2006 Queens Business Book

Before Forest City Ratner started making national headlines with its plans for the highly anticipated sports arena that will bring the New Jersey Nets to Downtown Brooklyn, Forest City Ratner was busy setting the foundation for the Queens retail environment – which today is expanding faster than ever.

Focus On The Boroughs

Having established his company in 1985 with a focus on office buildings, Bruce Ratner, the company’s president and CEO, began directing the company, an affiliate of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises, towards downtown Brooklyn.

Intent on leading the first new office construction in the area in a quarter century, Ratner persistently planned and pushed until he witnessed the opening of One Pierre Pont Plaza in 1988. Ratner watched and began planning again, as his work transformed Downtown Brooklyn into New York City’s third central business district.

Building on the company’s urban strategy, Forest City Ratner shifted its focus towards retail projects developing MetroTech Center, a $1 billion, 6.4-million-square-foot high-technology office, academic and retail complex in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn – and began moving over borough lines towards Queens.

While serving as the Commissioner of Consumer Affairs under Mayor Ed Koch, Ratner became interested in how major national retail outlets had long underserved inner-city residents and how the City was failing to utilize its major businesses and transit centers to prevent corporations from relocating to New Jersey and the surrounding suburbs. Concerned with the impact fleeing and under serving businesses could have on the city, Ratner knew he had to commit himself to projects that would enhance local communities.

Queens Expansion

In 1997, Forest City Ratner opened two shopping centers within a month of each other that would change the retail atmosphere in Western Queens. Shops at Northern Boulevard, a 218,059 square foot space, highlighted Ratner’s focus on the utilization of major thoroughfares, bringing Guitar Center Toys ‘R’ Us, Staples, Office Max, Walgreens and Pathmark to Astoria.

Queens Place was a rebirth on a retail hub.

Just two miles away, along Maspeth’s major thoroughfares, Grand Avenue and 74th Street, Ratner’s focus was highlighted again with Maspeth Center, which has drawn in swarms of shoppers to Stop & Shop Supermarket, Payless Shoes and Party City.

It wasn’t until Forest City Ratner’s most influential retail development in Queens came to fruition in September 2001 that Ratner was able to bring the long under serving major national retail outlets in contact with consumers in need. Queens Place, a 434,098 square foot vertical power center located at the corner of Queens Boulevard, Woodhaven Boulevard and Long Island Expressway in Elmhurst, was the answer to suburban malls that were luring national businesses away from the borough’s 2.3 million residents

With more than 1,200 parking spaces and outstanding visibility and access from major roads, Queens Place, at the site of the former Macy’s Department Store, was on its way to enhancing the local community. Queens Place not only offered a clear shopping route to more than 900,000 consumers living within a three-mile radius of the retail space, but also offered retailers access to this massive, yet traditionally underserved, consumer market, according to Forest City Ratner.

Since it’s opening in 2001, Queens Place, the smaller, round counterpart near Queens Center Mall, has successfully drawn leading retailers such as Target and Best Buy into the six-level, $100 million shopping center, proving that national retail outlets could succeed away from the street-level stores with upfront parking they traditionally opt for in suburban neighborhoods.

Target anchors the development with a 230,000-square-foot space; Macy’s Furniture Gallery, Designer Shoe Warehouse, Outback Steakhouse, Starbucks and Daffy’s enhanced the local communities even further by creating approximately 500 full- and part-time jobs, many of which are being filled by local residents.

Ever-Growing

Holding true to Ratner’s early commitment to invest in projects that would enhance local communities, Forest City Ratner today owns and operates 34 properties in the New York metropolitan area and is the nation’s largest publicly traded commercial real estate development company, as an affiliate of Forest City Enterprises.

The theater on Steinway Street was built by Ratner.

Since the late 1980’s, Forest City Ratner has been the only developer to create major public, commercial, retail, hotel and urban entertainment projects for New York City at an average rate of nearly 1 million square feet of new construction each year, according to the company. Assuring the communities’ needs are met, Forest City Ratner calls for the coordination of intensive public approval processes and negotiations with City, State and Federal authorities, as well as local community boards and private sector entities.

Forest City Ratner, which has recently increased its ownership stake in the 52-story New York Times Manhattan headquarters, is currently one of the finalists for the redevelopment of the 75-acre Willets Point district in Northern Queens. Recently most of the company’s energy is being focused back over borough lines towards Brooklyn, as Forest City Ratner works on the 850,000 square foot sports arena for Brooklyn’s basketball team, the Nets.