By Lauren Weber

NY Newsday, May 27, 2005

Deal would bring the warehouse retailer to a planned riverside shopping complex set to open summer 2007

After several delays, Costco is close to signing a lease for its first Manhattan store, said the developers of East River Plaza, a big-box shopping center set to open in summer of 2007 on FDR Drive in Harlem.

The warehouse club retailer will likely sign a lease as an anchor within the next two weeks, said David Blumenfeld, vice president of Blumenfeld Development Group, which is building the project in partnership with Forest City Ratner.

The other anchor tenant will be The Home Depot, which already operates two Manhattan stores, on 23rd Street and on 59th Street.

Costco has been looking at the location for years, but the project kept stalling, and Costco executives at one point said they were not sure they wanted to commit to the high expenses of operating at the site. Costco officials did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.

Kenneth Knuckles, president of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, said Harlem needs the retail and the jobs that will be created at East River Plaza.

"East Harlem is severely underserved," he said. And "the job creation there is of a kind that many of the residents of East Harlem will be able to occupy." Knuckles, whose organization is providing some financing for the project, expects the shopping center to create about 1,000 jobs.

Syosset-based Blumenfeld Group acquired the former Washburn Wire factory site, which sits between 116th and 119th streets on FDR Drive, in 1996 at a federal auction. The City Council approved the project in 1999, but it's been held up by lawsuits and concerns over parking, traffic and other issues.

Construction is scheduled to begin in November, and Knuckles said he looks forward to its completion. "As long as that site was a blight, it sent a bad message to everyone who passed it every day. The sooner it's developed, the better off... the upper Manhattan economy will be."

http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzcost4277403may27,0,721919.story?coll=ny-business-headlines