One Queens Office Building Does More Than Offer Space For Rent. It Offers To Help Its Tenants Make More Money.

Executive Office Center owners, Steven and Jack Blumner may have hit upon a novel idea when they opened their state-of-the-art business center in the fall. The brothers, former owners of First Choice Real Estate, once the top selling residential brokerage in Queens, are not merely landlords.  They are actively engaged in helping their tenants make more money.

Since opening in October, the Executive Office Center at Fresh Meadows has attracted 50 tenants and virtual tenants, including seventeen attorneys.  “We’re right on schedule,” says Executive Director Jack Blumner, who expects that number to double by the end of the year.

The Executive Office Center, offering serviced office suites and Queens virtual office services, is the first such business center to open in the borough of Queens.  There are scores of executive suite office centers in Manhattan and Long Island, but none until now in the densely populated borough of Queens.

Executive suite centers typically offer a menu of administrative services to their tenants, but supplementing these services with marketing support elevates the concept of serviced office space to a new level.  

Jack and Steven Blumner are no strangers to marketing.  In the 1990s they made their company, First Choice Real Estate, a household name in Queens by sending out millions of pieces direct mail to homeowners in the borough.  Now they are using the World Wide Web to help accomplish their objectives. 

     What they have done is to develop two consumer websites to help promote and facilitate business for their tenants, as a value added benefit.  The two websites are www.everythingunder1roof.com and www.queensforless.com. 

·         www.everythingunder1roof.com is a business directory of the Executive Office Center at Fresh Meadows tenants that shortcuts the customer’s hunt for business and professional services in Queens.   There are presently 50 companies affiliated with the office center.  In time, there will be several hundred, says Mr. Blumner, “and we want Queens consumers to know that they can find virtually everything they need right here under one roof.”

·         www.queensforless.com offers coupon discounts for Queens neighborhood stores and restaurants, while featuring the professional and business services of the Executive Office Center’s tenants.   Consumers are lured to the website by attractive retail discounts.  Once there, they also find the many different professional and business services offered by tenants of the Executive Office Center.

   
Tenants of the Executive Office Center are also featured on the 16 foot LED display that faces the busy parking lot of the Fresh Meadows shopping center. 
    
The Executive Office Center is the perfect place for attorneys and other solo professionals and small companies doing business in the borough of Queens.  It is ideal for companies that need a branch or satellite office in the borough.  The Executive Office Center is also the closest office business center to JFK and LaGuardia airports.  Business travelers to New York may wish to take advantage of the building’s close proximity to the airports.  Day suites and conference rooms are available at hourly, daily and weekly rates. 

    

NYC: What Counts Here is the Not the Color of Your Skin but the Quality of Your Work

I recently made the acquaintance of a tutor, who is a native of Trinidad.  He told me that he had relocated to Atlanta some years ago, but found it hard to make a living there.  “The first thing people would ask me,” he said, “is where do you worship?” The answer to that question often determined whether or not he got the job he was seeking.  After struggling for a few years, he moved back to New York.  “Here people don’t care about the color of your skin, or what religion you practice,” he told me.  “They care about the quality of your work.”

The other day, I sought to help one of the tenants of the Executive Office Center at Fresh Meadows, who is Muslim, with a personal referral.  I am a yarmulke (skull cap) wearing orthodox Jew.  He told me of the work he had done for the late Rabbi Wolf of the Great Neck Synagogue, and of other Jewish organizations that had engaged his services.  He said to me, “It’s too bad that everybody can’t come to New York for a lesson in how to live and work with people of all faiths.” 

Mr. Singh, my telecommunications consultant for over twenty-five years is a Sikh.  He wears a turban.   Since arriving in the United States at the age of 17, he has always lived and worked in New York.  He doesn’t advertise and has never advertised because his reputation precedes him.   He also believes that New York offers a level playing field for all races, creeds and colors. “No one is out of place in New York,” he said.  Then, he added, with a laugh, “except possibly the descendents of the original colonists.”  The only time he ever felt threatened by prejudice was just after 9/11.  “People were scared.  They looked at me, and all they saw was my turban,” he said.  “It didn’t last long,” he added, “and it didn’t cost me any work.  People always judged me on the basis of my ability and expertise.” 

I, too, remember my days as the co-owner of First Choice Real Estate, Inc.  First Choice was a microcosm of the borough of Queens, which, with its population of 2.3 million people is the most culturally diverse county in the Untied States.  The agents included such disparate nationalities as Chinese, Koreans, Russians, Irish, Greeks, Indians, Israelis, and spoke a cumulative total of twenty-one different languages.   There was often bickering among the agents, but it was like the bickering of my children. What I remember most about them was not the differences between them, but the family they constituted.