Whitestone Cinemas, where countless Bronx residents both former and current have tons of fond memories at the old drive-in and movie multiplex, has sold again, this time to mega developer Extell—for $41 million.
Extell is the developer for the towering One57 high-rise that has changed the skyline of midtown and also sold the most expensive apartment in New York City history at a whopping $100.5 million at the uber luxury building.
One can only imagine what they have planned for this area of The Bronx considering their track record of luxury development.
The Whitestone property sold back in 2012 to the Lightstone Group for $30 million which had plans to convert the mega site (which measures almost a million square feet) into what would have been the city’s first outlet mall.
But those plans never came to fruition and perhaps much to many local residents delight due to the traffic nightmares many locals predicted would happen since the area is poorly accessible by other than buses and vehicles.
The new owner has not released plans as to what they will do with the property but we’ll wait and see what they will unleash along this corner of the East Bronx at the edge of Throggs Neck.
The property sits at the crossroads of major expressways like the Cross Bronx, The Hutchinson River Parkway, Bruckner Boulevard, and the Throgs Neck and Whitestone Bridges.
This may just be a new era in development in the East Bronx but what will that mean and entail? Will they address the critical shortage of housing for low and middle income residents or will they just skip over the neediest class and hate straight for luxury residential along the Hutchinson River?
Maybe they’ll stick with commercial and retail?
At this point, until they speak up, it’s all speculation but we’d like to hear from you what you think the site should be.
