Irresponsible developers trying to beat the clock on a sweeping rezoning plan in Dutch Kills are creating dangerous building sites, a Queens official warns.Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) is urging the city to step up enforcement of construction violations in the neighborhood, where at least 11 hotels are being built.
The Council's zoning subcommittee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the Dutch Kills rezoning plan on Oct. 2, Gioia noted. The full Council is expected to vote on the measure later in the month.
The new rezoning would not allow hotel development on side streets in Dutch Kills, only on busier Northern Blvd. Developers are moving quickly to lay foundations, because if 80% of a new building's foundation is laid before the rezoning kicks in, it will be grandfathered in under the existing rules.
Warns of dangers in Dutch Kills
"We shouldn't let the construction in Dutch Kills turn into the Wild West," Gioia said at a news conference he called Monday to focus attention on construction site infractions and a recent wall collapse.
Too late, Doorman! While you were wringing your hands over Darfur, Dutch Kills became Dodge City.
4 comments:
It looks more like
"Tombstone Territory"
with these vertical slabs
sticking up all over the place.
It's making Dutch Kills,
a former viable neighborhood,
resemble a graveyard.
The "doorman" himself
let in the developers
to rape and plunder.
And now that very same Gioia
is saying the situation is intolerable and wants to shut the door?
Yeah....
only after he's already
pocketed their kickback cash!
Although the newspapers will never admit it, this is the poster child to a process that many can share in the blame:
1. politicans: campaign donations from developers in exchange to having their way with the peasants.
2. Dutch Kills Civic: led by the clueless and a community board 1 member, like matches and gasoline, a bad combination no matter how you look at it (they still want a wall of 11 story buildings lining Northern that the newspapers misleading (should we say lieing) report as a 'downzone')
3. the preservation community: their failure to embark on a city wide education policy points suspiciously to other motives (like QCC - made up of eastern Queens civics who are downzoning) who advised Dutch Kills to go ahead with the upzone.
Even now the press is loath to interview the residents in the community and highlight the outrages they face from development.
The only story they report is the relocation of business.
The civic does not help its case by having its leadership advise the members NOT to talk to the press or WORK with other groups.
But that is the point - right? - to isolate people and give them no hope...
and in Queens time and again they are successful.
CB1 the communtiy board from hell.
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