foot Chelsea Market and owning the property will allow the company to expand its footprint farther. Jamestown, the real estate investment firm selling Chelsea Market to Google, also won approvals from the city in 2012 to add almost 300,000 square feet of space on top of the property—development rights that could allow Google to create state-of-the-art space. Days after the news that Google’s parent company is purchasing a building next to the tech giant’s New York headquarters, Google has reached a tentative deal to grow even more in the city. Under the proposed arrangement, the company will expand at Pier 57, a large building on the Hudson River across the West Side Highway from West 15th Street. Google had previously agreed to lease 250,000 square feet at the complex and will now add another 70,000 to its offices there. It will lease an additional 50,000 square feet for public, cultural and educational activities and will also create a landing for ferry service. RXR, the developer of the site, has stated it is aiming to finish the pier project by the end of 2019. Gothamist, the local news site that was shut down along with DNAinfo by their owner in November of 2017, is expected to be back in business by the spring. The site’s rescue was announced today by public radio station WNYC, which began talks in December to acquire the property and concluded a deal a week ago for the key assets of both Gothamist and DNAinfo, including their web archives and internet domains. For WNYC, the deal is about strengthening local coverage at a time when its business model is under siege—and continuing the expansion of the station’s own footprint, which has been growing on the strength of its podcasts and programming. New York City is pushing to become the country’s cybersecurity hub, and has attracted several firms in recent months with a $30 million initiative. Jerusalem Venture Partners, an Israeli-based investment firm focused on cybersecurity startups, will announce this week it is reopening an office in New York in a bid to bring more Israeli companies to the city. Two other cybersecurity companies founded in Israel, D-ID and Intezer, are also opening offices in New York. They join Team 8, an Israeli cybersecurity think tank, which recently opened a hub in the city and Bay Dynamics, which relocated its headquarters from San Francisco to New York last year. Campari America will be moving from San Francisco to the heart of New York City’s Midtown in the fall of 2018. The US subsidiary of Campari Group, the world’s sixth-largest spirits company according to its website, has signed a 10-year lease to occupy 64,648 square feet, the full 18th and 19th floors in the Grace Building. Owned by Brookfield Properties and the Swig Company, the Grace Building is a 48-story, 1.6 million square-foot, LEED Platinum-certified property. It is located at 1114 Avenue of the Americas, between W. 42nd and W. 43rd streets, across from Bryant Park. The new offices will house approximately 165 employees. It will accommodate the entire US team including marketing, finance, accounting, legal, human resources, product supply chain, IT and sales operations. The company offered all eligible employees relocation from San Francisco to New York but anticipates additional hires at the new office. Field sales teams will not be affected. Queens County Newsday will be printed and transported to Long Island by The New York Times Co. from its production facility in College Point, Queens. Newsday, the commuter newspaper amNewYork and other Newsday Media Group products will begin to be printed in Queens later this year. The decision will mean the loss of 225 full-time jobs and about 300 part-time jobs, according to Local 406 of the Graphic Communications Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents the affected employees. Under a labor contract ratified in January, all of the affected workers will receive severance and a majority of the full-time people will be eligible to work at The Times plant in Queens. The Estée Lauder Cos. is reducing its presence in Melville, moving dozens of information technology jobs to a new office in Long Island City, Queens, according to an employee announcement. The number of affected employees is less than 10 percent of Manhattan-based Estée Lauder’s Melville workforce. Estée Lauder’s new technology hub will be in rented space at 1 Queens Plaza North and will open in July. Many IT employees based in the New York area will transition to the new space in Long Island City. Richmond County Triangle Equities, the developer of Lighthouse Point -- a $250 million, 115-unit luxury apartment complex to be equipped with retail, office space and a Westin Hotel in St. George -- has signed a lease to open a fresh food market in the fall. Lighthouse Point Market will offer healthy, affordable options -- including prepared foods, fresh breads, produce and meats -- in a 7,000-square-foot space equipped with parking for 300 cars. January 2018 Bronx County Developers of the nearly 1,000-unit La Central project in the South Bronx announced they have secured $335 million in financing for two buildings in the affordable-housing project— despite federal tax reform punching a $20 million hole in the budget. The $600 million La Central project, which was approved in the fall of 2016, is one of the biggest residential developments underway in the city. When finished it will comprise five buildings, a skate park, retail and a new branch of the YMCA. A partnership between Hudson Cos., BRP Cos., ELH Management, Kretchmer Cos., Breaking Ground and Comunilife scored the financing from public and private sources for two buildings slated for completion in 2020. Kings County The design and engineering giant AECOM has opened an office at Industry City as the firm's portfolio of Brooklyn projects has grown. The company has leased 15,000 square feet at the Sunset Park complex and in recent weeks began occupying the space, which it is using to house about 80 employees in its urban design group. AECOM is handling design work for the triple cantilever, a section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn Heights that is being rebuilt and involves a complex structure supporting the north and south lanes of the roadway and a pedestrian promenade above. The company is also involved in design work for sections of the Belt Parkway that are being rebuilt. Ward said that staff working on those projects would operate out of the Industry City space. New York County Discovery Communications, the company that runs the Discovery Channel and several other cable networks is headed to New York City. Discovery told its employees that the move will happen by 2019. Approximately 1,300 people work at Discovery Communications in Maryland and a portion of the workforce will remain in Maryland, although it’s not yet clear what departments and how many people are expected to relocate. Siemens has reached a deal to move its U.S. mobility division to 1 Penn Plaza. The German engineering and manufacturing company signed a lease to take 35,000-square-ft space, which also includes an option for Siemens to expand later. The bulk of the new space will be the national headquarters for Siemens' mobility division, which is relocating from 498 Seventh Avenue. The firm plans to move in by July. Update: As a subsidiary of CVS Health Corp., Aetna Inc.. may have to adjust its plans to move to a new headquarters in New York City, which the company announced last June. Aetna’s move to New York was motivated by a need for workers in the knowledge economy: software developers, data specialists, and others. Aetna had planned to move more than 250 executives, with about 6,000 employees remaining in Connecticut. Although nothing definite has been announced, Aetna’s new parent company, CVS said that “…all Aetna locations will be evaluated during the integration planning process.” In the meantime, the NYC EDC cancelled the $9.6 million incentive package Aetna was offered for the move, although the company could still take advantage of $24 million performance-based tax credit offered through the ESD. T.J.Maxx is doing so well at 250 W. 57th St. that it has extended its lease to 2030 and is expanding. The fashionista hot spot now includes the first and second floors, covering 27,400 square feet, and will gobble up the entire third floor of 19,000 square feet — for a total of 46,400 square feet. The store is opposite the upcoming Nordstrom’s department and men’s stores. The Pod Hotels brand is expanding its New York City footprint with the opening of its flagship location in Times Square. The 28-story hotel, located at the intersection of 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue, opened its doors 1/23/2018, making it the biggest Pod Hotel to date, among the current five locations. BD Hotels, the group that runs the Pod Hotels brand, has upped the ante just a little bit at this newest location. In addition to its hotel rooms, Pod Times Square will also have 45 apartments that will be available for short-term and long-term leasing. Embassy Suites by Hilton, a global brand of upscale, all-suite hotels from Hilton, announced the opening of a newly-built hotel in New York City’s Midtown Manhattan. The hotel venture marks a significant milestone as the only full-service Hilton in the Midtown central and south areas. Embassy Suites by Hilton New York is located at 60 West 37th Street. Queens County The fast-food chain Carl's Jr. said it will make its Manhattan debut at the end of the month. The franchise will open a restaurant across the street from Penn Station. The chain also opened a Coney Island location earlier this month. The chain currently has more than 1,300 restaurants, but fewer than 10 of them are located east of Oklahoma. A North Shore Farms store will open in a former Waldbaum’s location in the Whitestone section of Queens this year and another will open in a former A&P space in Westchester County’s Mamaroneck in early 2019. Last week, North Shore Farms announced its plan to open a seventh Long Island store in a former Waldbaum’s location in Hauppauge this spring. North Shore Farms’ new stores will open in spots formerly occupied by supermarkets that closed when their parent company, Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2015. North Shore Farms plans to open its 23,000-square-foot Queens store this year, to be leased from the Feil Organization. Its Westchester store will open in a space in Mamaroneck Centre that North Shore Farms is renovating and leasing from Brixmor Property Group. Brixmor also will add 13,000 additional square feet of space for small shops in Mamaroneck Centre. Richmond County Ikea announced plans to open a 975,000-square-foor fulfillment center on Staten Island in late 2018. The Swedish furniture giant is slated to open a warehouse in the Matrix Global Logistics Park, where Amazon recently announced plans for a fulfillment center. CEVA Logistics will operate the warehouse, which is expected to create 200 jobs, paying between $16 and $65 per hour. The NYC EDC said Ikea is slated to receive $1.2 million benefits from Con Ed, and a total of about $1.2 million in waived city and state sales tax on equipment purchased as a part of the project. As part of its expansion project, The Staten Island Mall has announced it will be adding international grocer, Lidl, to its list of new tenants. Lidl -- a grocery store with roots in Germany -will be the first supermarket tenant at the more than four-decade-old New Springville Mall that is currently undergoing a major overhaul. The retailer will take up about 36,000 square feet in the Mall. The Nicotra Group has entered into a partnership with Brooklyn Grange to manage a 40,000-square-foot organic rooftop farm at Corporate Commons Three, which is being built in Bloomfield. Brooklyn Grange -- a leader in rooftop farming -- will design and operate the farm, which will sit atop an eight-story office building being constructed on an 8.5-acre site inside The Teleport. December 2017 Bronx County None Kings County Whole Foods Market 365 will open its first East Coast store at Two Trees Management’s property located at 300 Ashland in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The opening of the 40,000 squarefoot natural foods supermarket is scheduled for Jan. 31, 2018. The Whole Foods Market 365 chain offers organic, natural, health foods at less expensive prices. Call9, a technology and medical startup, is more than tripling the size of its Sunset Park, Brooklyn, office after raising $24 million in venture capital funds three months ago. The fastgrowing firm is moving into a 14,500-square-foot office at Industry City, upgrading from a smaller 4,500-square-foot space it has had since coming to the complex a year ago. Call9 provides medical staffing at nursing homes along with the technology and software to remotely connect that personnel with off-site physicians who can attend to medical situations and emergencies in real time. Call9 was accepted into the Start-Up NY program, a state incentive that allows companies to save on taxes within designated zones, including Sunset Park. Peck said the new space will allow the company to more than double its 35 office employees. New York County Mastercard is expanding its New York City Technology Hub, leasing the entire 212,000 square-foot, 11-story building at 150 Fifth Avenue. The global payment company is relocating its employees, currently occupying 80,000 square feet on four floors of office space at 114 Fifth Avenue. The project is expected to create 473 new technology-related jobs by 2024, while Mastercard will also retain more than 250 existing research and development and tech jobs in New York City, according to the released statement. To encourage Mastercard’s expansion in New York, Empire State Development offered the company up to $13.3 million in performance-based tax credits through the Excelsior Jobs Program. Queens County Regal Entertainment Group has signed a deal to open a movie theater in Sunnyside, Queens. The new 38,000-square-foot Regal Cinema will anchor a 145,000-square-foot project that will also feature medical and community facilities. Under the 20-year deal, the new cinema will take a part of the ground floor and the entirety of the second floor. The company currently operates the closest cinema to the neighborhood, United Artists Kaufman Astoria. The Sunnyside is expected to be completed in Spring 2019. The Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center has acquired an 85,000 square-foot, former bicycle factory in Ozone Park, Queens. It plans to perform a gut renovation of the threestory structure with seventy-five thousand square feet of rentable space converted to production areas accommodating 20 to 25 small manufacturing businesses and up to 80 skilled workers. The facility is expected to open in the spring of 2019. GMDC forecasts the project to create 147 full-time construction jobs. Richmond County For the second time, the opening date for Empire Outlets on Staten Island has been pushed back. Now, New York City's first outlet mall is scheduled to open in the fall of 2018. Initially set to open on Black Friday 2017, the opening date was pushed to March 2018 earlier this year to better coincide with the opening of the NY Wheel, which was being built adjacent to the outlets site. While that project remains in limbo after the NY Wheel developer fired its contractor in May, the outlet developers claim that the new delay for the mall is a good thing. The developers said that there has been a great deal of new interest in the project and that Empire Outlets is looking to include a number of well-known chains in the future mall roster. Five Guys -- a chain restaurant known for its array of burgers and Kosher-style hot dogs -- is opening a nearly 2,000-square-foot location in New Dorp in January 2018. The second Staten Island location of the popular chain restaurant will open in the Tysens Park Shopping. The first Five Guys opened in New Springville in 2012. The new restaurant will seat 30 partons and employ about 45 people. November 2017 Bronx County None Kings County Sahadi's, an international foodstuffs purveyor, is preparing to open a second Brooklyn location. The new store will offer many of the same Sahadi-brand products, including hand-blended spices and homemade breads and pies, but with the added element of letting customers watch how the food is made. The new store, which is now scheduled to open late next year, will be in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. Fashion company Lafayette 148 New York is expanding its future headquarters in Brooklyn. The company is adding about 28,000 square feet to the 68,000 square feet it has already committed to at Building 77 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Building 77 has much larger floors than the firm’s current home at 148 Lafayette St., allowing it to expand while consolidating operations onto fewer floors. The space in the Navy Yard will house the bulk of the staff, including executives, sales and marketing personnel, designers and those who sew. Brooklyn Boulders, which launched in Gowanus in 2009 before expanding to Long Island City in 2015, is aiming to lease 121 Morgan Ave. in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which, at about 35,000 square feet, would be the climbing chain’s largest outpost in the city. The facility will feature climbing walls that reach 40 feet or higher—taller than those at the Gowanus and LIC locations, which top out at 30 feet. New York County Accounting and consulting firm EY announced a deal to take 600,000 square feet at One Manhattan West, a 67-story office tower being built by Brookfield. The company will occupy floors six through 22 in the 2.1-million-square-foot building. In exchange for a pledge to create 1,152 jobs in the next seven years, EY received $12 million in tax breaks through the state’s Excelsior Jobs Program. Right now, the company employs about 10,000 people in the city, most of whom work at 5 Times Square. Three years after launching its ride-hail service in New York, Lyft announced that it is opening its first permanent office in the city. The 11,000-square-foot space at 245 West 17th Street will have room for 80 employees. They will include sales, marketing and engineering staff focused on infrastructure, marketplace, and work relating to autonomous vehicles. Newell Brands, which owns a portfolio of household and consumer brands that includes Rubbermaid, Oster and Sunbeam, is opening a Dumbo office to support its growing e-commerce business. The company, which is based in Hoboken, signed on for 47,000 square feet at Empire Stores, a once-derelict warehouse at 53-83 Water St. on the Brooklyn waterfront that has recently been redeveloped into a creative office building with ground-floor retail space. "Newell Brands' new office in Dumbo will contribute to Brooklyn's thriving tech ecosystem and create hundreds of new, high-paying jobs for New Yorkers," ESD president and CEO Howard Zemsky said in a statement. Queens County UPS signed a long-term lease for two large sites in Brooklyn and Queens spanning a total of 1.7 million square feet. New distribution centers will likely occupy both sites. One is the 12acre Red Hook site, which holds six buildings spanning 350,000 square feet and offers a total of 1.2 million buildable square feet. The other site is a 475,000-square-foot warehouse in Maspeth, Queens, which was long used as a Duane Reade distribution center until it shuttered in May of 2017. Richmond County The Swedish furniture giant Ikea is in negotiations to open a 975,000-square-foot warehouse distribution center in Matrix Global Logistics Park in Bloomfield. While the international company has yet to sign a lease, it has been engaged in negotiations to occupy the first building constructed at the 200-acre Matrix Global Logistics Park Staten Island. October 2017 Bronx County None Kings County Marketing firm Translation Advertising is growing its presence on Jay Street in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. The firm, which is currently located in Midtown Mahnattan, took about 31,000 square feet at 10 Jay St. last year and will now occupy about 46,000 square feet with the expansion. The company will consolidate its operations at the new office and also plans to hire new staff once the move is complete early next year. A Japanese cuisine–themed food market is about to open at Industry City, the sprawling creative office and manufacturing campus in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Called Japan Village, the 20,000-square-foot space is designed to emulate other ethnic food halls, like Eataly and Le District, but with an Asian cuisine that has not been featured as expansively elsewhere. The market will be the largest among a growing collection of food purveyors at the complex, part of an effort by the property's partners to animate the once derelict campus with retail and outdoor spaces that attract visitors and serve as amenities for the building's office tenants. Japan Village will be located in Building 4 at Industry City in a space abutting a courtyard and Third Avenue. The new market, scheduled to open in the spring, is expected to feature a wide menu of foods offered through individual purveyors, including baked goods, matcha drinks, sweet rice cakes, noodles, sushi and a salad bar featuring Japanese vegetables, as well as street food such as savory pancakes and octopus balls. New York County Group Nine Media, the company behind popular sites including Thrillist, is more than doubling its space at 568 Broadway. The company is renewing its lease at the 11-story SoHo property and adding another 60,000 square feet, bringing its total presence to about 100,000 square feet. The expansion deal would allow the company to consolidate all of its projects at one location, as well as adding space for future hiring needs. A startup that launched in 2013 as a marketplace for unwanted gift cards has raised $60 million in its third major funding round. Raise, which calls itself the world's largest gift-card marketplace, also works with brands to market discounted, pre-paid payment cards. The company will be using some of its new investment to expand its operations in New York. Currently, Raise plans to hire 40 to 50 with product designers, mobile engineers, and sales people over the next year. PepsiCo Inc. has created a 200-person business unit that’s tasked with spurring online growth in a fast-evolving grocery landscape. To further set the online business apart, it’s located in midtown Manhattan—about an hour from the company’s suburban headquarters in Purchase, New York. The group is focused on marketing and packaging PepsiCo’s products for online sellers, including Amazon.com Inc. and Box Inc., as well as traditional brick-and-mortar grocers that are trying to boost their digital footprint. Amazon Inc. is set to open a large new office in New York City and create 2,000 high-paying jobs. The e-commerce giant, which already has several locations across the city, will expand its presence with a 359,000 square-foot office in Manhattan that will employ people in finance, sales, marketing and information technology earning an average of $100,000 annually. The company was offered as much as $20 million in performance-based tax credits through Empire State Development’s Excelsior Jobs Program to encourage further expansion. Although the exact timeline for hiring is still unclear, all jobs are expected to be filled by the end of 2018. International entertainment operator Parques Reunidos plans to open an entertainment center where visitors will be able to live out the scenes when the plot thickens at some of Lionsgate’s most popular and top-grossing films. Fans wanting literally more drama in their lives will be able to join The Hunger Games, and in person add to the trilogy in the dystopian Chicago of Divergent. SJP recently signed a lease with Parques Reunidos for the opening of “Lionsgate Entertainment City” as the anchor tenant to bring visitors to the over 1.1 million-square-foot commercial tower at 11 Times Square. The build-out is estimated to take two years and to cost approximately $30 million. The opening is scheduled for August 2019. Queens County A hotel with 194 rooms is on its way to Coney Island. The seven-story project from developer Gal Horowitz would rise at 2201 Neptune Avenue and span 95,450 square feet, according to plans filed with the Department of Buildings. The building would be divided up into 81,582 square feet of commercial space and 13,968 square feet of community space, and it would replace a one-story public facility currently on the site. Richmond County Demolition of a portion of Hylan Plaza will begin this fall when construction commences on a new $180 million Boulevard shopping center to be anchored by ShopRite and Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas. The Boulevard -- a new 460,000-square-foot shopping center -- will be built in multi-level "Main Street" format. The section of the shopping center that formerly housed KMart, Toys R Us, Hylan Plaza movie theater and other retailers will be demolished when construction begins this fall. The project has gotten all the necessary city approvals for work to begin, and it's hoped construction will start next month. The project is expected to be complete in fall 2019. A 10-auditorium, nearly 1,000-seat movie theater under construction in Charleston's Bricktown Commons will open next summer. Regal Entertainment signed a lease earlier this year to open a 90,000-square-foot movie theater in Charleston's Bricktown Commons. The theater, which will not be a dine-in venue -- is expected to be open for business in summer 2018. September 2017 Bronx County Burlington Coat Factory (now known as Burlington) and Marshall’s are taking the South Bronx by storm. The two discount clothing retailers will open new stores early next year at 2948 Third Avenue, in a growing commercial swath of Melrose known as the Hub. Burlington will occupy 55,000 square feet, and Marshall’s will take 25,000 square feet. Renovation and expansion of the four-story, 120,000-square-foot retail property between East 152nd and East 153rd Streets is currently underway. Construction is set to finish by the end of the year Kings County Ample Hills Creamery is opening a new factory in the historic building in Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. At capacity, the 15,000-square-foot factory will produce about 1 million gallons annually. It will be the only ice cream plant of that size in all five boroughs of New York City when it opens in late September. The space will include a scoop shop, the bakery, and the dairy floor. The small company had hit it big when it became the official ice cream of the Star Wars franchise, selling 40,000 online in the space of two weeks. In addition to the factory, the scoop shops, the team is working on growing their sales on Amazon and expanding nationally – all coming in 2018. The Brooklyn off shoot of the NYU Langone Hospital is planning an $83.7 million ambulatory surgery center in Sunset Park, as its health system parent organization continues to invest in the Brooklyn campus it acquired in 2015. The new ambulatory surgery center will include six operating rooms and handle cases in orthopedics, general surgery, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, vascular surgery and breast surgery. New York County Cornell Tech campus officially opened its technology-focused graduate school 09/13/2017. CIty officials hope the school will encourage the growth of the New York City tech sector. The campus was born of a 2010 competition started by the Bloomberg administration, which invited top-flight universities to compete to open an applied-science graduate center. Cornell University and its partner, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, were declared the winners and awarded $100 million along with a stretch of city-owned land on Roosevelt Island. “High-tech companies and new, small companies that will be the next big companies, they tend to be created where the founders go to school,” the former mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in an interview. “You see that in Silicon Valley. Here was a chance to get a bunch of people educated and create the economy of the future for New York City.” To create that economy, Cornell Tech will offer about a dozen masters and Ph.D. programs in fields like information science and electrical and computer engineering. It has been operating out of the Google building in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan since 2012. This will be the first academic year the institution, which now has about 300 students and 30 faculty members, will have its own home Pearl River Mart, once a casualty of Manhattan’s skyrocketing retail rents, is now in expansion mode. The eclectic Asian-goods emporium only last November reopened in Tribeca after annual rent at its former SoHo home was about to increase from more than $1 million to $6 million. Now, the family-run retailer is planning to open another 3,500 square-foot store at Chelsea Market, a collection of mostly independent specialty shops and food vendors at the base of a former industrial building at 75 Ninth Ave. in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The clothing and home goods chain Muji opened its first Brooklyn outpost in Williamsburg in early September, and now it has leased space for another Manhattan location. The multinational retailer will take 13,000 square feet at 127 East 59th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. The East 59th Street store will be Muji’s eighth in the five boroughs. The space, formerly home to cookware seller Williams-Sonoma, spans 5,700 square feet on the ground floor and 7,500 square feet below grade. Queens County None Richmond County In an update to a recently reported news item, Amazon.com Inc. is opening its first fulfillment center in New York, part of an ongoing push to store inventory closer to customers to enable faster deliveries. The new 855,000 square-foot facility is planned for Staten Island. It will create more than 2,250 full-time jobs and feature innovative technology including Amazon Robotics working alongside employees to pick, pack and ship items. August 2017 Bronx County Boston Market, the rotisserie chicken eatery, announced further expansion plans in the greater New York City area with the opening of new restaurants this year. New locations are now open in Parkchester and at The Crossings at Southern in the Bronx, with an additional property scheduled to open at Bruckner Plaza in the fourth quarter. The openings come as part of the company’s 2017 expansion plan, and includes opening 14 new locations both domestically and internationally, three of which are in the New York metropolitan market. A vacant Bronx lot in the Bronx’s Eastchester neighborhood will make way for a 127-room hotel. The project comes from developer Rajan Tewar, and it will be located at 3456 Conner Street in the northeast Bronx, according to plans filed on with the Department of Buildings. The project will be five stories and 61 feet tall, span 52,305 square feet and be located next to a bus depot along the New England Thruway. Elsewhere in the borough, prolific hotel developer Nehalkumar Gandhi filed plans for a new hotel. His will contain 66 rooms and be located in Tremont at 1893 Washington Avenue. Kings County This October, luxury home furnishings retailer Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams will be opening a 10,000-square-foot store and upholstery repair shop in Sunset Park’s Industry City, Commercial Observer has learned. The lease is for 10 years. The company, founded in 1989 in rural North Carolina by Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams, manufactures and sells luxury home furnishings, including upholstery, lighting, rugs, accessories and wall art. New York County Manhattan startup Healthify raised $6.5 million in a Series A funding round led by BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners. The company offers a software platform that helps managedcare plans and health care providers find available social services and coordinate referrals. Healthify allows customers to search for available services, track patients' social needs and referral patterns, and coordinate with community-based organizations, documenting when referrals are completed. The company currently employs about 30 people and plans to double that number in the next year. The Walt Disney Co. is more than doubling what was already the largest television production project in the state with an extension of its live-action miniseries set in New York City and produced by Marvel Television for Netflix. The original agreement, made in 2014, was to create four series totaling 60 episodes—which grew to more than 80—based on Marvel's heroes Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. The success of those shows led to a new commitment by Disney to shoot a total of 135 episodes in New York by the end of 2017. Twenty-six of those episodes are in production and an additional 23 episodes will be filmed by the end of the year. Although Disney would not comment on the terms of the deal, company insiders say that Disney may spend more than $400 million on the shows. Netflix is coming to Chelsea this fall, after signing a lease for its first office in New York City. The Silicon Valley-based streaming giant inked a deal to sublease 11,592 square feet from Twitter at 245 West 17th Street. Queens County Developer Antonio Mourtil is planning to build a nine-story hotel with 48 rooms in Astoria at 30-17 31st Street, according to plans filed with the Department of Buildings. The project would be roughly 19,000 square feet and include just over 5,500 square feet of community space. Richmond County Staten Island could have a new production studio by the end of 2019 after the state completed the sale of the old Arthur Kill prison site to Broadway Stages. Construction is now anticipated to begin in spring 2018 and the first sound stage is scheduled to open in 18 months. Under the terms of the deal, Staten Island Stages, an assignee of Broadway Stages, will buy the land from ESD for $7 million. Broadway Stages would invest another $20 million to erect five sound stages there. The NYC EDC officials estimated the project will create 367 construction jobs in addition to 1,311 permanent positions, with employment preference given to the local population. July 2017 Bronx County None Kings County Muji USA, the U.S. arm of the Japan-based home goods and apparel store, opened five stores in NYC in recent years and has plans for another one, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, expected to open its doors by the end of 2017. New York County Broadway Technology, a financial trading solutions firm will be relocating from a 13,000 square foot office at 140 Broadway to a 25,000 square ft property on the 50th floor of 28 Liberty Street. Founded in 2003, Broadway Technology recently closed a $42 million round of investment and projects that it will need a larger office to accommodate its expected growth. Precise job numbers were not released, although the company spokesperson said that job postings will be appearing soon on the Broadway Technology's website. Muji USA, the U.S. arm of the Japan-based home goods and apparel store, is growing its corporate office space in the city. The company signed a lease for 6,250 square feet at 250 W. 39th St., more than doubling the roughly 2,900 square feet it previously had in the building. As part of the expansion deal, Muji extended its lease at the property for roughly another decade. Aetna, the insurance giant, announced that it would move its headquarters to New York City. Scheduled to start in late 2018, the relocation will involve 250 current and new executive and digital jobs. Aetna is also investing $89 million to transform 145,000 square feet in a building on Ninth Avenue into its new home. Besides the state tax credits, which are based on the number of new jobs Aetna creates, the NYC EDC will provide $9.6 million worth of incentives through a combination of property and sales tax credits, among other benefits. Our business services team reached out to the company, but have yet to hear back. Amazon is opening a third physical bookstore in Manhattan. The online retail giant will be taking 7,354 square feet at 72 Spring St., between Crosby and Lafayette streets, in SoHo. The new store will take up the ground floor and the basement. Amazon opened its first store in Manhattan, at the Time Warner Center, earlier this year and will open another, in Herald Square, this summer. Bay Dynamics, a 16-year old cybersecurity company with around 100 employees, joined an emerging trend when it announced it had moved its headquarters to TriBeCa from San Francisco. The company, which raised $23 million in a Series B funding round a year ago, has satellite offices in Atlanta, Dallas and Washington, D.C. It has been growing its New York presence over the past few years by slowly migrating its executive team to a co-working space downtown. The company now inhabits its own 12,000-square-foot space at 99 Hudson St. The prime reason for the move was location. The TriBeCa office has 20 employees, compared to 30 in San Francisco, but Bay Dynamics expects to double the number in New York by the end of the year. Queens County The Aqueduct racino is doubling down on its Queens footprint. Resorts World casino at Aqueduct Racetrack is breaking ground on a $400 million expansion that will include a hotel, restaurants, retail stores, and additional slot machines. The project is expected to generate $200 million in economic activity for the city, including 1,000 gigs at the casino and over 3,000 construction jobs, casino officials said. The extension in Jamaica is expected to be finished in mid-2019. Altice USA plans to move its headquarters from Bethpage to Long Island City, Queens, by the end of 2017 to be closer to advertisers and business partners. The provider of broadband, cable and telephone services said the move to rented space will relocate top executives and corporate departments, such as finance, human resources and communications. An undisclosed number of Altice employees will be transferred to the new headquarters from Bethpage and from an office in Manhattan. The headquarters change will be accompanied by improvements to the Bethpage office to allow for the consolidation of five satellite offices located within 10 miles of Bethpage. The Kaufman Astoria Studios complex in Queens is adding 100,000 square feet of office and production space to meet the growing demand. Kaufman Astoria Studios broke ground last month on the project that involves the construction of a new four-story building on the site of a former parking lot at 34-11 36th St. in Astoria. The building will feature 68,000 square feet of office space and will include two production stages of 6,000 square feet and 9,000 square feet with offices on the upper floors. Among the building’s amenities are wraparound windows, high ceilings, terraces and underground parking. The new development will augment the more than 500,000 square feet of sound stages, production office and service space that currently exist at the KAS property. Richmond County Amazon’s ability to quickly ship stuff to New Yorkers, from Kindle readers to kayaks, is about to get a major boost. The Seattle-based Web giant is preparing to open a massive distribution hub in the Big Apple — the company’s first major facility in New York state — by summer’s end. The Amazon “fulfillment center” will span nearly 1 million square feet on the west shore of Staten Island, amping up Amazon’s access to millions of online shoppers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. The bold move marks a new chapter for Amazon in one of the company’s most crucial markets. June 2017 Bronx County York Studios broke ground on a $100 million movie studio on a 10-acre vacant lot off the Bruckner Expressway in Soundview. The production complex is about 2 miles from Silvercup Studios' new $40 million facility in the Port Morris neighborhood, which opened last August. The new production center will be the second for York Studios. According to the company executives, York specifically looked for space in the Bronx because of its easy access to Midtown, Westchester, and Queens. The first phase of construction will yield a 170,000-squarefoot facility housing five soundstages and support space at a cost of $45 million. Three of the stages will be 15,000 square feet, and two will be 18,000 square feet. They are expected to be up and running by October 2018. The next phase will create three larger stages. When completed, the development will have nearly 350,000 square feet of production space. The studio is projected to generate nearly $100 million in new tax revenue for the Bronx, employ more than 400 industry professionals and create hundreds of construction jobs. The city has already approved $33 million in tax benefits for the site over the next quarter century. Kings County The Hello Living company plans to build a 100-key hotel at 291 Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn. The 21-story project would appear to be the first hotel for what is one of Brooklyn’s most active residential developers. Plans call for a 40,721-square-foot structure with five hotel rooms per floor and coffee shop on the ground floor. Hello Living’s largest project, a 132-unit rental building at 1580 Nostrand Avenue in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, is still under development and is expected to wrap construction in 2018. Rabsky Group filed plans for a 104-room hotel on Bedford Avenue in South Williamsburg. The company plans to build an 11-story property at 361 Bedford Avenue, which is currently the site of a small parking lot. The developer became one of the most active firms in Brooklyn by building rentals and condos in the northern section of the borough, but has recently branched out into commercial development. New York County Vericred, a Manhattan startup that sells health insurance data on plans, provider networks, and drug prices, has raised $5.5 million in a Series A funding round. When the company launched in 2014 it was using its data to power Plan Compass, a platform to help consumers choose health plans based on price and whether their doctors were in-network. But after the 2016 open-enrollment period, the company decided to move in a different direction. Vericred now sells its data to companies across the country, including fellow Manhattan startup Wellthie. The company plans to use its new funding to build its data sets and sales team, and expand from 22 to 35 employees. The online men’s grooming products retailer Harry’s is making a “major New York City expansion” and creating new technology jobs, thanks in part to state tax credits. To encourage Harry’s expansion, Empire State Development is offering $1.5 million in Excelsior Jobs Program tax credits, as the firm moves its headquarters to NYC and hires at least 188 people over the next five years. The jobs are slated to be in software engineering and research and development. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is more than tripling its office space on Midtown Manhattan's far West Side. The bank has closed on a 15-year lease deal for about 300,000 square feet at Five Manhattan West, expanding office space for its digital teams from 125,000 square feet to 428,000 square feet. J.P. Morgan, which initially took space there in late 2014, has had success recruiting and keeping workers on its digital teams over the years, prompting its decision to take more space. J.P. Morgan eventually expects to have 2,000 to 2,500 people at Manhattan West. The bank plans on eventually filling the space with new employees, but no there have been no immediate hiring announcements. Queens County Elmhurst Hospital Center, a 545-bed facility in the Health + Hospitals system, is proposing a $6.8 million renovation to construct a second-floor addition to its emergency department. The addition will serve as the new home of its Adult Partial Hospitalization Program an outpatient intensive and structured program to stabilize adults with mental health and substance abuse disorders, who at the time of admission are experiencing acute psychiatric symptoms of their mental illness. The space where the PHP is presently located, in Elmhurst's H building, will be used for a planned expansion of its outpatient mental health and substance-use-disorder clinics to better integrate primary care and behavioral health care. Richmond County None May 2017 Bronx County None Kings County NYC officials announced a plan that would offer free, full-day preschool to all 3-year-olds within four years. New York would be one of few cities in the country to offer free preschool to every 3-year-old, with expected enrollment of 62,000 children a year by 2021. In contrast to the program for 4-year-olds, which tripled the number of prekindergarten seats in two years, the new plan would be rolled out over four years. The program would start in two of the city’s lowest-income school districts, District 7 in the Bronx and District 23 in Brooklyn, and offer a seat to every 3-year-old in those districts by the fall of 2018. The city would expand the program to an additional six districts, still to be chosen, by the fall of 2020 and to all districts by 2021. The city said it expected that roughly half of the seats would be in public schools, and roughly half in community-based centers and religious schools, and that an additional 4,500 teachers would eventually need to be hired. New York County A tech firm that helps car dealerships target their sales and marketing efforts to potential customers is quadrupling its office space in a move from lower Manhattan to Midtown. AutomotiveMastermind has signed a lease to move into 32,000 square feet at 1 Park Ave. from 8,000 square feet at 123 William St. The firm recently raised $45 million from JMI Equity, a private-equity firm that specializes in funding software startups. The company was founded in 2012 and has grown rapidly since, to its current headcount of 70 employees. The company founder said the new space will allow it to almost triple its workforce in the city, from 70 to 200. The lease also includes future options that will allow the firm to grow and expand, should it need the space. CityMD sold a majority stake in its urgent-care chain to private-equity firm Warburg Pincus as it seeks to accelerate its expansion. Founded in 2010, the chain has opened approximately 50 locations in the downstate area, providing an alternative to emergency rooms. Its walk-in clinics claim to serve more than 1 million patients annually. The company currently has and has about 300 employees (public information). The company plans to use the money raised by the acquisition to expand further both in the local area as well as the tri-state region. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is about to sign a lease to open a 10-screen, 40,000 square-foot luxury film complex next year at 28 Liberty St., the landmark skyscraper that was formerly known as Chase Manhattan Plaza. Alamo Drafthouse will open in 2018 on the tower’s third below-ground level, sources said. Dramatic exterior and interior signage will guide moviegoers through a confusing maze of entrances and walkways to ten-plus cinema screens and up to 600 seats under 20-foot-high ceilings. Founded in 1997, Alamo Drafthouse has 26 locations around the US including in downtown Brooklyn. Orangetheory Fitness has inked a deal at Vanbarton Group’s 45 West 45th Street for its fifth location in Manhattan and eighth in the city. The growing gym concept, which provides onehour group workouts, plans to open the new outpost in March 2018. The fitness company currently has more than 250 locations in the country. Its other Manhattan locations are at 51 Astor Place between Broadway and Lafayette Street; and 124 West 23rd Street between Seventh Avenue and Avenue of the Americas. Also it is opening new locations soon at 321 West 37th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and 605 Third Avenue between East 39th and East 40th Streets. And it also has three gyms in Brooklyn. Rumble, the trendy boxing gym concept backed by investors such as “Rocky” star Sylvester Stallone and Justin Bieber, has inked a deal for its third Manhattan location. The chain is leasing an entire five-story building owned by landlord Samy Mahfar at 1495 Third Avenue between East 84th and 85th streets, sources told The Real Deal. The 12,500-square-foot, 10year deal is valued at about $1 million a year, sources added. Rumble already has a location in Chelsea and is planning to open another in Noho this summer. Queens County A developer of a massive Queens project has signed a long-term lease with a local grocer to open a supermarket at the site, a deal that was helped by the replacement this spring of a realestate tax-abatement program. Brooklyn Harvest Market will open a 25,000 square-foot store at the first building under construction at Halletts Point, a 2.4 million-square-foot Astoria project developed by the Durst Organization. The first tower is expected to be open by spring of next year, with the supermarket opening in the early summer of 2018. Richmond County The developer of a new warehouse complex in Staten Island that will cater to growing demand from e-commerce retailers says it is on track to lease 2.5 million square feet by the end of the summer. Matrix Development Group, a New Jersey firm that specializes in industrial and warehouse space, is finishing up the first building in what it is calling Matrix Global Logistics Park, on the west side of Staten Island near the Goethals Bridge. The company is planning to build four properties totaling 3.5 million square feet. The first building, which is largely complete, is 975,000 square feet and features 40-foot ceilings. Matrix is preparing to soon break ground on a second speculative warehouse, 450,000 square feet in size. With many Hylan Plaza stores already closed or liquidating stock, work on the new $180 million Boulevard shopping center will begin in the fall. The developer, the Long Island-based Kimco Realty, recently announced several tenants that have signed leases to take up space in the new shopping center, slated to open in summer 2019. ShopRite and Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas will be two of the anchors in the new shopping center, which will house about 50 stores in a 460,000-square-foot multi-level "Main Street" format. April 2017 Bronx County None Kings County New York City’s initiative to bring ferry service to the five boroughs will add at least 200 new jobs to the city’s economy as Hornblower Cruises hires deckhands, captains and other crew members in the coming months. The company plans to add 19 boats to its fleet for a total cost of $75 million as the initiative is rolled out during a planned two-year period. The company currently lists about a dozen openings on its website, several of them for entry level positions such as ticketing takers, deckhands, or seasonal help staff (all paying under $25,000 per year) alongside more skilled titles such as staff accountant, port captain, and mechanical engineer. New York County A maker of reusable beverage bottles has quadrupled its office space in the Flatiron District of Manhattan. Launched in 2010, S’well Bottle moved into a 25,000 square-foot space at 28 W. 23rd St. that will allow the company to house all members of its expanded staff under one roof. The current lease is for two years, which let the rapidly growing business to expand again when the current lease runs out. Vroom Inc., an online used-car retailer, is quadrupling its New York offices as it relocates from the Flatiron District to a 22,549 square feet space at 1375 Broadway at the corner of West 37th Street. Vroom’s expansion outpaced its expectations about a year and a half ago, when the company signed a five-year lease for about 5,600 square feet at 149 Fifth Ave. The company had about 15 to 20 people in its New York office at the time, but within six months it hired 50 more and is planning to hire again in the near future. Glossier, the beauty brand born on the internet, is growing offline, big-time: it's adding 282 new jobs to its current workforce of 61. The startup will also relocate from its Lafayette Street headquarters in New York's Soho to a larger space in nearby 13-floor One Soho Square, where they've taken a whole floor. Glencore, a Stamford, Conn.–based commodities producer and trader, is moving to Midtown. The company just leased 60,000 square feet at 330 Madison Ave., taking the 39-story building's entire seventh floor and a portion of the sixth floor for rents in the low $70s per square foot. Queens County None Richmond County The Tilted Kilt -- a sports pub that likens itself to the old public houses of America, England, Scotland and Ireland -- is known for classic Celtic decor with a selection of over 35 draught and bottled beers on tap with a large list of craft beers. The 5,700-square-foot restaurant will include about 46 big screen televisions and seating for 180 people. The independently owned franchise location is expected to create over 100 new jobs. HomeGoods and Ashley Furniture HomeStore will soon occupy the space where Pathmark was formerly located in New Springville. The supermarket in the Richmond Shopping Center at 2875 Richmond Ave. has sat dormant since Pathmark closed more than year ago as a result of The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Inc. (A&P) bankruptcy in 2015.Nowthe two big-box retailers could be up and running by the fall. March 2017 Bronx County The Sheridan Expressway in the South Bronx, long viewed as a barrier that cuts neighborhoods off from the Bronx River, will be redesigned to reopen access to the waterway and parks, and ease traffic. The $1.8 billion project would transform the expressway, also known as Interstate 895, into Sheridan Boulevard. The plan calls for integrating pedestrian walkways so residents in the South Bronx could access Starlight Park and the Bronx River. Residents have long complained about the design of the roadway, which is slightly more than a mile. The project is expected to create more than 4,200 jobs. The first phase of the plan, which will be funded with $700 million in this year’s state budget, is slated to begin next year and be completed by the Spring of 2019. “The project includes building flyover ramps connecting Sheridan Boulevard and Bruckner Expressway to Edgewater Road, providing direct access to the Hunts Point Produce Market, a wholesale foods market. The popularity of farm-to-table eating has created demand in the city for a local farmers’ wholesale market. The State committed $20 million to fund a 75,000-square-foot food-distribution hub in Hunts Point and chose GrowNYC to develop and operate it. The 40-year-old nonprofit runs farmers’ markets and community gardens as well as recycling, composting and education programs. The Bronx distribution hub is the biggest project Marcel Van Ooyen has taken on in his 10 years as GrowNYC’s head. He said he hopes it will open in early 2019. The hub will source, aggregate and distribute locally grown produce to food-access programs and like-minded restaurants and retail outlets. It is anticipated well over 100 farmers will benefit. Farmers who grow for the wholesale markets will deliver large quantities to the hub where it will be broken and distributed to public and private buyers. They'll be additional space for farmers to store food, and eventually light processing. The current hub for local farmers is only 5,000 square feet Kings County Tesla Motors is growing its footprint at LIVWRK’s office conversion at 160 Van Brunt Street in Red Hook. The company inked a deal for an additional 6,500 square feet above its existing Brooklyn showroom. The additional square footage will be used as office space. About a year ago, Tesla signed a lease for a 40,000-square-foot showroom and service center on the ground floor of the property, marking its first entry into Brooklyn. New York County Compass, the technology-driven real estate platform, has expanded to fully occupy the office space at 90 Fifth Ave. The tenant leased another 25,000 square feet over two additional floors, bringing its occupancy at the Midtown South building to 115,000 square feet on floors 3 through 11. The firm has more than quadrupled its presence at 90 Fifth Ave. since signing its initial lease in the summer of 2014. In the first seven weeks of 2017, Compass has already added offices on the Upper East and West Sides. Target has leased 43,000 square feet for a new store that will open this fall at 112 W. 34th St., across the Street from the Macy’s flagship on Herald Square, The Post has learned. The Target store will anchor a 92,000-square-foot retail complex, also housing a Sephora, a Foot Locker and a Swatch store. When the Target location opens in October, the West 34th Street entrance across from Macy’s will greet visitors with Target fashions. A second entrance on West 33rd Street will offer grab-and-go food, as well as a CVS pharmacy.Target’s bread and butter has long been mega-stores in suburban strip malls that reach well over 100,000 square feet. But increasingly it has opened smaller formats as it looks to expand into denser urban areas. Target already has a smaller format store in Tribeca at 255 Greenwich St., while larger ones are at East River Plaza in Harlem and Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. Still-smaller Target stores are in the works: one at 400 E. 14th St. that will open in 2018, and one at 615 10th Ave. in Hell’s Kitchen that will open in 2019. Brookfield Property Partners announced a 60,000-square-foot lease with Whole Foods at 5 Manhattan West in Hudson Yards. The upscale grocer leased a spot at 10th Avenue and 31st Street. Queens County The city in late January selected developer Omni New York to redevelop an underutilized New York Police Department garage occupying roughly half a block along 168th Street in Jamaica, Queens. The winning proposal helps revive a years-long effort to make Jamaica—which is served by four subway lines, a major Long Island Rail Road junction and the AirTrain to John F. Kennedy International Airport—more than just a way station. Omni plans to build a 450,000-square-foot mixed-use development that will include more than 350 residential units, all of them designated as affordable, as well as ground-floor retail and commercial space, underground parking for the NYPD and what the city’s Economic Development Corp. describes as “a substantial community facility.” Another mixed-use development is under construction less than a mile away. The Crossing at Jamaica Station, being built by BRP Cos. on a 50,000-square-foot site at the corner of Archer Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard, will include a Hilton Garden Inn and 580 residential units. New York City’s initiative to bring ferry service to the five boroughs is expected to add at least 200 new jobs to the city’s economy. Hornblower Cruises will expand and hire deckhands, captains and other crew members in the coming months, company executives said. The privately owned company will add 19 boats to its fleet for a total cost of $75 million as the initiative is rolled out during a planned two-year period. The first phase of the ferry expansion is set to begin this summer. The Rockaway line will connect the Rockaway peninsula in southern Queens to the Brooklyn Army Terminal and Wall Street. The Astoria line will link the northern Queens neighborhood of Astoria to Roosevelt Island, Long Island City, East 34th St. and Wall Street. And the South Brooklyn line will connect Bay Ridge, the Brooklyn Army Terminal, Red Hook, Brooklyn Bridge Park and Wall Street. Two more routes are expected to launch next year. If the years-long initiative is fully implemented, it will mark the first time in a century New York City has had ferry service in the five boroughs. Richmond County None February 2017 Bronx County None Kings County Whole Foods Market is planning to open an outpost of its lower-priced grocery store brand at the base of a high-end residential building in Fort Greene. The store, called 365, will be the first in the tristate area. Whole Foods has already opened three outlets around the country, and has plans for 20 more. The company created the '365' brand to shake its image as a highpricer grocer. The story is expected to open in early 2018. New York County SoHo-based investment firm Two Sigma Investments signed a lease for 9,200 square feet of space at Cornell Tech, a new college currently under construction on Roosevelt Island. The firm, which builds computer systems that make complex stock trades, plans to use the space for its Collision Lab. Two Sigma hopes that it will find young scholars with a talent for crunching the type of economic and financial data the company needs to succeed. Updater, a tech firm that helps people move, is relocating. The six-year-old firm is opening a 9,200-square-foot office at 19 Union Square West, taking the 12-story building's entire top floor. The lease was signed for 10 years. Updater's business model aims to take care of the hassle of moving by hiring movers, making sure customers get their mail forwarded, are set up with utilities, and have insurance. The company works with real estate brokers to provide the service rather than with clients directly. Updater currently handles about 10% of the 17 million households that move per year in the country. The new office space is slightly larger than the firm's previous location and will allow it to grow to about 80 employees from around 60, according to the company’s CEO. Queens County The city selected a developer to turn a former NYPD parking garage in Jamaica, Queens, into a large, mixed-use complex with more than 350 affordable apartments. The project will also include ground-floor retail, a new NYPD parking garage, community space, and possibly a hotel. Specific timeline for the project’s completion isn’t yet available. Richmond County None January 2017 Bronx County None Kings County New York University is planning a $500 million expansion of high-tech campuses in Brooklyn, school President Andrew Hamilton said. The investment the university will make over the next decade builds on its existing NYU Tandon School of Engineering in Downtown Brooklyn, which opened in 2014 and has 5,212 students enrolled in white-hot fields such as computer coding and video game design. The facility will add 500,000 square feet of university space by developing the former transit headquarters on Jay St. When it opens in summer 2017, it will nearly double the area’s 600,000 square feet of NYU space. NYU will start moving academic programs into the Jay St. facility in fall 2017. Officials said the Jay St. building will be the largest NYU facility in Brooklyn and will provide space for 1,100 students and 40 faculty members. Lafayette 148 New York, a locally-based fashion brand, has decided to relocate its 200-person headquarters and other Soho-based operations to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The firm has leased 68,000 square feet in the Navy Yard’s Building 77. The brand’s new site will be about the same size as its existing space at 148 Lafayette St., where the company was founded 20 years ago. Its relocation is slated to bring jobs to the Yard that will range from senior level executives to designers and cut and sew workers. The company will retain a presence in Manhattan with its concept store at the Soho location. The company will retain a presence in Manhattan with its concept store at the Soho location. Education-technology company 2U is relocating to 78,000 square feet at Dumbo Heights. The company, which is now headquartered in 20,000 square feet at Chelsea Piers, is taking space on the upper floors of 55 Prospect Street. New York County The Herald Square shopping area that flows into NoMad is getting a Nordstrom Rack at 855 Sixth Ave. on W. 31st Street. The huge, approximately 46,500-square-foot store will open in the ground, lower level and second floor of a newly constructed mixed-use tower. This store will join the one at 60 E. 14th St. to become the second Rack in Manhattan, with others in Brooklyn and Queens. The parent company is expected to open its first city Nordstrom flagship in 2019. Brazilian luxury interior design brand Ornare’s first store in New York, at 150 East 58th Street will open in March 2017. This will be the brand’s third store in the U.S., in addition to Miami and Dallas. The location — commonly known as the Architects & Designers Building — houses some of the world’s finest interior design showrooms, including Alno USA, Gaggenau and the Miele Experience Center. Ornare will showcase its high-end kitchen, bath and closet designs in 3,267 square feet on the fourth floor. Spotify finalized a deal for 378,000 square feet of office space at 4 World Trade Center. The Swedish-based music-streaming company was reportedly debating between One World Trade Center and 4 World Trade Center late last year. The company had settled on 4 World Trade Center, Silverstein Properties’ 2.5 million-square foot office tower. The company will receive up to $11 million in rent credits over the next 15 years through the state’s World Trade Center Rent Reduction Program. Spotify plans to add another 1,000 employees to its new office, while retaining its 832 jobs. It currently occupies 140,000 square feet at 620 Sixth Avenue. Queens County None Richmond County The State has authorized another $20 million grant to developers of an outlet mall on Staten Island, bringing the total amount of state subsidies on the project to $67 million. The grant was approved by the board of Empire State Development, the state’s economic development authority. It is the third round of subsidies the state has sent to Empire Outlets, which will bring stores, restaurants and a hotel to a site next to the St. George Ferry Terminal that are projected to employ 1,300 people. Officials and the mall’s developers say the money is offsetting the cost of infrastructure that benefits the nearby Staten Island Railway and protects against storm surge. December 2016 Bronx County Big changes may be afoot on the shores of the south Bronx waterfront, as a longtime rail yard could see a massive redevelopment project. The Empire State Development has issued a Request for Expression of Interest from developers to gauge interest in the 13-acre south Bronx rail yard located on the NYS Department of Transportation-owned 96-acre Harlem River Yard, for covering the existing rail station with a deck and building residential and/or mixed-use buildings above it. The Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, a massive site that has remained vacant amid various political disputes, got a boost on when Gov. Andrew Cuomo committed to invest in a longplanned sports complex there. In his State of the State address in Lower Manhattan the governor promised to invest $108 million on the redevelopment of the five-acre site. The armory funding would not guarantee completion of the $348 million project, but would help the developer, Kingsbridge National Ice Center, finish the first phase of the plan. The firm, backed by hockey legend Mark Messier, is planning nine ice rinks, an arena and a community facility. The first phase of the project will cost $138 million. The Empire State Development board approved $30 million already, half of which was approved by the state Public Authorities Control Board. Kings County None New York County Success Academy, New York City’s largest charter school operator, has purchased commercial space in a new high-rise building on Manhattan’s Far West Side for $67.7 million. The charter network plans to open two schools there, a major shift for Success, which has insisted that the city provide charter schools free space in public school buildings. A Success spokeswoman, Nicole Sizemore, said the network planned to open a new elementary school and a new middle school in the space in 2017. By 2020, she said, the space would hold 420 elementary school students and 480 middle school students. The giant online retail company Alibaba, known as China’s Amazon, has expanded its new headquarters in New York. The $200 billion company had leased space in a new boutique office building at 860 Washington St. in the meatpacking district. Bed Bath & Beyond is making its bed in Hudson Square — not for a new store, but for large, new state-of-the- art design and photo studios. The fast-growing retailer, which recently added a store on Harlem’s West 125th Street, has signed two office leases totaling more than 79,000 square feet at two prime properties. Bed Bath & Beyond plans to take 27,778 square feet on the whole 11th floor of 250 Hudson St. for the photo studio this summer. In the second quarter of 2018, BB&B and its home decor and subsidiary, One Kings Lane, will establish a design studio in 51,576 square feet on the fourth floor of 315 Hudson St., after relocating from the eighth floor. BB&B plans to bring a substantial portion of creative work for itself and for its retail brands, including buybuy BABY and Christmas Tree Shops, under a single roof. Splash, an event-based marketing company that was founded in 2012 recently announced that it completed a new $7 million round of funding. Over the past year, the company has doubled its client base to nearly 5,000 companies. The financing will be used to expand the capabilities of Splash's event marketing automation software. The company provides online ticketing and RSVP services, along with tools for measuring the impact of events and staying in touch with customers. In addition, Splash plans to continue a hiring expansion that began in 2015. The company expects to add 30 employees to its current 65 over the next year. Queens County The TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport will soon be the home of the airport’s first on-site, full service hotel. A groundbreaking has been held for a hotel complex at the historic TWA terminal at New York's Kennedy Airport. The landmark will be preserved and enhanced as a centerpiece of the development. It's expected to open in 2018. The redevelopment of the terminal will cost about $265 million in private investment, according to MCR Development. The hotel development will also incorporate a museum that illustrates New York’s place in the “Jet Age.” MCR Development said the hotel would consist of two large structures set back on each side of the terminal, ensuring the historic building continues to take center stage after the redesign. MCR noted hotel guests and passengers from the other airport terminals would be able to reach the TWA Hotel by using the Air Train, as well as passenger tubes also designed by Saarinen that connect to Terminal 5, currently in use by JetBlue. Richmond County A Request For Expressions of Interest (RFEI) has been issued by the city for development of a premiere healthcare facility on the grounds of the old Sea View Hospital campus. Released by the city Economic Development Corp., a RFEI is the first step in a city-mandated process to secure a developer for the project. Dubbed Sea View Healthy Community, the project -- to be fueled with city funding -- calls for developing the century-old, former hospital site into the country's first publicly planned and funded mixed-use wellness community. With roughly 80 total acres of "buildable land," the Sea View campus will include: Medical: New medical office space, a wellness center with physical and occupational therapy, and improved medical uses for existing tenants, Camelot and the Grace Foundation. Retail: A mix of retail spaces, including community farms, health food grocers, farm-to-table restaurants and cafes to support both campus residents and visitors. Residential: A new residential development to provide housing for diverse populations, such as seniors and people with disabilities. Community Facilities and Open Space: New, accessible community facilities, plazas, green space and connections to hiking and biking trails for residents to incorporate physical activity, social engagement and cultural events into their daily lives. November 2016 Bronx County New York State plans to revitalize a 13-acre rail yard in the South Bronx to make way for a massive waterfront development in the area – an area which is attracting more private investment as land costs rise elsewhere in the city. The site is part of a 96-acre area called the Harlem River Yards, which is owned by the DoT and leased to a private company, which in turn leases out many of the buildings to industrial tenants. In addition to preserving the rail yard, the state wants proposals that cover opening access to the waterfront, boosting the local economy, and creating affordable housing. At 12.8 acres, the site is slightly less than half the size of the Hudson Yards development going up over rail yards on Manhattan's west side. The state plans to conduct an on-site tour Dec. 14. Interested parties must submit proposals by Feb. 2. Kings County Carolee LLC, the jewelry and women’s accessories firm owned by Brooks Brothers Group, is exiting its longtime headquarters in Stamford for Manhattan and Brooklyn. The move comes as a result of Carolee’s purchase of Brooklyn-based designer jewelry brand Alexis Bittar. Most of Carolee’s Stamford-based staff will be relocated to either Alexis Bittar’s Brooklyn headquarters or Brooks Brothers’ operations in Manhattan. Carolee employs about 100 people, having laid off 47 at the end of June as it consolidated its distribution and receiving operations in a Brooks Brothers Group-owned facility in Clinton, N.C. New York County BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset management firm, has been looking to move from its current offices in East Midtown to a new, single-building location. Last month, the company announced that it has narrowed down the choice to the Hudson Yards in NYC and a Jersey City location across the river, to which BlackRock planned to move about 400 employees. Now, the company not only decided to stay in NYC, but has also pledged to add 700 jobs over the next 20 years in exchange for a $25 million tax credit Excelsior Jobs Program. The official move-in date is not until 2023, when the firm’s current lease expires. Queens County Developers F&T Group and SCG America have revealed plans to bring a sizeable mixed-use complex to Queens, in the Downtown section of Flushing. The 1.2-million-square-foot development, named Tangram, will feature retail, office, residential and hotel space. Construction is underway at the full-block site, with frontage on 37th Avenue, Prince Street, 39th Avenue and College Point Boulevard. Retail will be delivered first, with an expected 3Q 2018 opening. Enclosed by a glass skylight with a central atrium within a two-level, the retail podium will provide 225,000 square feet. Retail leasing will officially launch at ICSC New York, which will be held Dec. 5th and 6th at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Richmond County After traveling by barge from Canada, four 100-ton pedestals are being erected at the site of the New York Wheel -- set to become one of the world's tallest at 630 feet above New York Harbor when it opens in 2018. Construction workers at the site of the future 60-story observation wheel will have the pedestals firmly cemented into the ground by the end of December. The pedestals, which will hold up the 275 foot long legs of the Wheel, are the first physical pieces to reach the construction site via barge from Montreal. Each pedestal is in a different stage of construction. Opening in 2018, the New York Wheel will be the world's tallest observation wheel at 630 feet and is expected to attract more than three million visitors per year. The $590 million project is part of a $1.2 billion redevelopment of Staten Island's North Shore. The parking garage associated with the project is expected to open by year's end. October 2016 Bronx County None Kings County A&E Networks has signed a lease to become one of the first major television networks to open an office in Brooklyn. The media company will occupy 11,775 square feet at 1000 Dean St. in Crown Heights. The space will be used for its newly launched digital-content agency, 45th & Dean. 45th & Dean will focus on creating branded content for the network's advertisers as well as digital content for A&E. Most of the work it will produce for the network's channels will be short-form, such as content for its websites, apps and social media. Kirin, Japan’s second-biggest beer brewer, announced that it will acquire a 24% in the local craft beer company Brooklyn Brewery. They will form a Japanese joint venture in January 2017 to roll out the Brooklyn brand in the country, and also plan to expand to Brazil. Under the deal, privately held Brooklyn Brewery will issue new shares to Kirin Brewery, and the U.S. company will remain independent with its management intact. The companies are also considering developing original products for the Japanese market and starting a restaurant business. Brooklyn Brewery has been expanding in recent years and has a downstate production facility in the works in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The deal with Kirin will likely speed up the outfitting of the new facility and promote new hiring opportunities. The Navy Yard facility is scheduled to open for business in 2018. New York County Trader Joe's plans to open a location at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge in the Lower East Side sometime in 2018. The new store will be a part of the urban renewal project called Essex Crossing, which spans eight blocks near Delancey Street, between Attorney and Ludlow streets. The grocer will be located at the base of 145 Clinton St., a residential building that will contain 211 apartments, half of which will be enrolled in the city's affordable housing program. Trader Joe's is expected to occupy 30,000 square feet. New York-based Dos Toros Taqueria is expanding in NYC. In the coming years, the Chipotle Mexican Grill rival plans to open four to six locations annually in New York. The company just raised $10 million and openED its 12th outpost in New York City. Target revealed plans to open its third and fourth Manhattan stores, in the up and coming Alphabet City and the West Midtown areas. The stores’ plan will confirm to the new flexible format, which allows the company to open stores in non-traditional and smaller-than-normal spaces. The new stores will occupy a bit less than 30,000 square feet, with openings currently planned for mid-2018 and early-2019. Clarifai, a software startup specializing in visual recognition software has raised $30 million in a recent round of funding. The company plans to use the money to further its development of low-cost and easy-to-use artificial intelligence applications. The firm announced that it expects to hire researchers, data scientists, engineers, and salespeople, and may more than double the company's head count over the next year from its current total of 33. Clarifai will also be looking for a new Manhattan headquarters that is at least twice the size of its existing space in Midtown Manhattan. Modell’s Sporting Goods is opening a new flagship in the former Sports Authority space in Midtown Manhattan. The 21,000-square-foot store encompasses the ground and second floor along with a storage basement. According to the company spokesperson, last spring, Modell’s had considered and rejected a joint bid with Sports Direct that would have split all the Sports Authority stores prior to its bankruptcy filing. Modell’s signed a 10-year lease for the property, with an expected opening date sometime in 2017. Queens County Bartlett Dairy & Food Service is taking over a vacant, city-owned 7.3-acre site at JFK International Airport to build a $24 million food manufacturing and distribution facility. Bartlett will develop 56,000 square feet of the irregularly-shaped lot at the airport’s northeast end, called JFK North. Officials said the city’s Economic Development Corporation chose Bartlett Dairy in part because their 200-person workforce is largely from Brooklyn and Queens, and the company intends to add 50 full-time jobs. The company also agreed to use the services of minority- and women-owned businesses to help design and construct the facility. Construction is slated to begin in 2018. Richmond County Jersey Mike's Subs -- a popular sandwich shop with 1,500 existing or in-development locations nationwide -- is expanding its franchises in the New York market, with the first of three Island locations opening on Hylan Boulevard. Jersey Mike's Subs is expected to open in early 2017 September 2016 Bronx County NYC authorities and the Hunts Point produce market management have resumed talks over new warehouses. The city Economic Development Corp. is negotiating with the wholesale fruit and vegetable market about constructing new buildings that would be completed in phases to accommodate the growing market. The old warehouses will be torn down as new ones are erected. In addition to the expansion, the city is working with the market to fund $10.5 million worth of capital improvement projects over a seven-year period, including lighting and electrical upgrades. Kings County The Pavilion, Park Slope's only movie theater, will stay a dedicated theater. Earlier plans to add condominiums to the property have been scrapped and boutique cinema operator Nitehawk plans to open its second Brooklyn location at the site next year. The new, 650-seat multiplex will have seven screens, a double kitchen, two bar areas, an atrium overlooking Prospect Park, and in-theater dining. The Pavilion will close by the end of October to make way for the $10 million renovation, which will take about a year to complete. A company that provides support to Dutch startups will open its first U.S. location at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, part of an effort by New York City to create jobs and attract global technology tenants. B. Amsterdam is taking about 100,000 square feet at the property, the company and city officials said in a statement Wednesday. B. Amsterdam provides real estate and business services, such as tax planning and human resources, for about 300 early and growth-stage firms, according to the statement. The arrival of B. Amsterdam, slated to create about 500 jobs, “will connect the Brooklyn and greater New York business communities with dynamic product design and tech companies across Europe,” Brooklyn Navy Yard Chief Executive Officer David Ehrenberg said in the statement. He said he expects startups incubated there to “grow and become significant employers at the Yard.” B. Amsterdam will focus on product design, hardware and technology companies at the Navy Yard, with about 15% of the space dedicated to manufacturing. Fairway’s 2015 announcement that it signed a 20-year lease for 40,000-square-feet at the Georgetown Shopping Center in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, has started to help generate leasing deals in the area, and may spur at least one small-scale development. The new store will be Fairway’s first since it emerged from bankruptcy this summer, and its second location in the borough; it opened in Red Hook 10 years ago, playing a key role in that neighborhood’s revival and later its recovery after Superstorm Sandy in October 2012. The new Fairway, expected to open before the end of the year, replaces a Waldbaum’s supermarket at the 156,000-square-foot shopping center, a short distance from Jamaica Bay. Tenants there include Nine West, Dress Barn, GameStop, Torrid, Payless and H&R Block. Since Fairway’s deal, Carter’s, Oshkosh and Five Below have all leased space at the plaza (though none as much as Fairway). All three are expected to open by November. New York County Snapchat is expanding its New York City headcount. The California-based disappearing-photos app has struck a deal to expand its NYC employment to nearly 400 from roughly 100. The new-media company has committed to the new hiring initiative at its office in the former New York Times building under an agreement with the Empire State Development Corp. The deal calls for Snapchat to boost its New York headcount to 396 by June 2020, and keep at least that many through 2027. In turn, the ESD said it will provide an incentive of as much as $5 million in tax breaks over the next decade. A consortium led by Simon Property Group and General Growth Properties won an auction for the assets of Aéropostale Inc., which filed for Chapter 11 protection in May, with a plan to keep open all of the bankrupt teen retailer's stores. The bidding group will also keep the chain's online business and licensing operation up and running. A Manhattan bankruptcy judge approved the deal. Saks Fifth Avenue is setting up shop in Manhattan far from its namesake street. The luxury department store chain opened a store in lower Manhattan on September 9th across from the Sept. 11 memorial and the newly opened World Trade Center mall. The Saks store caters to women, with a separate men's store planned for the downtown area. The three-level store has an open feel and new to Saks Fifth Avenue is that handbags are mixed together with clothing so shoppers can see more easily how items look together. Queens County None Richmond County Staten Island will be getting a luxury hotel. Starwoods Hotels & Resorts Worldwide will operate a 175-room hotel, the Westin New York Staten Island, at a new mixed-use development, known as Lighthouse Point, being built by developer Triangle Equities along the St. George waterfront. The $100 million hotel will have more than 20,000 square feet of banquet and meeting space as well as other attractions that include a rooftop pool and a terrace with outdoor dining. The hotel will be joining co-working space provider Regus, which agreed to lease 65,000 square feet at the $200 million mixed-use complex. Layoffs and Closings Ace Natural Inc., a Queens-based organic food company, plans to relocate its distribution center to a vacant building in Mount Vernon. The company distributes natural and organic foods, including frozen goods, snacks, gluten-free products, Asian foods and vegan and non-dairy products. Customers include restaurants, caterers and food retailers. The new site will have offices, a distribution center, and food processing, packing and cold storage facilities. Ace has budgeted $2.7 million for renovations and equipment. Once an IDA deal is approved, the company says it can finish the work and relocate in four months. Its 42 employees – 35 full-time and 7 part-time – will relocate to Mount Vernon. Gap Inc. is shutting down its Banana Republic New York City headquarters. Some 112 corporate staffers who work on store and product design, human resources, communications and operations were told that their jobs are being moved to Gap’s San Francisco headquarters by May. Toys R Us is closing four new York City stores, one each in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The stores will be closed by mid-April and employ about 275 workers between them. Following the takeover of the magazine publisher Rodale last year, Hearst magazines announced layoffs of the 124 of the 200 NYC Rodale staffers. The company intends to relocate the business, with layoffs being completed by the end of the first quarter of this year. Banana Republic intends to relocate its design, development, and operations departments to San Francisco, starting in June of this year and continuing until the end of 2018. Some of the 112 positions that are slated to be eliminated were offered as transfers to current employees, so exact impact of the move isn’t yet clear. Liberty Coca Cola, a beverage manufacturer and distributor, is closing its doors in Queens and laying off 115 workers as a result. The closing date will be the end of April of this year. Some of the employees belong to the Teamsters Local 812, which is helping its members to negotiate a severance package. Union Beer Distributors, an independent brewing company, is relocating its warehouse and distribution units to New Jersey at the end of April 2018. The company is laying off 233 employees, some of whom belong to the Teamsters Local 812. Vox Media said it was laying off 50 staffers — about 5 percent of its employee base — as it winds down online video and other initiatives. In the latest sign of a retreat in digital publishing, Vox CEO Jim Bankoff told employees in an internal memo that Racked, Curbed, SB National and the video services team were among the hardest hit. The Gap store in the Staten Island Mall will be closing by the end of February. Gap announced in September that it was gearing up to close about 200 "underperforming" Gap and Banana Republic stores and although no official announcement has been made, media reports cite the Staten Island store as one of the ones to be tied to the shuttering of underperforming stores. BuzzFeed is laying off about 100 employees globally after the company failed to meet its 2017 revenue targets. The firm said that the cuts will affect the company’s business staff in the U.S. and both business and editorial staff in the U.K. The company hasn't specified how the New York City staff might be affected. Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn is in the process of laying off up to 200 employees as part of a cost-cutting move. The layoff includes about 100 members of 1199SEIU, as well as members of the New York State Nurses Association. The dismissals account for about 3% of the hospital's staff of 6,500. The union positions affected include phlebotomists, radiology technicians, nurses and clerical staff. Hedge fund manager Neil Chriss is closing his $2.2 billion firm Hutchin Hill Capital LP after a period of poor performance. Chriss, whose firm is made up of teams that trade different strategies, wrote to clients on November 30th that the best way forward is to "proactively return capital as expeditiously as possible." All 121 employees will be laid off by 2/28/18. DNA-Info and the Gothamist, two online media outlets that focused on local news, are being shut down in the wake of a union vote. Between the two organizations, 115 journalists will be laid off, with the effective date of 2/2/2018. Shiel Medical Labs announced that it’s plans to lay off all of its 239 workers in the wake of the acquisition by Quest Disgnostics. Our Rapid Response team reached to the company and was told that about half of the employees have accepted offers of employment from Quest at other locations throughout NYC, while the rest of those being laid off are receiving assistance though an outplacement services firm. The effective date of the layoff is 12/31/2017. Toronto Dominion Bank is laying off 100 workers from its NYC offices at 31 West 52nd street in Midtown Manhattan. The effective layoff date is 5/30/2018. Entertainment Weekly is preparing to move closer to the film stars and TV personalities it covers. In March of 2018, the magazine plans to leave the company's NYC headquarters and relocate to Los Angeles, moving into offices that also hold People magazine's West Coast operations. A spokeswoman said that around 40 to 45 of the publication's 66 New York staffers are expected to make the move west, with some editorial employees who don't want to move able to continue working from New York. The city-based children's gear and clothing retailer Giggle shuttered stores in SoHo and on the Upper East Side, and is expected to close the West Side store in the near future. The company was founded in 2002 with the idea of making it easy for parents to pick out baby gear that met quality and safety criteria. Main Street Hub filed a WARN with the New York State Department of Labor on September 29. The notice indicates that the Austin, Texas-based company will lay off 108 workers at its New York facility. Main Street Hub, a full-service marketing platform for local businesses, announced on September 29 that it would move its headquarters and 1,000 employees to a new 114,000-square-foot building on East 6th Street, beginning in 2019. Main Street Hub will close its office at 1407 Broadway on December 29. “Consolidation of sales offices to Austin, TX” is cited as the reason for the dislocation. The employees impacted by the layoff are not represented by a union. The layoff date is expected to take place on December 29. ABM Aviation Inc. filed a Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification with the New York State Department of Labor on September 25. The notice indicates that the company will lay off 560 employees at JFK International Airport. ABM previously filed a WARN notice is Georgia, citing it would lay off 1,179 employees at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. The layoff was related to Delta shifting the work to its own subsidiary Delta Global Services effective November 15. The workers impacted by the layoff provide security and passenger services to travelers at JFK International Airport, Terminal 2 and 4. Separations are expected to take place on November 14. Courtyard by Marriott LaGuardia Hotel filed an amended Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification on September 29 with the New York State Department of Labor. The notice indicates that the hotel will close and lay off 144 employees on October 15. The hotel cited “economic” as the reason for closure on the filing. No further details were immediately available. Shiel Medical Laboratory, a division of Fresenius Medical Care, announced it will layoff 239 workers in advance of the division’s purchase by Quest Diagnostics. Most of the impacted workers work in Brooklyn. The layoffs are effective 12/31/2017. TCI College of Technology announced that it will be closing its doors and laying off all its 211 employees starting September 1st. The for-profit institution has struggled with declining enrollments for the last several years. The school was also recently a subject of the investigation by the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs over concerns about students’ dropout and loan-default rates, and the ways in which students were recruited. Cascades Containerboard Packing Inc. is closing its NYC factory and laying off all its 148 employees by the end of 2018. Layoffs will begin on November 27, 2017 and progress in stages over the next 12 months as the company’s operations in New York are wound down. Some of the employees belong to the Folding box, corrugated box and display workers local 381 United Steel Workers International Union AFL-CIO-CLC. Opinion Access Corp. (OAC) filed a Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification in the New York City Region on September 5. The notice indicates that the company will lay off 460 non-union employees on December 2017. OAC provides printing, data entry, tabulating and data collection services to companies performing market research activities. The company is headquartered in Long Island City, New York and operates an offshore center in the Dominican Republic. Vice Media, a millennial-focused media company, laid off 60 staffers in July. The move comes on the heels of a $450 million investment from private-equity firm TPG, which valued the Brooklyn-based operation at $5.7 billion. Vice announced plans at that time to expand its productions to include scripted television series and feature films. The company online job board still lists 68 available openings for positions ranging from program director to billing specialist. LMEG Wireless, which operated under the name LM Wireless, is laying off all its workers and closing its doors by October 19th. The company was implicated in selling counterfeit Apple and Samsung products last year, with government action following soon after. In total, 151 employees will lose their jobs. Lion Re:Sources continued to lay off employees as the Publicis-owned staffing agency seeks cost savings after its parent company acquired the back office support company Sapient, whose services largely duplicate those of Re:Sources. The latest round of layoffs will affect 154 people and will be completed by December 1st, 2017. A ride-hailing company Gett, which acquired one of its competitors, Juno, in April in an all-stock deal worth $200 million, is now laying off 68 workers as it closes offices on West 35th Street in Manhattan and on Northern Boulevard in Long Island City. The layoffs will take place in September. Courtyard by Marriott hotel located near the LaGuardia airport is closing its doors by the end of September. Last year, the Queens hotel made headlines when it was rumored that 60 of the rooms will be converted to a homeless shelter. Both the hotel management and the Department of Housing Services denied the allegations, but the business at the hotel never recovered. All of the hotel's 144 workers are being laid off. Some employees belong to the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council, AFL-CIO. Allied Health Service, a home health care agency, announced layoffs of all of its 351 employees, as the company completes the sale to the new owners, Extended Home Care. All employees who meet the qualifications and are up to date on their professional certifications will be encouraged to apply with the new owners of the company. Extended Home Care expects to offer jobs to the majority of current employees. The rapidly changing retail market is forcing Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey, whose signature thrift stores help support its social-services mission, to streamline operations. Goodwill will shutter five of its 42 retail stores by the end of the year, seek new store locations and develop user-friendly models to improve the shopping experience and make it easier to donate goods. Goodwill's thrift stores are key to its mission of helping those with barriers to employment enter and succeed in the workforce. The stores provide not only revenues, but also jobs and careers for Goodwill clients. Goodwill will shut down stores in the Bronx, Harrison, N.J., and in Binghamton, Herkimer and Rotterdam in upstate New York Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. has signed a major lease deal for more than 100,000 square feet in Downtown White Plains, one of the largest deals involving a New York company moving operations to Westchester County in the past decade. The bank, which is headquartered in Japan and has North American operations in New York City at 277 Park Ave, will shift approximately 230 people from NYC and add 109 new hires. Westchester County IDA granted Sumitomo a $1.97-million sales tax exemption if it moved forward with the project. NYC Health + Hospitals Corp. began laying off non-unionized administrative staff. During this round of layoffs, 396 management-level employees received termination notices, with another 80 positions eliminated through unfilled vacancies. In all, the health system’s interim president said that he expects at least 600 job cuts before the end of the year. Restructuring the workforce is part of the city's plan to shrink the health system's deficit, which it projected in 2016 would reach $1.8 billion by 2020 without intervention. Aircraft Service International, a ground service provider at the JFK International Airport, has lost its contract and filed a notice to terminate all of its 378 workers at the site. The Daily Mail & Trust cut 47 of the 94 staffers at its Elite Daily site just ahead of the April 17 sale of the millennial women’s destination to Bustle Digital Group, filings by the company with New York regulators reveal. A Bustle spokesperson acknowledged that it was only taking about half the employees in the unit. B&H Photo Video, whose Midtown shop has served the needs of gadget hounds for 20 years, will close its warehouse in Bushwick in August. Fifty-seven employees will lose their jobs, according to a filing with the state Department of Labor. The announcement was expected. B&H said in January that it would close its Brooklyn storage facilities and relocate them to New Jersey, affecting 335 jobs. The decision came a little more than a year after B&H warehouse employees voted to join the United Steelworkers union. Etsy Inc. is replacing its CEO and cutting jobs as it faces pressure from shareholders upset with its lackluster profits and anemic stock performance. The online crafts marketplace said Tuesday that it has named board member Josh Silverman as CEO, replacing Chad Dickerson, who also stepped down as board chairman. The Brooklyn, New York-based company also said it is also eliminating about 80 jobs, or 8% of its workforce, as it moves to trim costs. J. Crew Group Inc., the struggling apparel chain, will shake up its management ranks and cut 250 jobs in a bid to revive growth, as the company is coping with shrinking sales and a broader shift away from mall-based retail. The job cuts will include 150 full-time positions and 100 open slots, mostly at the company’s New York headquarters. New York Popular, a manufacturer and wholesaler of apparel, received a $9.8 million Grow New Jersey incentive package that helped it decide to purchase 400 Federal Boulevard, a 55,560-square-foot industrial property in Carteret, NJ instead of moving operations to Norfolk, VA. The company’s relocation will bring 150 new jobs to the Garden State, the application says. The company manufacturers or licenses products for the New York City Fire and Police Departments, I Love NY, and other brands, sold through resort retailers and theme parks around the country, and souvenir stores in the New York City area. Electronics retailer RadioShack has filed for its second bankruptcy in two years and will close at least 552 of its stores by mid-April. The stores that are set to close are the ones with the lowest sales velocity and highest rent. In New York State, 45 stores are slated for closure, ten of them in NYC. As the company goes through the process of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, other store closures might be mandated by creditors or forced by the courts, so the number of impacted employees could go up significantly. Ralph Lauren, struggling with declining sales and falling profits, will close its flagship Polo store on Fifth Avenue, revamp its e-commerce operations, and cut jobs. As part of the changes, Ralph Lauren will shift its digital operations to a platform run by Salesforce.com Inc.’s Commerce Cloud and streamline its organization by shuttering other offices and stores. Although the full impact of the downsizing isn’t known and won’t be felt for months, the company’s Polo store will close as of the end of April. The company announced that all 125 employees will be laid off with no transfers to other locations. The Dumont NYC hotel will layoff 79 workers effective 06/19/2017. The world-famous Waldorf Astoria hotel is closing its doors for a multi-year renovation after being acquired by the Chinese insurance giant Anbang in 2014. The company plans to convert the majority of the 1,100 hotel rooms into condos, leaving only 300 to 500 for hotel guests. The renovated Waldorf Astoria will keep its grand ballroom and some of the public spaces, along with its landmarked façade and overall appearance. Although all 1,500 employees are being laid off by the company, Anbang offered severance agreements as well as an opportunity to come back to the re-opened hotel in the future, to most of its full-time employees. Craftbar restaurant will close April 30th 2017 and lay off all 70 workers. Gourmet Guru, a Bronx-based natural foods retailer, will close 05/11/2017 and lay off 77 workers. Vodafone Americas began layoffs of 51 staff at the end of February. The layoffs will be complete by 06/30/2017. ComplexCare Solutions Medical Practice began laying off 103 workers on 03/03/2017. The layoffs will be complete by the end of May. Securities broker CLSA laid off 63 workers effective 02/27/2017. J.C. Penney plans to close 130 to 140 stores and offer buyouts to 6,000 workers nationally, as the department-store industry loses steam in competition with online retailers. The company said that it would shutter 13% to 14% of its locations and introduce new goods and services aimed at the shifting preferences of its customer base. Potential NYC impact is not yet clear. Recent decision by Macy’s to shutter its underperforming stores will result in the closure of the Macy’s in the Douglaston section of Queens. The store is expected to close by mid-April, with layoffs of all 163 employees occurring in the first two weeks of April. Duane Reade plans to lay off 214 workers at its distribution center in Maspeth, Queens, starting in April as it prepares to shut down the facility at the end of May 2017. A new distribution center, to be run by a third-party logistics company, will open this year in Linden, N.J., according to a spokesman for Walgreens, the Deerfield, Ill.–based company that acquired Duane Reade in 2010. There are about 200 Duane Reade stores in New York City. The Maspeth site served those locations and some Walgreens stores following the acquisition. The company decided it would not renew its lease when it expires this year. The 470,000-square-foot Maspeth facility, at 50-02 55th Ave., had not been operating at full capacity for several years and, with the addition of the New Jersey plant, the company would have had excess capacity. As Sears continues to shrink its physical store footprint, the company announced its plans to shutter a Rego Park Sears in Queens. The store will close by April 9, with layoffs of all 200 workers occurring by that date. The store at 9605 Queens Blvd., near the 63rd Drive subway station, was deemed “unprofitable,” according to Sears Holdings, which also owns Kmart. The Rego Park location, which has been one of the anchor stores at the Rego Center Mall since 1996, will be among 42 stores nationwide that will close this spring.