TRAVIS – Wine lovers may soon be able to sample a vintage with grapes grown on Staten Island.
A vineyard is featured in plans filed for a new $20 million building at the Teleport business park on South Avenue, the Staten Island Advance first reported.
“Staten Island has beer, why can’t it have wine too?” Richard Nicotra, owner of the Nicotra Group that bought the property earlier this year, asked the paper. Many wine club owners and connoisseurs are already curious about what the wine will be like once produced if the vineyard reaches completion.
Aside from the vineyard, Nictora plans a rooftop farm with beehives, indoor bocce ball courts, and a wellness center, a spokeswoman for the Nictora Group said.
The site will also have a farm-to-table not-for-profit Italian restaurant – Pienza Pizza, Pasta & Porchetta – which will use greens and honey produced on site for dishes and donate its proceeds to charity, the spokeswoman said.
Nictora, which already owns two buildings inside the Teleport and the Hilton Garden Inn, purchased the nine-acre plot of land for $3.6 million from the Port Authority in February, the Advance reported.
The 240,000-square-foot building, dubbed Corporate Commons 3, is still in the design phase and expects to start construction in 2017.
“We are getting bid numbers in now – it’s going to be the most expensive and expansive project we’ve undertaken,” Nicotra said in a statement.
The site hosts office buildings, the St. Paul’s School of Nursing and two charter schools – the John W. Lavelle Preparatory Charter School and the New Ventures Charter School – and was identified as a possible site to house a jail to replace Rikers.