NYC Planning wants a little more upzoning on Sutphin

 

 Queens Chronicle

The Department of City Planning provided residents an online refresher course about zoning ahead of a Zoom town hall about proposed reforms of Downtown Jamaica and parts of Hollis, last Thursday.

During the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan Town Hall, people had questions about what will be developed in the area and if its needs will be met with the plan.

DCP agency reps said they hope to get more feedback from community members regarding the rezoning. The initiative would transform Jamaica Center, the downtown area where straphangers catch the E, J and Z trains, along with nearby regions stretching to the Jamaica and Hollis Long Island Rail Road stops to Hillside Avenue in the north and the Van Wyck Expressway to the west. Last Thursday’s event was designed to lay the groundwork for an environmental review of the plan. The proposal also calls for rezoning sections of Dunkirk and 160th streets and Merrick, Sutphin and Guy R. Brewer boulevards, according to DCP. There will be no zoning changes to single- or two-family areas, said Shavvone Jackson, a DCP representative.

More than 200,000 people who live, work or go to school in and around Downtown Jamaica would be impacted by the rezoning of the area, said DCP Borough Planner Alisa Nurmansyah, using data from the 2020 Census.

“Zoning is a set of rules that control how land in a community can be used,” said Jasmin Tepale, the senior program manager at DCP, who is overseeing the Jamaica rezoning plan. “It tells us what you can build and where you can build it ... this includes the type of uses you see in a neighborhood like residential or commercial zoning ... and what a building looks like and how tall it can be.”

The three main types of zoning districts include residential, commercial and manufacturing, or R, C and M zoning districts. R1 is a low-density residential district, while R10 is a high-density district.

The purpose of the rezoning plan is to build up Downtown Jamaica, which consists of mostly two- to six-story homes and residential, commercial and manufacturing buildings to create eight- to 16-story buildings to address the growing population and low housing production in the area, according to the DCP presentation.

Data from the American Community Survey, released in 2022, said that from 2010 to 2020, Jamaica’s population increased by 13.4 percent, higher than the rest of the city, which grew by 7.7 percent. Housing production in the area increased by 10.1 percent while housing production in the city grew by 7.3 percent, which is closer to the citywide population increase, according to DCP.

Profiles of Queens Community District 12 (Jamaica, Hollis and St. Albans) said the population was approximately 225,900 in 2010 and 248,158 in 2022.

U.S. Census data said that the city’s population was 8,804,190 on April 1, 2020. A World Population Review census said the city’s population decreased to 7,931,147, but is expected to be around 9 million by 2040, according to a Fox News report on March 28.

Blossom Ferguson, one resident who was on the Zoom call, asked if any of the housing will be available to people with low incomes.

A city Housing Preservation & Development spokeswoman said that if an area is mapped for mandatory inclusionary housing, its required that a share of new housing will be permanently affordable. If a developer comes in to erect a building with more than 10 units, a percentage of them must be permanently affordable.

“Do you plan on having condos or co-ops?” Ferguson asked. “Is that already established or still in the works?”

Tepale said that based on previous feedback, many seniors who would like to leave their single-family home have expressed interest in still owning property, and condos and co-ops are something that can be created in residential zones, along with other housing types.

Lisa Edwards, another resident, said that she believes the whole rezoning plan is simply gentrification and that the whole process for the initiative is undemocratic.

“This has not been properly publicized,” Edwards said. “It does not allow for community members to hear each other’s voices and discuss.”

Jackson, who spoke during the zoning refresher, said there are 38 people on the steering committee, 26 meetings were held and that DCP has reached out to more than 2,000 people since May 2023.

“We are going to continue to create opportunities for people to engage in this process,” Jackson said.

Woodside twin luxury public housing towers looks even worse than when it was first proposed

This is some development. Well, some over-development. It wasn't long ago when the city promised to build a school here along with promises to devote more units for families, but the folks at Madison Realty Capital had some other plans thanks to the former Mayor de Blasio's HPD very generous upzoning approval, much to the chagrin of the community's and Council member Holden's objections.

 

Have to admire the tenacity of this one holdout homeowner

 

 

Admin note: I was notified that I implied this was a NYCHA building and that's not the case at all. Luxury public housing is what I describe every new "affordable housing" building that has gone up in the last decade, mostly those built during the Blaz years, because of the ratio of incremental low rent units to higher market rate units.

Assembly holding hearing on ADUs tomorrow

We're about to get royally f*cked.

Paul Graziano calls out Deputy Mayor Vicki Been during protest against Planning Together

  

The Village Sun

  Activists slammed Corey Johnson’s long-range planning bill as a “Trojan horse” for developers at a rally outside City Hall on Tuesday.

The temperature was freezing but passions were heated as speaker after speaker blasted the bill, Intro 2186, the City Council speaker and Mayor de Blasio at the press conference, organized by the Citywide People’s Land Use Alliance.

They derided the 10-year comprehensive planning initiative as “top-down” and “one-size-fits all.” They charged that it would cut the community out of the process and legally empower an unaccountable “director” to ram through district planning schemes — if necessary, over the objections of community boards and local councilmembers.

Most chilling to them was the fact that Intro 2186 would force mandatory upzonings every decade for every single community board in the city — in short, codifying an unstoppable development juggernaut.

Dozens of organizations supported the rally, from East River Park Action, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, the Soho Alliance and the Seaport Coalition to Preserve BAM’s Historic District, Voice of Gowanus, Inwood Preservation and Stop Sunnyside Yards.

Alicia Boyd of the Movement to Protect the People, which is fighting a development project that threatens the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, said the citywide plan is being spun as something that will help low-income black and brown people, when, in reality, it will mainly lead to an explosion of luxury development.

“This bill is being presented as an equalizer,” she railed. “Mandatory Inclusionary Housing is a failure. It’s a Trojan horse! This is not an anti-racist plan. This is not an anti-displacement plan. This is a displacement plan. We are tired of the scams [about] affordable housing.”

Paul Graziano, a Queens native and planning consultant, has played a role in helping contextually rezone much of Queens to keep overdevelopment in check.

“It’s been three months since Corey Johnson dropped this bombshell,” he told the rally. “This bill is not a comprehensive planning bill. It’s a comprehensive overdevelopment bill. It’s a comprehensive real estate bill. I have gone through this bill with a fine-tooth comb.”

In short, Graziano said, rezonings make the “speculative value” of property go up.

The Mandatory Inclusionary Housing included in the rezonings is a “scam,” he said.

“M.I.H. has not worked,” he said, “because there is no deep affordability. And it’s set up as a real estate program.”

 Graziano blasted Vicki Been, de Blasio’s deputy mayor of housing and economic development, calling her the engineer of the current upzonings. He said a report Been headed at New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy has been used “to justify upzonings for the last eight years.”

“Eighty percent of her data is wrong,” Graziano said. “You’ve got this administration running this phony agenda and you’ve got “Planning Together” looking to lock it in for 10 years. This horrendous bill…will lock it in.

“Planning Together” is a report, released in December, on which Intro 2186 was based.

 

Kathryn Garcia wants to upzone us into oblivion

"Former NYC Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia is running for NYC Mayor this year. Below is a portion of her plan to address the affordable housing and homelessness issues. I received this today via email. She was soliciting for campaign contributions.

These two issues are important to work on, however, some of her proposals are rather shocking and reflect the increasing attacks on our contextual rezonings and our fight against dangerous illegal conversions. Again, this is a portion of Ms. Garcia's Policy Statement.

Is this what we can expect to hear from other candidates for Mayor this year?" - anonymous

Housing supply has not kept up with demand. We added 500k New Yorkers over the last decade, but only 100k units of new housing.

Public dollars cannot fund all affordable housing, but we can make it easier and faster for private partners to build.

That means comprehensive upzoning to ensure all neighborhoods - particularly those rich in transit, jobs, and great schools - have their fair share of affordable housing.

We need to get creative: end apartment bans and legalize basement apartments, accessory dwelling units, and single-room occupancy apartments (SROs).

Accelerate approvals for new housing construction by streamlining the ULURP and environmental review process, especially for affordable housing projects.

Here she comes to save the day!

Developer demands upzoning for apartment building where Shalimar Diner once was

 

 

  Queens Post

A developer has filed plans with the Department of City Planning to have a Rego Park site where the Shalimar Diner was located rezoned.

The application was filed earlier this year by David Koptiev, the owner of the Forest Hills-based company Platinum Realty, who is looking to construct a nine-story, 74-unit project on the 63-68 Austin St. site.

The plans were certified by City Planning on Oct. 5 and the public review process has begun.

The site had been occupied by the Shalimar Diner from 1974 through to the end of 2018. The corner property was purchased by two LLCs owned by Koptiev for $6,550,000 on Nov. 15, 2018 from Alderton Associates.

Alderton was owned by Hildy Limondjian, whose family had the property for decades.

The Austin Street site is currently located in a R4 zoning district—with a C2-2 commercial overlay—which typically allows for a three-story mixed use building, according to City Planning documents.

 

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.

This is what democracy looks like

Photo is of CB11 meeting last night regarding the plan to upzone the corner of Northern Blvd and Douglaston Pkwy. CB11 voted unanimously to reject the proposal. The applicant's attorney fled the room before he was scheduled to speak.