The Corridor Journal of Strategic Alliances Building Arts & Real Property | Page 5

Prognosis for the New
Commercial Real Estate Market:

Top LI Firm Sees Growth
by Vivian Leber

Who better than the real estate partners of a major Long
Island law firm, where deals start, financing is negotiated,
and contracts are signed and closed, to take the pulse of
the Long Island real estate market? 
The CORRIDOR spoke in early March with three attorneys
of Ruskin Moscou Faltischek P.C., a full-service 60-plus
firm in Uniondale.  Since they are engaged in all aspects
of commercial real estate acquisition and financing,
leasing, zoning, and land use, municipal incentives, and
environmental, they are engaged from the starting gate to
the finish line in those large property transactions that help
fuel LI’s economy:  housing complexes, malls, main street
development, industrial and infrastructure projects. 
“We are optimistic about 2014,” Eric Rubenstein, co-chair
of the firm’s Real Estate Department and member of its
Environmental Practice Group, says. “Throughout 2013
and particularly the fourth quarter, our clients have been
very active. We expect the steady uptick in all aspects
of real estate to continue.” He views the pace as strong
in residential multifamily housing, especially new rental
units, and in retail, hotels, and medical facilities. The last
is ignited by several major hospital systems which buy
whole practices and combine them in new or reconfigured
space; and the influx of national specialty health and
wellness niche services to Long Island, spurred in part
by demand from aging Baby Boomers. The space being
vacated by those practice consolidations is quickly filled
by another hot business sector. 
When the RMF partners travel and talk to national
developers, including those at the International Council
of Shopping Centers’ conventions in Las Vegas, they are
sure to hear grousing about Long Island being the most
difficult place in the U.S. to build.  The complaints are
of too many municipal jurisdictions, exceedingly slow
approval and the NIMBY’s. Yet those same residential and

commercial developers, REITs, hoteliers, major retailers,
restaurant chains and banks all want to be here!  The
incomes and education of Long Island’s 3 million people
well exceed national averages, and Long Islanders love to
shop and spend. The Island is where some national chains
have their #1-grossing store or restaurant.  
“So while developers bemoan the time and expense to
get a project done here, the payoff at the end is very
rewarding,” adds another partner in the Real Estate
Group, David Leno, who chairs the Zoning and Land Use
Practice.
 Then you have the big office centers as a catalyst too.
The firm represents Canon, which consolidated its US
headquarters in Melville, with a building just awarded a
LEED-Gold certification. Leno says that the new complex is
spawning a lot of other development around it.  
Multifamily housing, especially the rental segment,
has gained in momentum.  “The staunch negativity that
previously came with any proposal for multifamily rentals
has diminished,” according to Leno.  He and Rubenstein
say that local government is more empathetic of late, as
it gets comfortable with rental housing, not least because
politicians watch as their own children leave the Island in
search of reasonably priced housing elsewhere.   
Projects of regional significance spring up across Nassau
and Suffolk that include multifamily and mixed use. Rentals
are incorporated into Transit-Oriented-Development in the
new downtowns. The Village of Hempstead created a
downtown overlay district to speed up and simplify the
approval process. The municipality would predesign the
zoning to indicate to the developer the type of housing
density and mix of sale, rental and affordable housing that
it wants.  If the builder then follows certain guidelines, part
of the Smart Growth concept, it will ensure a smoother,
shorter road to the necessary project approvals. 
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