Don't call it a City Of Yes: New Jamaica zoning proposal finally revealed

 

 City Limits

The city is moving forward on plans to rezone a swath of Jamaica, Queens—what officials say aims to boost both housing and economic opportunities around the area’s many public transit hubs.

The Department of City Planning (DCP) on Monday unveiled the “Draft Zoning Framework” for the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan—crafted after six months of community workshops and a public survey, and a precursor to a more formal rezoning proposal expected later this year.

The 300-block study area encompasses the Jamaica Rail Hub and surrounding downtown, CUNY’s York College campus, the Hollis LIRR station and several branching-off “transit corridors,” including Hillside and Jamaica avenues and Sutphin, Guy R. Brewer and Merrick boulevards. 

The framework proposes to “increase density and allow housing in appropriate, key areas,” according to a DCP presentation, including through the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program, which requires new housing in rezoned areas include a portion of income-restricted homes. It would retain several hubs for industrial uses, and prioritize others for “mixed use” development.

 The area is represented by City Councilmember Nantasha Williams, whose district has seen 3,400 new units of city-financed affordable housing since 2014, according to DCP (a tracker published by the New York Housing Conference ranks it 13th out of the city’s 51 Council districts when it comes to affordable development). 

Just more than half of homes in Jamaica are occupied by renters, 59 percent of whom are rent burdened, meaning they spend at least a third or more of their income on housing, according to DCP. The district has a higher homeownership rate than both the borough of Queens and the city as whole, though more than half of its homeowners are considered “mortgage burdened.”

In a statement accompanying the release of the draft framework, Williams—who as the local rep will play a key role during public review of the plan, and the Council’s ultimate vote on it—stressed the importance of ensuring “stakeholders feel their voice is being heard in every step of this process.”

“This zoning framework allows DCP to begin the environmental review process into how much our community can grow in the future and what the needs will be,” Williams said.

The proposal is one of several neighborhood rezonings being pursued by the Adams administration, alongside plans to boost development around new Metro-North stations in the Bronx and in Central Brooklyn. 

It comes as the city grapples with an extreme housing shortage: the most recent survey of the city’s inventory released last week found that just 1.41 percent of rental units were vacant last year, the lowest availability since 1968. 

City Planning expects to release a more formal zoning proposal for Jamaica—to include specific zoning districts and projections for how many new units of housing it aims to create—in the next couple of months, according to a spokesperson. 

The months-long public review process, known as ULURP, will likely begin at the end of the year, the spokesperson added.

 

The great Mizumi zoning controversy

Queens Chronicle 

The City Council voted 50-0 to approve a C2-2 commercial overlay last Thursday that will allow Douglaston’s Mizumi restaurant to expand significantly, which Councilmember Vickie Paladino (R-Whitestone) supported despite overwhelming opposition from area civic leaders.

The original plan, which Community Board 11 voted unanimously against in May, extended the commercial overlay from the western end of the Mizumi property to 234th Street. Though Borough President Donovan Richards recommended that the overlay be approved — if it only included the Mizumi property — the original plan went before the Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises last month, at which point modifications were recommended.

At the time, civic leaders believed that modification to be the same as Richards’ plan; following last Thursday’s vote, however, they were informed that is not the case. Though smaller than the original overlay, it will extend to 233rd Street, and therefore includes two additional properties: the carwash two doors down and the adjacent abandoned church.

Sean Walsh, president of the Douglaston Civic Association, said the move once again calls Paladino’s transparency into question.

“I feel double-betrayed,” he told the Chronicle. Referring to the councilmember, he continued, “I feel insulted that you can lie to me so bald-faced ... now I’m going to have to go full tilt against you.”

And that he did. At Monday’s Community Board 11 meeting, he and several others made their discontent with Paladino clear. Flushing land-use expert Paul Graziano even went through each point in Paladino’s subsequent press release on the matter, detailing his objections to each. Both Third Vice Chair Henry Euler and board member Doug Montgomery noted that they were not informed of the additions to the overlay. Montgomery said Monday that a City Planning Commission employee told him the added properties were incorporated after the vote; the Chronicle did not receive confirmation of that by press time.

Paladino has stood by her decision, which she has touted as a compromise, and says she did not flip-flop on the issue. “I did what was best to serve the community, the small business owner and the environment,” Paladino said. “This was a homerun.”

 

City Council approves Edgemere overdevelopment

City Limits
 

 The City Council voted Thursday to rezone a 166-acre swath of Edgemere, approving a plan first proposed by the de Blasio administration that could add more than 1,200 new housing units and improve resiliency in a Queens neighborhood at severe risk of flooding.

The land use plan, part of a broader initiative known as Resilient Edgemere, encompasses the area bound by Beach 35th Street and Beach 50th Street and will change zoning rules to increase density in some areas, limit development in others and raise the shoreline along Jamaica Bay. Resilient Edgemere also includes efforts to develop housing on city-owned parcels, elevate homes, improve parks and infrastructure and designate 16 acres as open space to be used for coastal protection.

The Council specifically approved five applications submitted by the city’s Department of Housing and Preservation and Development (HPD) to amend the zoning and allow for new development with mandatory inclusionary housing (MIH) affordability rules, which force developers to cap rents on a portion of their units for low- and middle-income New Yorkers. Around 530 new units will be affordable under MIH, according to HPD, and 35 percent of those affordable units will be up for sale, not rent. The plan would further a Community Land Trust on up to eight acres of city-owned land.

Resilient Edgemere establishes two special coastal risk districts, which HPD defines as “currently at exceptional risk from flooding and may face greater risk in the future.”

Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers, who represents Edgemere and other neighborhoods in the eastern portion of the Rockaway Peninsula, said the changes will allow for more affordable homes in the waterfront neighborhood, while shoring up the region against rising sea levels and storm-related flooding.

“Edgemere will benefit from vital affordable homeownership opportunities, infrastructure investments and protection from a changing climate,” Brooks-Powers said. “Rockaway has seen a surge of new development in recent years, but that development has not been accompanied by a commensurate investment in local infrastructure.”

Brooks-Powers inherited the project from her predecessor, Donovan Richards, who was elected Queens borough president in 2020 and told City Limits he was pleased that the Council voted to approve the rezoning after seven years of planning and community engagement. Richards recommended the plan in his advisory role in March but urged the city to foster affordable home ownership opportunities in response to community demands.

“There is tremendous promise in the Resilient Edgemere Community Plan,” Richards said, adding that he would focus on ensuring that developers and the city adhere to local hiring and MWBE commitments.

Under the changes, which now await Mayor Eric Adams’ signature, most of the area north of Beach Channel Drive would be zoned for one- and two-family homes, while the stretch between Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Edgemere Avenue would allow for taller, mixed-used buildings. City-owned vacant land next to the Edgemere Houses would be converted to open space, as would much of the land abutting the Jamaica Bay.

In a statement following the vote, Adams hailed the plan as “an important step forward for residents of Edgemere, the Rockaways, and the entire city.”

Rezone me once shame on you...

Queens Chronicle 

 A rally was held in Springfield Gardens on Tuesday to protest against the development of an apartment complex.

Civic leaders and some members of the community say the neighborhood is already stressed as it is with traffic and infrastructure — there is constant flooding from an overflow of the sewers during heavy rainstorms — and that a new housing complex for more than 30 people with a parking space would add to the troubles of the area.

“I’m looking at the traffic,” said Marcia O’Brien, president of the Rosedale Civic Association, before about two dozen people at the corner of 147th Avenue and Guy R. Brewer Boulevard. “The vehicles and the trucks are double-parked. I’m standing right here as cars are backing up here, backing there and backing up over there. How are they going to build an eight-story building here?

“We are still waiting for Part B on the flood infrastructure project.”

After Community Board 13 voted down a proposal 32-0 with no abstentions, developer Ranbir LLC told community members that the proposed mixed-use apartment building at 146-93 Guy R. Brewer Blvd. would be seven floors instead, according to Bryan Block, the CB 13 chairman.

There was also construction going on at 182nd Street and 147th Avenue to alleviate flooding in the area.

“I’m here because this also affects Cambria Heights and whatever happens in Springfield Gardens affects all of us,” said Block, who is also the president of the Cambria Heights Civic Association. “This is about density. We don’t need to have any more density in Southeast Queens ... we have to draw the line here.”

Block, who grew up in Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, said that his family moved to Southeast Queens in 1967 over safety and overcrowding. The civic leader also said that many families who were transplants from Harlem and the Bronx moved to have the suburban dream of living in a house with a backyard for the same reason.

“We understand that [the developer] has to make a dollar, but not at the expense of the community,” said Block. “Bartlett Dairy is here, that’s fine. Perfect. This is what we want, businesses. What we don’t want are structures that are going to destroy the quality of life.”

Bartlett Dairy, a milk and food distribution site two stories and 54,000 square feet in size, located between the Nassau Expressway and Rockaway Boulevard in Springfield Gardens, is set to provide 165 jobs. It had its groundbreaking August 2021.

“This is in our backyard as well,” said Kim Lawton, president of the Spring-Jam Civic Association, whose members live near Bartlett Dairy. “I’m saying this not as the president, but as a single mother and homeowner. I moved in this area to have a certain quality of life ... we want something that fits with the character of the neighborhood.”

Lawton would prefer a community center at the lot.

“Rezoning takes community action and this community does not approve this,” said Rich Hellenbrecht, the former chairman of the Land Use Committee and current first vice chairman of CB 13. “This is a site that is not compatible with a seven-story building. We are looking at maybe 32 apartments and 23 parking spaces. If you look around, there is no place to park for the rest of the people with cars. Some families may have two cars.”

Community board approves luxury public housing building on Van Wyck service road

 

Queens Chronicle

 Community Board 10 gave the greenlight to a developer in South Ozone Park hoping to build a new four-story apartment building along the Van Wyck Expressway on Thursday, Sept. 2.

At the meeting a representative of the developer proposed changing the plot’s zoning map amendment from strictly residential to a mix of residential and commercial. It would be taller than the other buildings on the block.

The new building would be 22,000 square feet at 103-16 Van Wyck Expy. The ground floor would be a small retail store and the second, third and fourth floors will contain 18 apartments ranging from studios to two-bedrooms. Five or six of them will be permanently affordable.

The development would include 13 spots for cellar parking, five more than the zoning requires.

The community board’s Land Use Committee, having met prior to the meeting, was in favor.

“The recommendation of the committee was that it was an appropriate use along the Van Wyck and Liberty Avenue. None of the adjacent owners had expressed any opposition. In fact some of the adjacent owners would like to do the same thing at some point,” said CB 10 Chairwoman Betty Braton.

This is what's getting plowed. Can't think of a better place to drop a dense luxury public housing tower on an accident prone service road. Coming out of the garage of this building will be a daily adventure.

And the views of the expressway and daily detritus from those floor to ceiling windows will be exquisite.

 

 

 

The Blaz gives the go ahead for Soho/Noho luxury public housing developments

 

Stencil on building wall by Crosby St..Soho (JQ)

The Village Sun

 The City Planning Commission on Tuesday announced the start of the public review for the Soho/Noho rezoning. The plan was officially certified, kicking off the city’s land-use review process, known as ULURP.

Village Preservation, the largest neighborhood preservation organization in New York City and largest membership organization in Greenwich Village, the East Village and Noho, promptly issued a defiant statement in response. Its director, Andrew Berman, blasted the rezoning as “a massive giveaway” to developers salivating to strike it rich in their coveted holy grail — the world-renowned, cachet-laden Downtown enclaves of Soho and Noho.

According to the city, the scheme, which it calls the Soho/Noho Neighborhood Plan, would allow as many as 3,500 new homes to be created, 900 of which would be permanently affordable under the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program.

Outside of the Soho and Noho historic districts and along Canal St. and the Bowery, the plan calls for “Opportunity Areas” that would allow increased density and a maximum height of 275 feet, “which is appropriate to the existing context,” according to City Planning.

The proposed changes would cover an area generally bounded by Canal St. to the south, Houston St. and Astor Place to the north, Lafayette St. and the Bowery to the east, and Sixth Ave. and West Broadway to the west. The area’s unique zoning dates to the early 1970s, when vacant manufacturing buildings were repurposed by artists. About 85 percent of the proposed rezoning area is landmarked due to being included in historic districts.

“Every New Yorker should have the opportunity to live in transit-rich, amenity-filled neighborhoods like Soho and Noho,” said Marisa Lago, the chairperson of the City Planning Commission. “Built on years of community engagement, this proposal was crafted with a lens focused on fair housing, an equitable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, reinforcing Soho/Noho as a regional hub for jobs and commerce, and preserving and augmenting the arts. Through permanently affordable housing requirements and support for the arts, this plan is a giant step forward toward a more equitable and even livelier New York City.”

Under ULURP, Community Board 2 now has 60 days to review the proposal, after which it will go to Borough President Gale Brewer for her consideration, then back to the City Planning Commission and ultimately to the City Council for a binding vote. The process typically can take around seven months, which would just barely get under the wire before de Blasio is forced out of City Hall due to term limits.

But despite the city’s lofty rhetoric, preservationist Berman said the Soho/Noho rezoning is, at heart, a transparent payback for the mayor’s deep-pocketed developer pals.

“In the dying days of the de Blasio administration, the mayor is indulging in an orgy of payback to the special interests who donated generously to his campaign and his legally suspect, ethically tarred, now-defunct Campaign for One New York,” Berman said. “High up on that list is a massive giveaway of real estate development rights in Soho, Noho and Chinatown to his generous donors, like Edison Properties, which will enable them to build enormous office buildings, big-box chain retail stores, and super-luxury condos where current rules prohibit them from doing so.

“Wrapped in a false veneer of affordable housing and social-justice equity,” Berman said, “de Blasio’s Soho/Noho proposal is a fire-sale giveaway of enormously valuable real estate that will destroy hundreds of units of existing affordable housing and create few if any new ones; displace hundreds of lower-income residents and residents of color; make these neighborhoods richer, more expensive and less diverse than they are now; and destroy locally and nationally recognized historic neighborhoods while pushing out the remaining independent small businesses with a flood of big-box chain retail. It’s a classic de Blasio bait and switch, and one has to wonder, after seven-and-a-half years of seeing this mayor in action, who is naive or desperate enough to not see it for what it is?”

Village Preservation recently released a study that analyzed the de Blasio plan and found that, in every case where the city predicted affordable housing would be included in new development, the plan actually makes it more lucrative to build without the affordable housing, and to utilize the many loopholes in the plan for avoiding affordable housing requirements. Specifically, commercial, retail and community-facility space, as well as market-rate residential space of no more than 25,000 square feet per zoning lot are all exempted from affordable housing requirements. Thus, according to Village Preservation, the chances of any affordable housing being generated by the plan are exceedingly small.

The group’s study also found that the Soho/Noho plan only accounts for about 37 percent of the 10.3 million square feet of new development potential it would create (nearly four Empire State Buildings’ worth), thus “hiding millions of square feet of additional development likely to take place that will almost undoubtedly take the form of luxury condos, big-box chain retail, and high-end commercial office space with no affordable housing.”

Earlier this month, the Soho Alliance, Broadway Residents Coalition and individual plaintiffs filed a lawsuit to block the rezoning plan’s certification, but the city, at the last minute, delayed the certification. As a result, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled that he could not issue an injunction yet. He set a return court date of June 3, likely figuring the city would have certified the plan before then.

Last Friday and this Monday, the plaintiffs returned to court to try to block the certification once again and the judge denied them again. But that does not mean, as has been incorrectly reported by some media outlets, that the lawsuit was tossed out of court, noted Sean Sweeney, the director of the Soho Alliance. Sweeney paraphrased their attorney, who related Engoron’s latest response:

“The judge said, ‘Look, I’ll give a T.R.O. [temporary restraining order] if the bulldozers are coming in to destroy a building. But I’m not going to give an emergency T.R.O. for a process [ULURP] that will last seventh months.”

Engoron, however, said that the issue of an emergency T.R.O. would be discussed during the return court date of June 3.

The lawsuit argues that public in-person meetings, not Zoom virtual meetings, are required under ULURP and also that the city did not make sufficient information about the plan available to Community Board 2 the required 30 days before the certification.

According to Sweeney, C.B. 2 was only sent a couple of sentences notifying the board that the certification was planned. That’s insufficient under a referendum to the City Charter that voters approved in 2019, he noted. Meanwhile, the Soho/Noho rezoning plan is a massive document.

“One appendix [for the rezoning] has 13,000 pages, so how can the community board, let alone the public, review a long, long attachment?” the Soho activist asked, incredulously.

Judge approves luxury public housing over-development around toxic Gowanus Canal

 

 NY Post

A Brooklyn Supreme Court judge allowed City Hall to move ahead Monday with controversial plans to build thousands of apartments near the Gowanus Canal, the site of one of the biggest pollution cleanups in the country.

Judge Katherine Levine made the ruling after the Department of City Planning offered to hold hearings for the proposal outside and virtually — instead of entirely by video conference, as officials had previously sought.

City planners have been pushing to rezone Gowanus since the Bloomberg administration — arguing the area would be far better served by building housing amid the city’s pressing shortage than by hanging onto warehouses, which have had little use since heavy industry moved out of the Big Apple.

Under the current proposal, developers would be allowed to build more than 8,500 apartments in the neighborhood — 3,000 of which would be rent-stabilized and set aside for low-income, working-class and middle-class families.

The exact income levels have not yet been determined. Officials estimate it could take until 2035 for all of the newly allowed buildings to be finished.

City Council approves Flushing Creek luxury housing and hotel plan

 

 QNS

The City Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises and its Committee on Land Use on Wednesday, Dec. 9, voted in favor of approving the Special Flushing Waterfront District — a 29-acre proposal that would bring waterfront access, environmental cleanup and new development to a decades-long isolated and polluted section of downtown Flushing.

The proposal will now move forward to the full council for a final vote on Thursday, Dec. 10. 

After delaying the vote on the matter in recent days, the council’s Subcommittee on Zoning had announced reaching a deal with the labor unions, Hotel Trades Council (HTC) and SEIU 32BJ, to ensure good jobs, community benefits and more for the Special Flushing Waterfront District (SFWD).

According to Councilman Francisco Moya, chair of the Subcommittee on Zoning, it was imperative for the committee to reach a deal that met with the union’s demands. 

“As I stated from the very beginning, it would have been irresponsible to approve this application without commitments to provide good-paying jobs for local community members and deep community benefits like real affordable housing,” Moya said. “I have always stood by my brothers and sisters in labor, 32BJ and HTC.” 

The developers of SFWD — F&T Group, Young Nian Group, United Construction and Development Group known as FWRA LLC. — said they have worked tirelessly with community members for years to activate what is currently an empty and polluted waterfront and finally give Flushing the future it deserves.

“This is a pivotal vote for New York City’s economic recovery, especially for a hardworking immigrant community like Flushing,” the group said in a statement. “We deeply appreciate the Council members’ support in moving Flushing forward, particularly the leadership of Council member Peter Koo, Chairs Francisco Moya and Rafael Salamanca, and Speaker Corey Johnson.”

 That hotel might actually come in handy with all the homeless people that will be produced from the gentrification this will cause. Especially with rents going up in Flushing during a pandemic. Happy Holidays.

The mayor suddenly wants to rezone Soho to make it "affordable" to live in

 

NY Daily News

“Affordable” and “SoHo” aren’t words New Yorkers are used to hearing in the same sentence, but if Mayor de Blasio gets his way, things could change in the upscale neighborhood.

The city would rezone SoHo and NoHo with the goal of getting 800 units of affordable housing built there, under a plan Hizzoner announced Wednesday.

The proposal targets a square bound by Canal St., Sixth Ave., W. Houston St. and Lafayette St., with a sliver of blocks leading up to Astor Pl. The area was last zoned in the 1970s with the intention of helping turn vacant manufacturing sites into lofts for artists and others, according to de Blasio’s office.

Since then, SoHo has became one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city, replete with luxury apartments and fancy boutiques for international brands.

 De Blasio’s proposal would pave the way for 3,200 new homes and include requirements for developers to construct affordable units.

It has already been confirmed that the word "affordable" has been redefined in de Blasio's segregation based affordable housing program. Plus this proposal comes much too late. Besides, after 6.10 years of Blaz gaslighting and narrative control, who can actually believe him now?

Steamrolling Flushing Creek hyper-development plan doesn't include a hospital

NY Post

A $2 billion development along toxic Flushing Creek will pollute the neighborhood with gentrification, critics say.

Affordable housing activists, unions and mom-and-pop shops have packed public hearings on the waterfront proposal, pushing back against more luxury apartments and designer stores.

And as livid as they are about the revitalization, they are just as angry about the government-approval process — claiming Community Board 7 and ex-Borough President Claire Shulman have steamrolled the project through. After wrapping up 15 years as beep, Shulman set up a nonprofit that makes private investments like the Flushing Creek venture possible.

Three developers — F&T Group, United Construction and Development Group, and Young Nian Group, in a partnership called FWRA LLC — want to transform 29 mostly unused acres into 3.4 million square feet of 1,725 apartments, a hotel, retail shops and offices that would generate a projected $28 million annually.

Their plan — the land is on the opposite side from the infamous junkyards near Citi Field — includes privately maintained roads and public access to the waterfront after an environmental cleanup of the area, polluted for decades by industrial waste.
“We believe this is the poster child for future waterfront development, and a legacy project for the owners who live and work in the community,” said their attorney, Ross Moskowitz, who pointed out supporters have turned out in big numbers at the public hearings — alongside the protesters.

“You can disagree with the project, but to say it has been steamrolled is just not right,” he said, adding the owners have followed the city’s statutory timeline for both land use and environmental reviews. “Already, he said, the owners have spent about 18 months on the reviews.

But opponents still think the process has been shady. As evidence of shenanigans, they point to Chuck Apelian, CB7’s first vice chair and land use committee chair, acting as a paid consultant to the developers and to Shulman, who received more time to speak during a Feb. 10 public hearing that turned so nasty cops were called. At times, demonstrators shouted “Shame” and “Let us speak.”

It takes a global pandemic to stop hyperdevelopment

6 SQ FT

 All city land use and rezoning processes have been temporarily suspended as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday. In an executive order, the mayor directed procedures “applicable to the city planning and land use processes” to freeze for the duration of New York’s state of emergency.

The city’s official public review process, or the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), involves months of evaluation of a proposed project from the community board, borough president, the City Planning Commission, the City Council, and the Mayor.

“To avoid the need to hold public gatherings and minimize the potential spread of COVID-19, Mayor Bill de Blasio has temporarily suspended New York City’s land use decision making processes,” Marisa Lago, the director of the Department of City Planning, said in a statement.

“The suspension of the City’s official public review process, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), was made via Executive Order. As of the issuance of this Executive Order, all City Planning Commission meetings, including public hearings and votes required as part of land use review processes, are suspended and the time periods for hearings and votes will not run.”

The Real Deal

Build, baby, build — but not in a pandemic.

Brooklyn City Council member Carlos Menchaca is calling for a moratorium on construction work citywide, in what would be one of the most significant industry-related disruptions since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak.

“I’m calling on the moratorium of all construction site work in NYC,” tweeted Menchaca, who represents District 38 including neighborhoods such as Sunset Park and Red Hook. “Again, we are putting workers in danger.”

His calls for suspension of all construction were echoed by Council member Brad Lander, who represents District 39 and is the Council’s deputy leader for policy.

“It is essential right now to build new hospital capacity,” Lander tweeted. “It is NOT essential right now to build new condos.”
 
New York’s Department of Buildings notified active construction sites this weekend to follow the latest guidance from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on the coronavirus, but as of Monday afternoon had not shut down the industry.

“We will continue to closely monitor the situation,” agency spokesperson Andrew Rudansky said in a statement, “and will issue further guidance to the industry as needed.”

MEGA developer wants rezoning permit for apartment buildings with movie theater and affordable housing components in Astoria

Cityland


The proposed zoning actions seek not only to facilitate the development but also bring block’s current uses in conformance. On December 4, 2019, the City Planning Commission heard an application by Mega LLC and the Pancyprian Association of American to rezone and redevelop an entire block in Astoria, Queens. The applicants proposed two eight-story buildings connected at the ground floor level with a green space between the buildings. The development includes affordable housing components and the creation of a new theater for the Pancyprian Association.  Nora Martins from Akerman LLP and Emanuel Kokinakis from Mega LLC presented the application.


The rezoning will occur on Block 769 in Queens which is bounded by Ditmars Avenue to the north, 23rd Avenue to the South, 46th Street to the east and 45th Street to the west. The proposed development site is home to two one-story manufacturing buildings located respectively at 22-60 46th Street and 22-61 45th Street in Astoria. One building is vacant and the other is used by a contracting business for parking. On the same block but north of the proposed development site is Pistilli Grand Manor’s parking garage and just north of the garage is Pistilli Grand Mannor itself. Pistilli Grand Manor is a six-story residential condo building that was once home to the Steinway Piano Factory. To the south and east of the site, but still on the block, are one to two family residential homes and Joes Garage Bar, a one-story restaurant. Just a bit further south of the block and development site is the Grand Central Parkway.

The proposed development is a two-section, mixed-use building setback from the property line. The design features a six-story base with two setback floors above. There will be a shared residential landscaped green-roof courtyard between the buildings. The development includes 88 residential units, 28 of which dedicated to affordable housing. The residential tenants will have access to valet parking (70 spaces), a fitness center, resident lounge, play room, party room and an office center. The applicants have 7,060 square feet of commercial space planned for 45th street, adjacent to Joe’s Garage Bar. The 250-seat/ 11,000 square foot theater would be controlled and operated by the Pancyprian Association, but will be made available to other community based groups. Anticipated uses include youth orchestras and choirs, art exhibitions, book talks and panel discussions.

No shit, Sherlocks at City Council; the city planning department doesn't evaluate the effects of overdevelopment?

LIC Post


City Planning’s predictions as to the outcome of neighborhood rezonings will be put under the microscope if a number of bills sponsored by Council Member Francisco Moya become law.
 
The bills would require city agencies to review past neighborhood rezonings to see how accurate City Planning’s projections were with what took place on the ground in following years.
 
The bills come at a time when there have been a number of neighborhood rezonings—where existing residents have voiced concern about being displaced due to gentrification– and instances where City Planning’s projections have been found to be way off.
 
For instance, City Planning’s projections were proven wrong when it rezoned a 37-block area in 2001 in the Court Square/Queens Plaza area. The city anticipated, according to its Environmental Impact Statement in 2001, that no more than 300 residential units would be built in the rezoned area by 2010, according to a report released by The Municipal Art Society of New York last year. In 2010, there were 800 residential units and by 2018 almost 10,000 units—with more coming.
 
With each neighborhood rezoning, the city goes through an environment review process, called the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR), to identify the likely outcome.
 
Based on the CEQR manual, the city must evaluate the impact of a rezoning on land use, traffic, air quality, open space, schools, socioeconomics, among other items. City Planning studies these impacts and makes projections that go into an Environmental Impact Statement, which the public relies on when it undergoes the ULURP public review process.
 
City Planning works with other city agencies, such as the School Construction Authority, Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, to produce an Environmental Impact Statement. The agencies provide guidance based on City Planning’s calculations.
 
However, the city is not held accountable for its predictions and legislators want that to change. There is no mandate requiring officials to re-examine their projections.

Here's more unaccountability:

Hunters Point developers for parcel C given the green light to build their towers higher and higher

Developers have released new designs for Parcel C of the ongoing Hunters Point South development, a shift that will result in the two planned towers to rise significantly higher than expected along the 

Long Island City waterfront in order to accommodate the complex infrastructure running below the ground along with a recently planned school for the site.
 
The two residential towers, referred to as “north” and “south” will rise to 55 stories, or 550 feet, and 44 stories, or 440 feet, respectively. The north tower’s new design is 14 stories higher than previously planned, and the south tower will see an additional nine stories, up from 35 stories in the previous plan.
 
The developer, TF Cornerstone, aims to break ground in June 2018.
 
The two towers will be flush against the perimeters of the parcel, as will the newly incorporated elementary school, resulting in cleared-out space in the middle of the site, where no built structures will rise, save for a food pavilion with outdoor seating amidst greenery and public art installations.

 The changes were revealed during Community Board 2’s Land Use meeting Wednesday night. Jaclyn Sachs, a senior planner at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and John 

McMillan, director of Planning for TF Cornerstone, said that they had to redesign the two towers so they wouldn’t disturb  power lines, an Amtrak tunnel, and other infrastructure running below the site. 

Furthermore, easement holders such as the New York Power Authority and Amtrak, wanted unobstructed access to the site.
 
Sachs added that while the New York Power Authority and Amtrak and other easement holders were part of initial conversations about the development, it wasn’t until a specific proposal for the parcel was put out by TF Cornerstone that easement holders preferences for an undisturbed center became clear.
 
TF Cornerstone also had to incorporate an elementary school on the parcel, which was not part of the original plan, after the city pushed for its addition during the developer’s redesign. The school will be 34,000 square-feet, with 572 seats, and have a ground level playground directed toward the center of the site.

 “This was not an easy thing to do,” Sachs said, adding that parcel C is the largest and most complex of the parcels on the 30-acre Hunters Point South development.

This obviously got permitted because it contains, ahem, "affordable housing", which as we have been told ad nauseum that it can only be achieved if market rate and luxury housing get built also. Like the nearby "zipper building":

The Zipper Building, a new luxury condominium development in Hunters Point, has officially placed all 41 of its units on the market.
 
The available condos, located inside the converted and expanded zipper factory at 5-33 48th Ave., range from studios to four-bedrooms. The units begin at $650,000 and go up to $2.5 million.

“The Zipper Building will complement the budding Hunters Point neighborhood, which is in the midst of a real estate boom,” said Eric Benaim, CEO of listing brokerage Modern Spaces.

And the behemoth at Court Square,

The first units have hit the market in the 67-story, 802-unit building that is going up in Court Square.
Twenty-units are now available in the condo, which will be the tallest building in Queens when it is complete. The listing prices for those units now on the market range from $660,400 for a studio to $2,325,610 for a three-bedroom.
 
The development, called the Skyline Tower and located at 23-15 44^th Drive, is across the street from One Court Square and is being marketed as offering spectacular views and more than 20,000 square feet of luxury amenities.
 
The condos offer floor-to-ceiling windows, modern appliances, and marble-adorned bathrooms.
 
The initial listings are in floors four through 36. The developer anticipates that buyers in the bottom 36 floors will be able to move in by the end of 2020, around the same time that the Dept. of Buildings is expected to issue a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy.
 
Residents will be able to move into the higher floors by the end of 2021, when the TCO is expected to be issued. The upper floors will tower over the Citigroup building.
 
Eric Benaim, the CEO of Modern Spaces, anticipates that it will take four years to sell all of the units. Modern Spaces is the exclusive marketing and sales firm for the project.

Apparently, the city and the real estate industry that truly runs it is building for speculative, well, hypothetical residents to supply instead of and for the present demand of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who are having difficulty finding affordable housing right now.

de Blasio's zoning policies will exacerbate unaffordability and gentrification according to housing study

Crain's

A recent study on rezonings could prove problematic for the de Blasio administration the next time it tries to rewrite the rules for development to promote affordable housing.

The January report studied two citywide rezonings in Chicago and found that housing prices there increased shortly after the zoning changes went into effect, while permits for new construction didn't increase. That conclusion could bolster New Yorkers' fears that the city's policy of rezoning neighborhoods for greater density will simply raise housing prices and increase the risk of displacement without delivering enough market-rate and affordable units to ease pressure on the housing market.

The de Blasio administration countered that rezonings in New York typically have spurred serious amounts of construction. And because City Hall has instituted a policy requiring some of that production to be permanently affordable and has created protections for existing tenants, the city argues the 15 neighborhoods targeted by the mayor for greater density will ultimately be a net win for New Yorkers.

Both sides have a point.

"The funny thing about my study is that … everybody is convinced that it proves their side of the equation," said Yonah Freemark, an MIT doctoral student, who authored the report.

Although rezoning for greater density seems like a logical way to alleviate housing crises in big cities, the effects on the neighborhoods themselves are not well understood. Most studies tend to take very broad views of housing policy to draw conclusions, such as cities with stricter zoning tend to have higher land-use costs. Studying the effects on a neighborhood level, however, has been more difficult. In New York, for example, many neighborhoods are rezoned precisely because they are already growing, making it difficult to attribute changes to pre-existing market forces or to the rezoning itself.

In addition, existing homeowners might expect that new development will bring more amenities to the area and so they jacked up their prices in response. Yet the study found that new building permits never materially expanded in any meaningful way after five years.
"If the product of upzoning is no change in construction levels but increases in property transaction values, including for some existing housing units," Freemark wrote, "this policy may have some negative consequences in upzoned neighborhoods that rapidly become more expensive." In other words, a rise in housing costs without more supply could put existing residents at risk for displacement.

Plaxall to develop site alongside Amazon

From The Real Deal:

Plaxall isn’t completely handing over its large Long Island City project to Amazon.

The family-run plastics company, which last year developed a 15-acre plan that appears to have been the key to luring Amazon’s HQ2 to New York, will retain a site just to the south of the tech company’s planned campus where it can develop its own commercial building, according to a memorandum of understanding between the company and the state and city’s respective economic development arms.

Plaxall... will retain the southernmost block of the larger project: a group of properties that sit on the block between 46th Road and 46th Avenue. The six property lots, which cover nearly the entire block, would allow Plaxall to build a mixed-use building slightly larger than 800,000 square feet, or a residential building of nearly 566,000 square feet.

Under the residential plan, the new building would be subject to the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing requirements, and under either scenario, Plaxall would set aside 5 percent of the space for light industrial use.

Woodside megaproject being negotiated

From Sunnyside Post:

The size and scope of a large project proposed along Queens Boulevard in Woodside is currently being negotiated, with discussions of a smaller development with a public school on the table.

Council Member Robert Holden, who represents the district where Madison Realty Capital has proposed a two-tower project at 69-02 Queens Blvd., is working with the developer to decrease the development’s density and add an elementary or middle school at the site.

“We’ve been negotiating for the past month or so,” said Daniel Kurzyna, spokesperson for Holden. “They seem open to it.”

The project as currently envisioned includes a 17 and 14 story tower with a total of 561 apartments, of which 169 would be affordable. Some ground level commercial space is also part of the proposed project.

But the project, larger than what is permitted under current zoning, can only be built as planned if its rezoning application passes a lengthy public review process. The review process, however, is soon coming to an end, with a City Council vote scheduled some time before the end of the year.

Negotiations have mainly focused on shaving off some stories from the taller building and including the school in a district with an overcrowding issue.

Major World seeks major rezoning

From The Real Deal:

A disgraced car dealer from Queens who recently pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud is now looking to rezone one of his auto lots in Long Island City under the city’s affordable housing program.

Bruce Bendell, a former senior manager at the Major World family of dealerships, is looking to upzone the site of a shuttered Kia dealership on Northern Boulevard to make way for an 11-story mixed-use building with 244 apartments.

But the 64-year-old is facing up to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty in July for failing to report $3.5 million in receipts and payroll expenses on Major World’s 2009 tax forms with the Internal Revenue Service.

Parkway Hospital rezoning underway

From Crains:

A rezoning application to convert the former Parkway Hospital in Queens into 351 units of affordable and market-rate housing entered the public review process Monday.

The Manhattan-based Jasper Venture Group is seeking city approval to add two stories to the former medical facility, which was forced to close after losing a court case a decade ago. The revamped building would have about 135 units of affordable housing, according to application documents, and some of them would be set aside for seniors. In addition, the developer seeks permission to construct a 14-story rental building with about 216 market-rate apartments elsewhere on the site, which abuts both 113th Street and a Grand Central Parkway service road between 70th Road and 71st Avenue in Forest Hills.

The application ends years of intrigue about what would become of the property.

Rezoning of LIC is happening regardless

From City Limits:

Despite the city’s slow-moving plan to study Long Island City for a possible rezoning, real-estate developers are moving their residential and commercial development proposals for individual sites through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, the city’s review process for zoning changes, while community members gear up to testify against the new developments this month.

The idea of a neighborhood-wide rezoning in Long Island City has some community members and small business owners—all concerned by what some have called “overdevelopment”—wondering how long it will be before they are pushed out.

Long Island City and its residents are all too familiar with rezonings. Over the last few decades the neighborhood, including Hunters Point, Queens Plaza and Dutch Kills, has transformed from an industrial neighborhood to one hosting a mix of commercial and residential development under an ever-expanding skyline.

In 2017, Mayor de Blasio announced Long Island City as one of the dozen or so neighborhoods the city planned to rezone as part of his plan to create an estimated 300,000 affordable units. The area boasts extensive transit access with with eight subway stations, 13 bus lines, two LIRR stations and the East River ferry terminal, and its proximity to both Manhattan and the new Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island make it an ideal location for a “economically diverse, 24/7, mixed-use community,” according to the Department of City Planning website.

The study launched by the de Blasio administration overlaps with the 2001 Queens Plaza study area and parts of the 2008 Dutch Kills study area. It encompasses the Special Long Island City Mixed Use District, a special-purpose zoning district that has a mix of residential, commercial, and light industrial uses and includes the Queens Plaza, Court Square, Hunter’s Point and Dutch Kills neighborhoods. Thirty‐seven blocks of the study area fall within the Queens Plaza and Court Square sub‐districts. According to the DCP, the majority of new completed or under-construction developments are located on those 37 blocks, including an estimated 10,100 housing units, more than 1.5 million square feet of office space and 600 hotel rooms. DCP has not scheduled any public engagement events yet for this study process.

According to residents, developers are not waiting for the city’s study or the possible city-sponsored rezoning and are avoiding the community by going through “spot-rezoning,” which means changing the zoning of a single property and not including any community engagement during the planning process.

City pushing through rezoning that no one has seen

From PIX11:

A rezoning plan for Inwood has been heavily protested by large groups of residents over the course of many months, but on Thursday, a scaled down version of the proposal got onto the fast track to approval.

A city council subcommittee gave the plan the green light, before residents who've long opposed change got a chance to get a good look at it.

It's a proposal that would change the look and feel of this neighborhood, one of Manhattan's last pockets of relative affordability, forever. The proposal, which will see some 5,000 new units of housing built in this northern Manhattan neighborhood -- more than 25 percent of it classified as affordable -- was revised overnight Wednesday, and then re-negotiated in closed door meetings among city councilmembers all morning on Thursday.

The resulting proposal will allow for taller buildings in the western part of the neighborhood near Manhattan's northern tip. The area west of 10th Avenue will be upscaled, but new construction will not be as tall as originally proposed, according to preliminary assessments. To the east of 10th Avenue, buildings will be allowed to be even taller. The proposal will also add new schools and other additions to the community.

At the council subcommittee hearing, which was attended by developers, building trade union members and residents alike, there was a theme: that because the proposal that was being voted on had been newly minted, there was inadequate opportunity for analysis.