Forest
Hills Ledger / Times Ledger |
A lofty new Gap store designed to usher in a new millennium of style is coming to Austin Street in Forest Hills. A 22,000-square-foot building with tow floors is risking at 69-39 Austin Street and will house the Gap, Gap Kids, and baby Gap stores, Heskel Elias, the Forest Hills developer, said this week. "It's going to be designed in the new style, the 'Millennium Gap,'" Elias said in an interview. "The price is still going to be Gap, but you'll feel like you're shopping for a Rolls Royce." The store will look plush and conservative at the same time, Elias said, with a facade design that combines art deco with other architectural styles. Among the new features meant to evoke a fresh new style for shoppers are an interior with more open space and light, and new amenities such as a device in each fitting room that beckons a sales clerk at the touch of a button. The two-story building will be accessible to the disabled, the developer said. "I think it's going to do phenomenally well," the developer said. "The Gap doesn't need to be next to anything. It has its own magic." The new Gap, which will replace the Gap's existing store on the eastern end of Austin Street, is yet another link on the chain of new retailers that Elias' Heskel Group has brought to the increasingly stylish Austin Street, turning the strip into one of the borough's premier shopping avenues. In 1996, the developer custom-built a 7,000-square-foot superstore with 18-foot ceilings for the Disney Store on Austin Street at 70th Road. In 1998 another Elias property, the 58-year-old Midway Theatre on Queens Boulevard, underwent an overhaul that expanded the theater from four screens to nine and brought elevators and stadium seating to a building erected during World War II. Then in March 1999, Elias opened the new UA Brandon Cinemas building at 70-20 Austin Street. The most recent Elias endeavor was the opening a year ago of the Duane Reade drugstore. An early 1900s building on Continental Avenue had been painstakingly refurbished for that project. The concept of a Gap superstore came about more than two years ago, Elias said, when the popular retailer began expressing a desire to leave Austin Street. Elias said he convinced the clothing giant to stay by striking a deal on the new building, a property he owns in partnership with Federal Realty Investment Trust of Maryland,. Elias bult the original building 25 years ago as a movie theater--one his first projects on Austin Street--and sold it in 1989, only to purchase it again in 1996. It has been demolished to make way for the new building, Elias said. Other Heskel Group tenants on and around Austin Street include Sprint, Blockbuster, and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Elias said he was pleased that another well-established clothing retailer is moving in across the street from the future Gap superstore: Eddie Bauer. The 6,5000-square-foot store , now under construction at 70-00 Austin Street will be the first Eddie Bauer store in Queens, said Eddie Bauer spokeswoman Cozetter Phifer. The Seattle-based retailer has stores in Manhattan and Long Island as well as a catalog business. Phifer said Forest Hills was a sensible choice for a new Eddie Bauer store, which is also being designed after a new prototype meant to bring the retailer into the 21st century, because it already has a lucrative catalog business in the Forest Hills area. "We know it's a strong market fur us," Phifer said. The store in tentatively scheduled to open Thursday, Oct. 19. The two new clothing store will serve a s good anchor for Austin Street's west side, once an industrial area, Elias sail. The developer said he plans to turn over the building to the Gap company in October, and the opening should come a few months later.
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