The incentives were competitively awarded through the US Treasury's New Markets Tax Credit initiative, a federal program allowing community development organizations to raise equity capital from investors and to pass tax credits on to these investors over a seven-year period.

With the tax credits to start with, "we hope to break ground by the end of the year," LCOR senior VP David A. Sigman tells GlobeSt.com. Anchor tenants are already at the table, he says, including an unspecified aviation firm and a state agency.

Designed to keep prospective tenants at the table are a raft of incentives, although the specifics of each need to be ironed out before any papers are signed, Sigman explained. Included in these are breaks that come via the city's relocation program as well as the acreage's status as both an empire zone and a 25-year tax-abatement zone. At their max, the bundled packages could save tenants as much as $29 per foot. This, says Sigman, could lower the overall rental rate "to the mid 20s."

Sigman believes that the $21 million will fast-forward a rehabilitation of the down-trodden Jamaica commercial center, which today exists as a mix of new and fairly new office buildings, single-story retail strips and fired-out shells of flop-houses. The major feature has traditionally been Long Island Rail Road's massive Jamaica station. The newest development is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's 298,000-sf Airtrain terminal, currently going up across the street from the proposed JFK Corporate Center.

Over the years, some of the blighted buildings have been replaced by such large but one-off projects as the 969,000-sf Joseph Addabbo Federal Building. But the JFK Corporate Square project takes a more expansive attack on the local market.

The link that the Airtrain terminal provides--it dead ends at Kennedy International Airport some 10 minutes away--will be key to redefining Jamaica, says Sigman. "There's no real commercial development at JFK," Sigman tells GlobeSt.com. "With all of the incentive programs in place, we have the opportunity to create a new office core, a sort of commercial airport village. We can prove to people that Jamaica is no longer just a place to transfer through."

Of five New York City-based organizations that received a total of $201 million in NMTC tax credits, GJDC is the only entity that will use the credits exclusively within the city. The award was one of 66 grants nationwide totaling $2.5 billion.