Mr. Ross, one of the city’s most active and politically connected developers, and some of his colleagues have been in secret talks with the Bloomberg administration about designing and financing the middle-class buildings on a 24-acre publicly owned parcel at Queens West in Long Island City His proposal is to have the industry’s powerful lobbying arm, the Real Estate Board of New York, form a nonprofit corporation to build the huge complex.But some local residents, civic and church groups and housing advocates are outraged by the talks, saying that City Hall has locked them out of what was supposed to be an open planning process on the future of an important piece of public land on the East River. Developers’ goals may not be in the best interest of the local community, they say.
Fearing that such apartments would not be affordable for most Queens residents, the local community board and a coalition of 20 organizations sent letters this week to Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff saying that turning the land over to the Real Estate Board would be “a serious mistake that could jeopardize a valuable and important opportunity to create thousands of units of affordable housing.”
Plan for Middle-Class Homes on Queens Bank of East River Prompts Ideas and Protest
From the Queens Chronicle (5/17/07):
Real Estate Moguls Eye Queens West
Is western Queens waking up?
5 comments:
No, western Queens is not waking up at all.
This is a dispute between the mayor's boys, and the local talent. Each group wants to control massive development to ensure that their political base is secure.
It is an issue of control by two different cliques.
Massive development, loss of the waterfront as parkland, cutting out (and displacing) the community that aleady lives there is in the cards for both. Not a dime's worth of difference between the two.
The bottom line is that neither church group or the city hall group are from the community.
Again, western Queens is not waking up. It is simply a pawn between two big juggernauts.
Bloomberg, the billionaire bumbling bozo mayor, continues to rape Queens.
Good point.
Look at that. An American colony where the locals have no real say in the future of the neighborhood, homes, way of life.
Their fate decided far away. Lines drawn on a map with no regard to the needs and interests of the community. Only the 'greater good,' whatever the hell that means.
An American colony right across the river from the United Nations.
Understand that church group has a lot of churches starting to pump up the idea of development from the pulpit with pastors etc dangling 'affordable housing' in front of their parishioners.
Of course 'affordable housing' to the gullible and 'affordable housing' to a city functionary acting as all but agent for a developer may SOUND the same, but believe me, MEANS something completely different in reality.
Ah, politics!
There once was a king from Bloombergtopia,
That really couldn't get any dopier,
He pillaged the land of Queens,
Which (in 2030) is supposed to be more green,
And his lies get more and more hokier.
Russ
Post a Comment