Jackson Heights Life

An extremely important policy and planning issue may soon be coming to our community...

Queens leaders hope to bring some livability back to Queens' 'gold coast' with new affordable housing push

Community Board 2 chair Joseph Conley is proposing a plan to create four small zones within the district where developers will be allowed to build denser and higher if they create below market housing. Mayor de Blasio has said that potentially allowing larger buildings is an important component of his ambitious plan for 200,000 affordable apartments in the city.

BY ELI ROSENBERG  NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 9:36 PM

Hey Mr. Mayor! Build it here!

Leaders in Long Island City, Sunnyside and Woodside are inviting the city to look their way to put up some of the 200,000 affordable apartments the de Blasio administration has promised to create or preserve.

“The neighborhood has become too pricey," said Community Board 2 chair Joseph Conley. “In Hunters Point and Long Island City, the rents are astronomical and people are being priced out.”

Conley penned a letter to city officials proposing four swaths of land that could be rezoned to allow for taller buildings and potentially denser developments with affordable housing set aside.

They include part of Queens Plaza in Long Island City, a triangle in Woodside — bound by Broadway, Northern Blvd. and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — and an area in Sunnyside near Northern Blvd. between 43rd to 48th Sts.

Conley also proposed building on top of the Long Island Rail Road tracks on Woodside Ave. between 63rd and 65th Sts.

Developers taking advantage of the new zoning would have to make at least 30% of their buildings’ units affordable, Conley said.

“No requirement for affordable housing will have our district continue to gentrify unchecked,” he wrote to Department of City Planning Commissioner Carl Weisbrod, referring to Long Island City as a "new Queens 'Gold Coast.'"

Rents continue to climb in much of the district.

In Long Island City, one-bedroom apartments can rent for between $2,800 and $3,200 a month.

Two-bedrooms go up to $4,000 a month, according to real estate expert Rick Rosa, the executive vice president of Douglas Elliman's outpost in the neighborhood.

“New York has become so unaffordable that it’s hard for people to live in good neighborhoods,” Rosa said.

Rents in Sunnyside are generally more affordable due to the area’s concentration of rent-stabilized units, according to broker Harvey Heit, who noted a one-bedroom averages between $1,500 and $1,700.

Officials were receptive to the proposal.

“We appreciate [the community board’s] willingness to discuss the important goals of expanding housing that will be affordable to a range of incomes,” a Department of City Planning spokeswoman said.

“We continue to evaluate the appropriateness of areas that can meet the goals of the mayor’s housing plan,” she added.

Development advocates also cheered the effort.

“This speaks to a new paradigm,” said Moses Gates, a planning director at the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development.

“Communities and the administration are working together for the best way to figure out affordable housing.”

erosenberg@nydailynews.com

Hi Todd,
I agree that this is an extremely important and potentially beneficial opportunity. If the community gets organized early, we're much more likely to end up with a development that makes western Queens a pleasant place to live. I'm definitely up for contributing to a letter, coming to meetings, etc.

I'd also be interested in being involved in letters, meetings, etc.  I think this proposal, if done right, could be really wonderful for our neighborhood.

Is it NIMBY to want development to scale and not the atrocious scenarios that have played out in Long Island City
and Williamsburg with oversized high-rises going to the highest bidders? How about some lower scale townhouses
or more 6story Jackson Heights style housing? More towers like our original Towers. Or more Phipps apartments
who still gets frequent visits from architecture students for their inventiveness and affordability?

excerpting:

Northern Boulevard, meanwhile, is utterly unlovely and is built way too low considering the huge street width, as is the part of Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside/Woodside.

What the community needs to get organized on is not to stop the residential development that we so desperately need in a city where people are living in basement rabbit warrens because there aren't enough affordable apartments - but to make sure that development targets the working-class New Yorkers who actually need to live here, as opposed to the global economic elite or international absentee owners looking for places to park their money (cough cough, Vin Chu Towers).

well, we may as well toss a few 30-story high rises on northern in the middle-to-high 70s as well....

More green space, yes.  Protected bike lanes along Broadway and Northern to connect this new development with other neighborhoods.

excerpting:
well, we may as well toss a few 30-story high rises on northern in the middle-to-high 70s as well....

Once you get into Jackson Heights along Northern, super-dense development becomes less automatically appealing because you aren't close enough to a subway station. Rail is the best way to move large numbers of people. That said, Northern between 74th and 79th is pretty awful, and there have got to be better ways to use that space. Considering that the community was unable to even figure out how to give Travers Park the rest of its block, though, that may be a hopeless cause.

That's a really interesting point, dssjh.   The times have certainly changed, at least in some parts of NYC.  Here's what's happening now on previously-cleared land on the Lower East Side:
http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/302-13/mayor-bloomberg-plans-major-mixed-use-development-long-vacant-seward-park-area-on#/0
Absolutely massive development.

The market won't support anything of that scale in Ironbound Woodside.  I don't think high-rises are a real possibility there.  But there's a middle ground, like the wonderfully livable, high-density urban forms we have in Jackson Heights.