Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Development not necessarily good

An open letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

Thank you for your recent letter regarding North Flushing rezoning. It is true the city has experienced unprecedented growth, but encouraging all this development in Queens is wrong. Most neighborhoods, especially in eastern Queens, are not accessible to all modes of transportation. Residents there have many cars, so encouraging builders to convert dwellings from one-family to multi-family is wrong. It is adversely affecting the quality of life in those neighborhoods.

You stated in your letter that you are discussing these issues with City Planning Commission Chairwoman Amanda Burden, and I am glad you are doing so. We would like to discuss them with her, as well. The residents here would like you both to come and take a tour of Flushing and other Queens neighborhoods to see how City Planning's inaction has negatively affected our communities. If "City Planning works to ensure that development is responsible and benefits all New Yorkers", then why am I still trying to figure out how I benefit from a builder ruining my street so he can make a profit?

I look forward to your response on this increasingly pressing matter.

Rose Forkan
Flushing

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Most neighborhoods, especially in eastern Queens, are not accessible to all modes of transportation.
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Sorry, Rose, you folks need public transportation. You are not going to push development into western Queens using this as an excuse. You have a lot more land to build on than us, and we hope that some enterprising developer challenges your downzoning and have it overturned.

Then you might have to move to Plan B: instead of DUMPING on western Queens, WORKING with western Queens to DOWNZONE THE ENTIRE BORO!

Anonymous said...

Look we have gone over this again and again. The time for tours was back in the 90s. They know perfectly well what is going on out here.

Unless you are ready for new action and new ideas, just shut up and sit down.

At least until someone with some balls to bump things up a notch comes along nothin is gittin done

Anonymous said...

I never realized eastern and western Queens were at war.

Anonymous said...

How about a link to Bloombergs letter?

Anonymous said...

That old Astoria "granny" (who
legally resides in a rent controlled Yorkville apartment)has been cooking up his armchair east versus west
Queens war for at least the 2 decades that I've known him (or her).

Sorry no name will be revealed.

You can guess the protagonist's identity.

Anonymous said...

What a lot of ignorant replies.

Anonymous said...

What's stopping you western Queens folks from initiating your own down zoning plans like we've done out in the northeast ?

But I guess you river rats prefer complaining and complacency over
doing some real hard work.

Nobody is at war with you.
You're just jealous of what we've already accomplished!

Blame your own laziness
for what you've got
(or don't have).

Anonymous said...

LIC, Hunters Point and Astoria
are geographically closest to Manhattan.

Sorry, but that's the real problem.

It has, and will continue to be developed first so the "grand isle"
can spill its burgeoning population onto your shores.

History has proven such all over the world.

It's called "urban sprawl".

You are DEFINITELY not going to ever see down zoning to the R1-2 levels of the eastern environs.

There are only two options:
Get used to it or move!

Anonymous said...

There are only two options:
Get used to it or move!
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Third options is to raise hell and upset the apple cart.

Believe me, the developers will love to expand into other areas. We will repay the courtesy of you shifting your development on us, back to you.

Then you might consider plan B.