The owner of the Long Island City factory building that is famous for its graffiti-covered rear wall has met with the city's Department of Planning to discuss the redevelopment of the site with about 1,300 rental apartments, according to an article in today's edition of The New York Daily News. The article said that it "has been tagged for development, likely ending its run as a street-art mecca."

The article said that the site was rezoned in 2001 for large-scale development and that the $300 million project would include studio space for artists, an open-air concourse, a supermarket, shops and restaurants and two residential towers, one likely to rise 40 stories.

The owner, Jerry Wolkoff, is expected to submit a formal plan to the city in about two weeks, the article said.

"It is not just any other building with graffiti on it. It is the epicenter for graffiti artists from all over the world," said Jonathan Cohen, founder of the 5Pointz collective. "It would be no different than tearing down the MOMA or the Guggenheim."

"What most people call graffiti, I call aerosol art," said Wolkoff, who owns several properties in the city and on Long Island, the article said, adding that he has allowed graffiti at the factory building bordered by Jackson Avenue, Crane and Davis streets for over a dozen years. "The artists have to go through a committee; it's not just put up at random. And no one gets paid; it all comes from the heart."

According to an April 29, 2008 article by Marc Ferris at therealdeal.com, "current manufacturing tenants and artists' lofts cover the building's taxes, maintenance and utilities."

"From the beginning," the article continued, "there has been a steadfast policy for artists: no nudity, politics, ethnic disparagement or other negativity....The building's aerosol program was founded in 1996 by Pat DeLillo, who called it the Phun Phactory. A former plumber who once worked as a community activist with the Graffiti Terminators, which painted over graffiti works around Queens, DeLillo realized that he couldn't beat graffiti artists, so he decided to join them and champion their work. The Wolkoffs gave him the keys to the castle that is 5 Pointz based on a handshake and a promise - not a dime changed hands."

"The program's current administrator, Jonathan Cohen, known as Meres, took over in 2002," the article continued, "after DeLillo moved to Pennsylvania. Cohen, who is certified by the Board of Education, offers classes, cultivates his own career as an artist and curates the offerings at the Wolkoff building, which he dubbed 5 Pointz after the city's five boroughs."

Depending on the quality and the reputation of the aerosol artist, pieces can stay up for as long as several months, especially in the coveted loading dock area, where even dumpsters and vehicles are tattooed with color, the article said.

The most prominent structure on the multi-lot property is the five-story factory built in 1900. The article said that the Wolkoffs carved the bulk of it into 90 artist studios called the Crane Street Studios. The rest of the building's space, around 20 percent, consists of light manufacturing, mainly in the garment industry.

Jerry Wolkoff started as a floor waxer, the article, said, and eventually built over a thousand houses in Brooklyn and Staten Island and then moved his focus to Long Island and built the 400-acre Heartland Business Center in Edgewood and the 240-acre Heartland Executive Park in Hauppauge and in 2001, he bought 460 acres of the former Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood for $20 million.

The factory building was described in an August 8, 2004 article in The New York Times by Sarah Bayliss has having "hundreds of artworks, most of them huge: murals with allegorical tales of good and evil, modern takes on Rembrandt, variations on and homages to grunge comix and the golden age of Mad magazine....The best view is from the elevated No. 7 train."