The Industry, 21-45 44th Drive: Review and Ratings

Review of 21-45 44th Drive by Carter Horsley

Sales started in September 2010 at The Industry, a new condominium apartment building at 21-45 44th Street in Long Island City, Queens.

The 76-unit building has been developed by Stuart and Alan Suna, brothers who founded Silvercup Studios in Queens and who also had planned Silvercup West, a $1 billion, three-tower complex on six acres designed by Lord Richard Rogers, Lord Richard Rogers, best known for the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Millennium Dome in London, just to the south of the Queensborough Bridge in Queens.

The Silvercup West project received all its public approvals in 2007 but construction has yet to start. The complex was designed to have eight new soundstage studios as part of a larger two million square foot complex containing an office tower, two high-rise apartment facilities with about 1,000 apartments, many different shops, a waterfront esplanade as well as ample public open space. In addition, Silvercup agreed to allot 15 percent or 150 residential units for affordable housing. The tallest residential tower would have been 588 feet high while the finials of the Queensborough Bridge are only 354 feet high.

The main Silvercup building, according to a September 24, 2010 article by C. J. Hughes in The New York Times, "was a bakery of the same name before the Sunas and their father, Harry, bought it for $2 million in 1981."

"The plan for the 240,000-square-foot structure under the Queensboro Bridge," the article continued, "was to allow the elder Mr. Suna to consolidate his sheet-metal business. But he ended up requiring only 30,000 square feet, so the family opened a soundstage in the other space. Silvercup s first commercial, for Cool Whip, was filmed in 1983; today the building has 13 soundstages. Then in 1998 the brothers paid $8 million for a nearby Depression-era I-beam manufacturing plant, which became Silvercup Studios East. Its 200,000 square feet offer more spacious studios for scenes with larger sets, like the F.B.I. office on the USA Network show 'White Collar.'"

"The Industry," the article said, "is not the Sunas' first residential development, but it is their first foray into market-rate development. Beginning in the 1990s, the brothers began rehabbing affordable rentals, starting in the Highbridge section of the Bronx with a 5-building, 150-unit complex that they gutted in partnership with Jeffrey E. Levine, now the chairman of Douglaston Development. All told, the Sunas have rehabbed or built 1,700 affordable apartments in the last two decades in areas like Harlem and Williamsburg and East New York in Brooklyn, said Alan Suna, the chief executive of Silvercup. The Sunas are also partners in Metro Management Development, which manages 15,000 apartments in the city."

Alan Suna is an architect who was once with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and the article said that at The Industry residents will find "soft-close kitchen cabinets and showers that glitter with glass tiles" as well as "windows that stretch to seven and a half feet...unfettered by mullions, allowing ample sunlight and expansive views across the neighborhood's mostly low-slung buildings."

The 7-story, pet-friendly building has been designed by GreenbergFarrow. It has a landscaped courtyard and roofdeck, a gym, a doorman, private storage and bicycle storage, on-site parking and refrigerated lobby storage.

Bathrooms has white carrera marble vanity countertops, Toto toilets and Casalgrande Italian porcelain tile floors and walls. Kitchens have Samsung stainless steel refrigerators, KitchenAir stainless steel ranges, and Bosch washers and dryers and grey oak cabinetry with undercabinet lighting.