The two one-story warehouses, each on sites of about six acres in Port Chester and Elmsford, represented an obstacle to growth, Mr. Hochberg said.

Even if the approval process with the city were to go smoothly, Mr. Walentas, who owns the one-story warehouse, said last week that the apartments wouldn't be built for two or three years.

Today, the vast swath of land that Harvard owns in the Boston neighborhood of North Allston includes a truck graveyard and flimsy one-story warehouses and office buildings.

The project will create 175,000 square feet of office space in a three-story building alongside a 247,000-square-foot, one-story warehouse and distribution center.

The weathered sign on the front door of the compact one-story warehouse on Old Moor Street read Shanghai Trading Company.

The building, which will also include 4,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, will rise over the next 21 months on a city-owned site that formerly included a one-story warehouse.

"It's certainly better to have an eight-story building than an empty lot, or a one-story warehouse."

The first was a renovated one-story warehouse consisting of three rooms as well as an outdoor patio area, which was one of the primary reasons the venue was made famous.

Early on the morning of May 16, the police surrounded City Gas's headquarters, a one-story warehouse in an industrial park at the edge of the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.

The fire was declared under control at 7:30 A.M., but not before flames had spread to a one-story warehouse and a seven-story factory-warehouse, Chief Masters said.